[MOD] Marine Rebalance

[pref]

I rather like general sels myself. That way, if it breaks, you're at least sure that it won't land somewhere else. That can be a danger, particularly if you use "[1]" the way you did a couple of posts up.

I find it's much safer if something breaks completely by landing nowhere, doing nothing, and giving you an error message then if it breaks by landing somewhere else and changing something unanticipated.

Then again, come to think of it, the same could be said of extremely specific sel paths.

Yeah hard to guess
I was thinking if there would ever be 2 cease fire commands in that cue, those must be in a conditional, and this way at least i catch the first. Might be better without 1 though - too many assumptions...

[w.evans]

13.Feb.2016 - Marine Rebalance updated to v0.52

- Suppresses notifications added in X:R 4.0 Beta 5.
- Removed sound of boarding notifications.

Marine Rebalance is now fully compatible with X Rebirth 4.0

Happy 13th, everyone!

.......
Please report if there are any issues. I usually suck when I try to code first thing in the morning.

[SyberSmoke]

Would it be reasonable to ask that the mod have a function added? I would like to be able to configure the options that I get when attacking. Do say disabling the Drone Bay and Cap Shields as valid targets.

Much of the time when pirating a ship, I want the drone bay intact and waiting for the time out is frustrating and causes marines to die. So could the option to skip those...or may be when one of those things come up, To choose (I will attack this / I am not going to attack this).

[w.evans]

Hi SyberSmoke,

Sounds like you want something like Boarding Options. This mod should work with Boarding Options without a problem.

[Scoob]

Hey w.evans,

I'm using the latest version with the newly released 4.0 + HoL. Boarding operations go well...possibly a little too well as I'm yet to lose a Marine.

I of course strip any ship of weapons and other surface elements first, then get the hull down so resistance is under my strength. However, even doing all this I'd expect loses. My strength is only about 10% over the ships resistance, plus I've been unable to scan it first - so boarding lasts the full 10 rounds.

Anyway, possibly you've made changes to how it works, but this does seem a little easier than maybe it should be.

Note: I had 50 recruit marines during my first boarding, all survived giving me 10 Veterans. My second boarding went equally well, I now have 25 recruits and 25 veterans!

Cheers,

Scoob.

[w.evans]

Hey Scoob,

Thanks for the report. Going 10 rounds with boarding strength 10% above resistance, you should've taken losses. I'll take a look at the attrition stuff.

[Scoob]

Thanks.

Edit: I just started another boarding operation, where I DIDN'T strip the ship, and I started loosing Marines right away. Possibly all element dead = no chance of Marine death?

Scoob.

[Requiemfang]

I had noticed this as well... I was curious about it but I shrugged it off and then I see I'm not the only one. I've done boarding ops with maybe half of the surface elements destroyed, do a drone scan and then I shoot guns on the ship to get 25% increments of the boarding op done. Only time I lost marines was during my first boarding op of a pirate cargo transport and they were all rookies anyways. Only other times I lost marines was when the boarding pods decided to go ahead and go towards the other end of the ship that had turrets alive still.

[Scoob]

I did another capture last night, this time stripping the ship of surface elements. Zero Marine casualties each round once again - until an NPC blew the ship up! I reloaded

Scoob.

[w.evans]

Alright. Looking at what changed in 4.0, saw this:

Code: Select all

<do_else>
  <set_value name="$outcomedecider" min="$fightoutcome" max="$fightoutcome + 10"/>
  <do_if value="$outcomedecider gt 0">
    <debug_text text="'marines may be lost due to close fight'" chance="$debugoutputchance"/>
    <!--player loss-->
    <set_value name="$losschancemin" exact="2" chance="$debugoutputchance"/>
    <set_value name="$losschancemax" exact="5" chance="$debugoutputchance"/>
    <include_actions ref="LoseMarines"/>
  </do_if>
  <do_else>
    <!--Player wins-->
  </do_else>
</do_else>

Code: Select all

<do_if value="$outcomedecider gt 0">

was

Code: Select all

<do_if value="$outcomedecider gt 10">

and

Code: Select all

    <set_value name="$losschancemin" exact="2" chance="$debugoutputchance"/>
    <set_value name="$losschancemax" exact="5" chance="$debugoutputchance"/>

was

Code: Select all

    <set_value name="$losschancemin" exact="5"/>
    <set_value name="$losschancemax" exact="10"/>

$fightoutcome is defined as:

Code: Select all

<set_value name="$fightoutcome" exact="$defencestrength - $attackstrength"/>

If I understood that correctly, what this means is that there is a greater chance of getting casualties if in close fight range (boarding resistance - boarding strength between -10 and 10), but you get less casualties when you do get casualties at all within that range.

In the mod, close fight range is extended to -100 to 10.

Which means, you should still be seeing casualties in the range that Scoob mentioned, albeit lighter casualties than in 3.61; but you aren't. Now, why could that be?

edit: corrected was for set_value name="losschancemin" and "losschancemax" Did NOT have chance="$debugoutputchance" and didn't notice at all. Thanks to pref for spotting it.

[pref]

Why setting $losschancemin/max depends on $debugoutputchance?
Seems weird.

[w.evans]

Holy crap! That's it! Thanks, pref.

[w.evans]

29.Feb.2016 - Marine Rebalance updated to v0.53

- Fixed attrition. Many thanks to pref for spotting the waldo!

[pref]

Happy to help!

This was the most debugproof bug i met so far

[Valhalla Awaits]

Not sure why, but this mod currently breaks the game for me, that or another mod I have conflicts with it to cause the game breakage.

Currently after boarding 1-2 capital ships the marine officer becomes bugged and no longer responds to ANY commands, or even has the option to give him commands other than "your fired" and "show me your skills".

Disabling the mod returns the game to working order, though I have to start from a save back before the office became bugged.

Also one other minor issue, the progress screen during boarding doesn't show unless radar is enabled.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Have you captured any Xenon Ks? A couple of odd experiences with those have been reported.

Please list the other mods to allow consideration of the conflict theory. "Time is money!"

[Valhalla Awaits]

Have you captured any Xenon Ks? A couple of odd experiences with those have been reported.

Please list the other mods to allow consideration of the conflict theory. "Time is money!"

Yes both K's and I's.

I spent a while double checking to see if I could hunt down the culprit, and it now seems I may owe an apology, I currently believe it's not this mod at fault now, seems to be the "War and conquest" mod that actually semi-broke this.

I say semi-broke because the marine officer is in fact not whats bugged, it's the ships the mod alters that are broken. Seems there are different K's and I's being used by the mod at the same time, some are boardable, others are not, and there is absolutely zero distinction between them other than that fact, and it's random as hell as to what each one will be when it spawns. (I actually had two I's at spawn at the same time next to each other in a fleet, one was boardable, the other wasn't. It's that brokenly random.)

Anyway, I'll properly post this bug to the correct people over there to hopefully get fixed.

PS: The radar bug is actually correct though, that's 100% this mod's fault.

[w.evans]

Hey Valhalla,

do you get any event monitor notifications with radar off? The mod uses extremely normal show_notification commands which are the same as any other notifications except for the interactive ones.

[Ridingbean]

Hey there.
First of all, big thanks for your mod. It makes boarding alot more fun.

But when comparing normal and hard difficulty, the gap seems too big.


For example, boarding a Rahanas:

Took out jumpdrive, engines and weapons, leaving the cap shields and hull intact and scanning with drone before starting the boarding process.

On normal difficulty I lost 0 Marines.
On hard I lost 5 elite, 14 veterans and 4 recruits out of 11 elite, 34 veterans and 5 recruits. 5/5/5 marine officer.

Normal difficulty feels way too easy and on hard you lose more good marines than you get for successful boarding, making "training" of your marines kinda useless.

Would it be possible to make boarding a bit harder on normal, and a bit easier on hard difficulty?

[w.evans]

Hey Ridingbean,

Glad you're liking the mod!

Hard and above is the old Hardcore variant which is pegged at the vanilla numbers. I kinda want to keep it there so that people who like the vanilla boarding strength progression could play that.

I do agree that boarding strength progression at Normal difficulty is rather fast though, and have been thinking about nerfing the veteran strength for quite some time now. Will look into it one of these days, but can't promise when.

That said, you could try the Nexus version of this mod. The balance point at Normal difficulty in Nexus is somewhere between Steam Normal and Hard. Might hit your sweet spot.

If you switch to the Nexus version, don't forget to unsubscribe from the Steam version first. The Workshop doesn't like finding duplicate mods and sometimes makes copies which could cause weird things to happen.