What's New?

The biggest development in v0.44.x, in my opinion, is the translation to different languages. (Thanks, alexalsp, for suggesting this.)  So far, alexalsp, Fazer, and Sindrali have generously contributed translations to Russian, German, and French, and their help is greatly appreciated.  If anyone would like to contribute further translations, please let me know.

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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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29.July 2017 - Marine Rebalance updated to v0.55

Compatibility update with XR 4.1

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2.April 2016 - Marine Rebalance updated to v0.54

Compatibility fix with Boarding Options to enable attempt to launch boarding pods anyway even if the target ship is moving too fast.

Many thanks to FunkDooBiesT for pointing out that this does not work with Marine Rebalance installed.

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

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

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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!

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22.Nov.2015 - Marine Rebalance is updated to v0.51

The number of scan points for PreScan in Normal difficulty was reduced to 1-3 points for some testing, and I forgot to put them back up. This has been fixed. When doing PreScan in Normal difficulty, you will now have to scan between 2 and 10 points to successfully scan a ship in preparation for boarding.

Marvin Martian is doing something really cool with his Fleet Supported Boarding mod. I'll let him announce it when it's released. Some things were changed in this mod upon his recommendation to prepare compatibility with this upcoming really cool thing. Thanks to Marvin, as usual, for thinking about compatibility.

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7.Nov.2015 - Marine Rebalance is updated to v0.50

Compatibility update with the Fleet Supported Boarding mod by Marvin Martian

Thanks to Marvin for thinking about compatibility.

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12.Aug.2015 - Marine Rebalance is updated to v0.49

Quick fix to make sure that the engineer.ai tweak lands correctly.
Credit to Sindrali for the French t-file was already typed, but not saved before the last upload! Apologies. Fixed.

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8.Aug.2015 - Marine Rebalance is updated to v0.48

French text included.

Many thanks to Sindrali for this excellent translation!

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5.Jul.2015 - v0.47 is up.

Compatibility update. Now compatible with Linux and Mac versions. (v0.46 probably won't work with linux or mac. This one should.)

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28.Jun.2015 - v0.46 is up.

Compatibility update.  Now compatible with Linux and Mac versions.

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8.Feb.2015 - v0.45.1 is up!

Updated German translation.  (Thanks, Fazer!)
There was a problem with the option to board not coming up when the player has drones, but no Beholder URV. - FIXED

Thanks to Inquisitor for reporting this issue.

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1.Feb.2015 - v0.44.5nzw is up!

Just a bit more spit and polish, mostly from suggestions by Rubini.  (Thanks!)
And changed the t-files to merge rather than diff patches as per alexalsp's suggestion.  (Thanks!)

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31.Jan.2015 - v0.44.4nzw is up!

PreScanDone should now, finally, only trigger when all scanning points are successfully scanned.

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31.Jan.2015 - v0.44.3nzw is up!

Bugfix - Menu was not firing when player did not have any drones. - FIXED (Thank you, alexalsp for reporting this bug.)
PreScan reward was triggering when drone is launched, regardless of success - FIXED (?)

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31.Jan.2015 - v0.44.2nzw is up!

experimental.
Fixed a couple of bugs with logbook entries and initial PDA output.
Translations to German and Russian included.  (Thank you very much to Fazer and alexalsp for the excellent (I'm assuming) translation work!)

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30.Jan.2015 - v0.44.1nzw is up!

All text exported to t-files.
Otherwise identical to v0.44

v0.44 changelog:

Specified priority for all information displayed on PDA.
Casualty calculations displayed are now correct.
Added option to abort boarding op. (credit to camus for this. Thanks!)
Added a lot of per round information via the PDA.
More information displayed after boarding op. (Thanks to Pimpace for the idea. Thanks, Rubini for reminding me to actually implement the idea.)
Correctly displays the attack strength after retreat, whether or not the Marine Officer survives. (Credit to Rubini for this. Thanks!)
Correctly checks if PreScan was successful. No more workarounds.
Completely removes usage of $skipscannerdrone.
Marine Officers get rather depressed and insecure (lose morale) when they retreat.
They gain confidence (gain morale) when they win.
They also gain less experience when they survive a retreat. (Full credit for all three ideas go to Rubini. Thanks!)
Improved compatibility with Boarding Options -- "Launch Pods" was triggering PreScan rather than skipping it. Works as intended now.
Cleaned up feedback when using with Boarding Options.
Marine Officer has a slim chance of successfully retreating. (Thanks to Rubini for both of these changes.)
Cleaned up dialogue options, and made notifications immediate and more persistent.
Just a bit of polishing: cleaned up dialogue options (Thanks, Rubini)
Made notifications immediate and more persistent.

There is now a lot of information displayed in the PDA. Possibly too much to be useful. Feedback on this would be greatly appreciated.

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Simply unzip to your extensions folder, and set to overwrite older files.


v0.40 effects the following changes:

• Situational Yisha tweak applied.
• Yisha stops giving orders when target is outmatched.
• 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.)
• Losses due to attrition tweaked.
• Fight outcome rescaled.
• Default number of combat rounds increased.
• Marines blitz when target is severely outmatched.
• Possibility to scan a ship before launching pods as a part of the boarding operation.  Successful scan reduces combat rounds.
• Marines will attempt to retreat when the situation is FUBAR.
• Your marine attack strength is entered into your in-game logbook after every successful engagement.
  

More information on these modifications is available under the Mod Details section here.

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As of v0.36x, maintaining the various variants has been rendered obsolete by tying three balance points to the three difficulty levels which you can set in-game. The three difficulty levels correspond to balance points as follows:

Game difficulty = Hard gives you the hardcore variant.
Game difficulty = Normal gives you the default variant.
Game difficulty = Easy gives you the op variant.

(HARD: min attackstrength=5.25, mid=75.75, max=252.5)
(MEDIUM: min attackstrength=17.5, mid=112.5, max=750)
(EASY: min attackstrength=30, mid=300, max=1000)

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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In the older versions, the various variants differ as follows:

v0.2x rebalance gives a consistent boost to the influence the Marine Officer has on attack strength ranging from 20% to 100%. (min attackstrength=30, mid=150, max=500)

The v0.2x_lubatomy variant uses lubatomy's algorithm, and adjusts the attack strength ranging from a 10% reduction (with a rookie marine officer) to a 70% boost (with a 5/5/5 marine officer). (min attackstrength=22.5, mid=127.5, max=425)

v0.2x_hardcore uses Egosoft's default v3.0 algorithm for Marine Officers. (Only a truly brilliant officer can inspire the troops to go above and beyond their potential!) (min attackstrength=5.25, 75.75, max=252.5)

The v0.2x1x rebalance variants each use the corresponding v0.2x MO algorithm, but further boost veteran and elite attack strengths. (I think that elite marines should kick ass even if their officer sucks. Especially now that we have to train them up.) Variants using the default rebalance, lubatomy, and hardcore Marine Officer algorithms are available. (for v0.331: mid=300, max=1000; for v0.331l: mid=255, max=850; for v0.331h: mid=151.5, max=505)

NZ-Wanderer's personal variant, designated v0.xx1_NZ-Wanderer, has the added benefit of greatly extending the time allotted to accomplish boarding support objectives. It is otherwise identical to the v0.xx1 lubatomy variant. (mid attackstrength = 255, max = 850)

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v0.2_OP is truly overpowered, and uses the vanilla pre-v3.0 algorithm.  With it, 10 recruits with a rookie Marine Officer can successfully board a Balor.  50 recruits can capture anything up to a Taranis.  Significantly diminishes from the game, and is most useful to verify that the mod is working at all.  Flat Yisha nerf applied.  This file is still up, but was moved to old files to slightly mitigate clutter. (min attackstrength=525, mid=7575, max=25250)

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And a supplementary file, MR_supplement_engineer, was added to the optional files. It modifies a single line in engineer.ai.xml which should compel the engineers to prioritize the Drone Launch Bay in addition to the Engines and Jump Drives for repair. Simply extract into your extensions folder.  (NB: This will be integrated into the stable branch as of v0.38x)

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Gameplay changes and wall-o'-text with more information over here:

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

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Compatibility:

May be incompatible with other mods that change AI engineer behavior.

Modifies the Boarding.xml file in [/md], and could have incompatibilities with anything that changes that particular file.  Only mod that I know of that does that is Clownmug's 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.  Fight outcome is not affected.

This mod is current as of X:R 4.10

Compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac versions of X Rebirth.

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 accomplishing 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 - coder and tester
alexalsp - translator
Fazer - translator
Sindrali - translator
antoniut - tester
NZ_Wanderer - fun tester
Pimpace - tester
w.evans - finger twiddler and occasional mediocre number tweaker

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Ideas, confirmations/corrections of the assumptions and interpretation of code above, suggestions, comments, votes, or simply "hell, yeah!" or
"NOOOO!" or "you have to learn basic arithmetic, man." would be greatly appreciated.

And please note that this is still very much a work in progress.  Files could change within the hour*.

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 excellent translation work.

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

Thanks to Clownmug 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.

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13.Jan.2015 - v0.381.1
12.Jan.2015 - v0.381 (workshop only)
11.Jan.2015 - v0.371.6, v0.371.7
10.Jan.2015 - v0.37x, v0.371.1, v0.371.4, v0.371.5
9.Jan.2015 - v0.3612
9.Jan.2015 - uploaded v0.3611
7.Jan.2015 - uploaded v0.36 and v0.361
4.Jan.2015 - uploaded v0.33x set
3.Jan.2015 - uploaded v0.32x set
1.Jan.2015 - uploaded v0.30x set, v0.31x set
31.Dec.2014 - got Retreat working!  v0.2613psr
30.Dec.2014 - v0.2611ps
28.Dec.2014 - got PreScan working! uploaded v0.261ps
24.Dec.2014 - uploaded v0.26x set
22.Dec.2014 - uploaded v0.25x set, new nzw variant
22.Dec.2014 - uploaded v0.24x set
21.Dec.2014 - uploaded v0.23x set
19.Dec.2014 - uploaded v0.22x set
17.Dec.2014 - hardcore set uploaded
16.Dec.2014 - New version set out: v0.2 and variants
14.Dec.2014 - Project start

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*Just so it's clear, that was a joke.  I don't have anything new and game changing coming out within the hour.  Mostly because I need new data or insights to make it better, and I need feedback to get (most of that) data, and you guys and gals have to actually try it out to give feedback.  :)

edit: stripped out the tables and most of the data from this page, since I might forget to update the text and could later become misleading.  The text in the Egosoft forum will always be current.