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Marine Rebalance

Simple mod rebalancing the boarding of capital ships.

The stable variant of v0.54 is uploaded here. Experimental variant/s using code that is undergoing testing, or where different balance points are used, is/are usually available. A link to that/those other variant/s, and ye olde wall-o'-text with more information over here:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=375052

Note: If you presently have Marine Rebalance from sources other than the Steam Workshop, and you would like to use this copy to simplify updates, please delete the "MarineRebalance" folder from your "extensions" folder before subscribing.

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What's New?

17.February 2018 - Marine Rebalance updated to v0.57

Fixed getting very powerful veteran and elite marines in Hard and Very Hard difficulty.

Thank you very much to lyonheart for reporting the issue.

Only the version available on Steam was affected.

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8.December 2017 - Marine Rebalance updated to v0.56

Compatibility update with XR 4.3

Thank you very much to alexalsp for reporting the new error.

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Please check the change log for information on changes implemented in earlier versions.

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Information about this variant:

The algorithm used to determine the influence that the Marine Officer has on attack strength is now directly dependent on your in-game difficulty setting.*

The attack strengths of veteran and elite marines at Normal and Easy game difficulty are increased. (I think that elite marines should kick some serious ass even if their officer sucks. Especially now that we have to train them up.) (from v0.40 onwards, veteran and elite marines are boosted only when playing easy or normal game difficulty.)

• Situational Yisha tweak applied.
  
• Yisha stops giving orders when it looks like you know what you're doing.
  
• Losses due to attrition tweaked.
  
• Fight outcome rescaled.
  
• Default number of combat rounds increased.
  
• Possibility to scan a ship before launching pods as a part of the boarding operation.
  
• Successful scan reduces combat rounds.
  
• Marines blitz when target is severely outmatched.
  
• Marines will attempt to retreat when situation is FUBAR.
  
• Information on what's happening in the boarding op displayed on the in-game cockpit display.

NB: A more detailed description of these features is available at the last, possibly the last two, page/s of the comments section below, and in this mod's thread[forum.egosoft.com] at the Egosoft forum.

TIP: If you find yourself getting stomped, try switching your game difficulty to Easy. Hard is HARD.

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* (HARD: min attackstrength=5.25, mid=75.75, max=252.5)
(MEDIUM: min attackstrength=30, mid=300, max=1000)
(EASY: min attackstrength=525, mid=15150, max=50500)

min attackstrength is with a 1/1/1 Marine Officer and 50 recruits.
mid attackstrength is with a 5/5/5 Marine Officer and 50 veterans.
max attackstrength is with a 5/5/5 Marine Officer and 50 elite marines.

Please note that you will probably never have 50 elite marines.

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Compatibility:

Compatible with everything out there as of the 4th of January 2015. Modifies only the Boarding.xml file in [/md], and should only have potential incompatibilities with anything that changes that particular file. Only mod that I know of that does that is camus' Boarding Options mod, and Marine Rebalance is fully compatible with Boarding Options.

However, please do keep in mind that the Boarding Options mod will not give you the correct attack strength information before your marines land when using this mod. It uses the vanilla algorithms for the calculations used to calculate the display. It does, however, display the correct attack strength right after the last marine lands, and fight outcome is not affected.

This mod is current as of X:R 4.10

Makes no alterations to saved games whatsoever.

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known issue: if PreScan is launched, you get in a Beholder drone, then go back to the Skunk for whatever reason without having accomplished the scanning mission, your targeting reticle gets stuck to that of the Beholder. Don't know how to fix it yet, but am deciding to keep it because I think that there's very little chance of anyone doing this, and the only other choice would be to cut the whole PreScan function out completely. Only fix that I've found is to go in a Beholder again. This appears to reset your targeting reticle.

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THE TEAM SO FAR:

lubatomy - researcher, coder, and code diver extraordinaire
Rubini/arubinig - coder and tester
alexalsp - translator
Fazer - translator
Sindrali - translator
pref - waldo spotter
antoniut - tester
NZ-Wanderer - fun tester
Pimpace - tester
w.evans - finger twiddler and occasional mediocre number tweaker

(Please let me know your Steam aliases if you would like this updated.)

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Follow and JOIN the discussion here:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=375052

NEED MORE DATA! Please let us know how it goes!

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Lots of thanks to lubatomy, without whom I will still be stuck with a half-baked concept, and code that does nothing.

Special thanks to ty_cho for straightening out my data at the very beginning.

Thanks to antoniut, CMDR Sweeper, DaveDee, Inquisitor, Malthol, Pimpace, Rubini, Sabre6, Scoob, Shalloa, Swiftpaw, toepick, and NZ-Wanderer for providing feedback.

Thanks to alexalsp, Fazer, and Sindrali for the translation work.

Thanks to euclid and UniTrader for being the fonts of coding wisdom they generally are.

Thanks to camus for permission to adapt code from his Boarding Options mod.

Thanks to cicero111 for scipting help, and collegial support.

And credit for most of the code goes to Egosoft. Code redirects, number tweaks, and copy-paste jobs were applied, but very little actual new code was written for this mod.