Marine Repairs and Training [TC][AP][ALP]

[Welingen]

hello,

Did you find the problem with add ware to yaki/pirate station ?

can't remove with ware manager, script permanantly add emp ware to station.

haapy new year

[DrBullwinkle]

Thanks for your report, Welingen.


Update

v214 (2015-01-01)
* Bug Fix: Hotkey did not register correctly. (Welingen, Tiek)
* Bug Fix: Removed (broken) ware. (Welingen, Tiek)
* Removed custom ware requirement for improved compatibility with major mods.

[Bad Debt]

Hello DrBullwinkle and thanks for some great scripts! I'm using this one and DCS in my game.

Are you open to suggestions for new features? I was thinking the marines could repair all ships docked to the same station as their own ship. Perhaps with another restriction, e.g. it has to be a player-owned station (giving them more freedom of action compared to race stations, etc.). What do you think?

I'm asking because I'm sick of having to find an Equipment Dock to fit my newest capture with Cargo Lifesupport in order to send in the marines for repairs. Mainly for M6s and M8s that seem to bail quite often.

Thanks!

P.S. I'm running XRM.

[DrBullwinkle]

Thanks for the suggestion, Bad Debt. I did have that feature on my list for a while.

1) Have you tried the Marines Repair Target hotkey? It is an easy way to repair a damaged ship that does not have Cargo Bay Life Support.

Be flying a ship carrying trained marines.
Fly near to the ship that you want to repair (within 2-3 km usually works).
Target it.
Press the hotkey.
Wait for the space-walking marines to finish the repair and return to your ship.

2) Some players use an Aran as a Mobile Repair Base. Any ship can dock to an Aran, and the Aran isn't much good for many other things, so it is a good combination.

Would either of those solutions work for you?

[Bad Debt]

1) I have; spacewalk repair works fine, but the script still asks for full price, or at least seems to ignore the Teladianium I have conveniently beamed aboard the captured ship.

2) I'm still in the early(ish) stages of the game, so I'm still lacking the UFJD needed to go Aran-hunting. I guess an Aran would indeed provide a good "mobile repair base".

[DrBullwinkle]

I do plan to change the hotkey pricing to use the same routine as on-board marine repair costs. Including using wares instead of credits.

Hopefully, between that, the Aran, and just earning more credits in your game, you should be fine. Probably.

[Bad Debt]

Yeah, I guess you're right. Earning more credits would solve a lot more issues as well.

[soulmata]

This is an amazing script, and I'm so glad I found out. I didn't read through all 40 pages of this thread, but there are a few oddities I've noticed in using this on latest AP.

Specifically, the following:

* I lose credits when having unskilled marines, presumably for training, but they never, even after 4 game days, gain a single point of skill. If I make those Marines take traditional training, they stop draining my account. So for now I take all new Marines and immediately train them up to 2 stars, else they seem to make me pay "wages" for training they are skipping class on.

* If using spacewalk repair, the amount of money used is insanely high. I had a Sabre, for instance, that was at around 90% hull, which normally would be a few thousand to repair at the most. I had 8 marines in my TM, I told them to spacewalk repair it, and it said it would be something like "38,000 credits to repair, press to cancel". It then proceeded to drain 38,000 a bunch of times - it ended up costing me 300k+ to repair 10% of damage on a ship that brand new is only 260k.

* If using spacewalk repair on an expensive ship, like an M3, and there isn't enough money, I still would lose huge amounts of money. Example: I had a Mamba at around ~40% hull, and it said it would cost something like 780,000 credits to fix, but I only had around 500k at the time. Well, I was then drained of 780,000 credits and my credits went negative, but there was no repair work done.



Aside from those oddities, this is one of the best mods I've seen, and definitely something that vanilla should have had. I love being able to stick some M6s to do sector patrol with Marines on them, and if they get damaged, whatever, they just repair themselves. I further love having marines in my player ship, and when I take the occasional hull damage, I don't have to worry about flying a billion miles to go dock and repair something - my onboard team takes care of it.

[DrBullwinkle]

This is an amazing script, and I'm so glad I found out.
... this is one of the best mods I've seen, and definitely something that vanilla should have had.

Thanks, soulmata.


Marine Repairs and Training (MRT) will not do anything unless your account balance is over the threshold in the text file. By default, that is one million credits.

If you do have enough credits, then the marines will train. Check the numeric amount (0-100 points) of training for each skill with a bio scanner (not the number of stars).

* If using spacewalk repair, the amount of money used is insanely high. I had a Sabre, for instance, that was at around 90% hull, which normally would be a few thousand to repair at the most. I had 8 marines in my TM, I told them to spacewalk repair it, and it said it would be something like "38,000 credits to repair, press to cancel".

Sounds about right to me. A Sabre costs 400,000 Cr. So ten percent repair should cost a little less than 40,000 Cr.

It then proceeded to drain 38,000 a bunch of times

That part is not right. I don't even know how that could happen. Unless maybe you pressed the hotkey a bunch of times?

* If using spacewalk repair on an expensive ship, like an M3, and there isn't enough money, I still would lose huge amounts of money.

That, too, should not happen. What should happen is that you will not be able to do a spacewalk repair if you do not have enough credits.


Try it for a while and see if your troubles do not disappear with experience. If you continue to have trouble, then keep me posted.

[soulmata]

In this case, the script did indeed tell me that I didn't have enough money for the repairs, but still deducted credits from my account.

I'll see if i can replicate it tonight. Thanks!

[Gaster]

This seems like a really nice script, but I'm a bit confused with bootcamp. What's the minimum required balance for training to kick in with 40 fresh recruits in my fancy new Geochen? My balance has fluctuated between 1 and 10 million credits for several hours now, but I haven't seen any stats going up nor have any meatsteaks or sidearms been consumed.

[DrBullwinkle]

40 marines will cost 100 million credits to train.

If you have sufficient funds in your account, then BootCamp will do four training cycles per hour, at the vanilla cost of 25,000 credits per marine per training cycle. Or 100k per hour per marine. With 40 marines, that is 4 million credits per hour. One training cycle for 40 marines will cost 1,000,000 credits.

If you do not have enough credits for a training cycle, then BootCamp will patiently wait until you do.

By "sufficient funds", I mean 20 times the cost of a training cycle. BootCamp should never spend more than 5% of your account balance per hour.

20 times one million credits per cycle = 20 million credits minimum balance for a full training cycle. This is probably why your marines are not training -- you do not have enough credits.

Really, Marines are not well-suited to shoe-string budgets. Better ramp up some sort of passive income, such as Mk3 Traders, mining ops, and/or selling stuff.

To see the training increases due to BootCamp, you will need a bio scanner. Read the numbers (not the stars) for precise training levels. Look at all of your marines -- it is possible that only some of them are doing repair work (and, therefore, earning training).

Your marines will train up soon enough, but you will need many more credits than you have.

The default minimum balance for repairs is 1,000,000 credits (configurable in addon\t\8501-L044.xml). So your marines may still do repairs, slowly, even if BootCamp does not have sufficient funds to operate. And marines *will* earn training while doing repairs -- this may be why you see *some* costs deducted.


Bottom Line: Marines are intended for mid-to-late game, *after* you have sorted out your income sources.

[Gaster]

I've actually got a decent income, I was just spending money as fast as I was making it. I let my credits pile up, and as soon as I was at around 12 million, the first guys started to train. Most of them seem to be training now that I'm up to 25 million, so it's all good.

This is my first playthrough of AP after putting way too many hours into Reunion years ago, so I'm trying to explore the new things (like boarding) before my power level rises so high as to make it obsolete. I want capping my first M6 to be exciting not "Meh, I've already got 20, at least my guys got a little fight training"!

[DrBullwinkle]

Excellent.

I have enjoyed boarding immensely; more than any other activity in any game. I hope that you will enjoy it as well.

Kaplah! (Success!)

[Pind]

Hi Bullwinkle, big user of several of your scripts, repackages, revamps in a heavily modded XRM AP setup.

Just wanted to let you know that:

1) You are awesome for still being active!
2) Marine repairs target is giving you money for repairing (deducts a negative amount from your account)

This could easily be my mistake in either configuration or just installation but just in case I thought I'd let you know. I fixed this in my version by making the marine repairs target cost multiplier negative.

Cheers!

[DrBullwinkle]

Marine repairs target is giving you money for repairing

It certainly does not do that under normal circumstances, Pind.

Perhaps it is due to one of your configuration choices.

If you can reproduce it with default settings, then please let me know the exact steps required to reproduce it in my game.

[Gaster]

This script has been great, but now I've got a couple more questions:

1) How does the fight bonus from meatsteaks and sidearms work exactly? My first group of marines got no bonus and used no resources, but those were 4 star fighting marines I scoured the galaxy for. I just picked up a bunch of new scrubs that ejected from an M7, and I noticed the meatsteaks and sidearms in the "acquiring" TP went down, so I'm assuming some of them got fight bonuses?

2) How does the speed of bootcamp training compare with doing it manually? For example, I want 35 mechanics and around 50 engineering on all those new guys before I send them off to cap hired TLs (with a few maxed out vets to hand-hold them through the decks and take care of the hacking). Is it faster to individually Quick train those skill levels myself or can I just let them sit in a TP with bootcamp doing it just as effectively?

3) Does bootcamp have any effect on marines currently undergoing training or only those in a ship's cargo bay?

[DrBullwinkle]

1) Most marines will get a increase to their fight skills if you feed them and give them weapons. The amount of the increase depends on how much fight skill they already have. Novice marines will get more benefit from a hearty lunch and a new disintegrator rifle than will an elite marine who already has his favorite weapons oiled and ready to fire.

It is possible that the top marines get no increase at all.


2) All training in MRT is faster than vanilla. Cost is the same as vanilla training.


3) MRT only affects marines on ships.

[chrisyonggg]

Hi Dr,
First of all, thanks for this amazing script! I have run into a problem though, when i target my damaged captured ship, and press the marine repair command, i see them fly out, i hear lots of repair noise, but i dont see the target ships hull increasing.

Is there a minimum/maximum range on the marines? I did it at around 300m. So far the only way i could get any repairs done is if i transfer the marines on board and let them repair from within, (whcih btw is an AMAZING function for poor ole me). This option however, cannot work on smaller craft.

I initially tried it after altering the t file for cost and repair speed, etc. After finding out it didnt work, i uninstalled the script and tried again with default values across the board. Still no luck.

Please advise.

[BicRazor]

The download link isn't working for me.