New releases MegaMek 0.41.20, MegaMekLab 0.1.56, MekHQ 0.3.30

[MoleMan]

Ah yes, I was :D

[pheonixstorm]

Well at least you know you can look it up in HQ rather than sarna all the time.

[neoancient]

Hey, can I make a suggestion? Would it be possible to add onto the marketplace screen the production year of the particular unit variant design? I.e. Raven 3L 3024, 4L 3060 etc.

I think this might help complete newbies like me to identify which mechs are newer tech and which are star league era without having to pull up sarna every 5 minutes! You could even go a step further and create a 'born on' date for that specific mech, just for added fluff purposes, this one is fresh off the factory line, this one has trace amounts of brain matter from a splattering back in 2501! I understand that would take a fair bit of work equivalent to the RAT tables though.

The year a model is introduced is not a good indicator of tech level. While you know anything produced during the Succession Wars will not have advanced tech, most of what was produced during the Star League era doesn't either. Instead of relying on intro date, you can just click on the row of the unit in question and look at the summary in the other pane to see what equipment it actually has.

Adding a production year for the specific unit would require far more work than it's worth. Some models are in production for centuries, and some have production runs that last a few years but due to the number produced or the way it's used, there are still significant numbers around decades or centuries later. For most units this information is not given.

[BlueThing]

I started a new campaign with 0.3.30 last night.

So far I haven't seen Princess hang, so that issue is hopefully fixed. :)

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I'm finding the Personnel Market a bit annoying to use, as it requires several clicks to look at it daily (when it yields one candidate a day, most of which I don't care about).

Could that get changed (perhaps an option?) to aggregate a week or a month of people and update weekly or monthly? Or perhaps to have people stay in the list for a week or a month after becoming available?

[pheonixstorm]

Just change the personnel market used in the campaign options to FM:Mercs

Each market option has its own way of populating the market.

[PurpleDragon]

I started a new campaign with 0.3.30 last night.

So far I haven't seen Princess hang, so that issue is hopefully fixed. :)

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I'm finding the Personnel Market a bit annoying to use, as it requires several clicks to look at it daily (when it yields one candidate a day, most of which I don't care about).

Could that get changed (perhaps an option?) to aggregate a week or a month of people and update weekly or monthly? Or perhaps to have people stay in the list for a week or a month after becoming available?

I don't know what I do differently, but I don't seem to have this problem.  On my computer it seems to keep a running "tally" of who is available and changes daily with some new showing up some being removed from the list and some staying for weeks at a time.   I would really like to see this done with the contract generator and the unit markets as well. 

[neoancient]

I don't know what I do differently, but I don't seem to have this problem.  On my computer it seems to keep a running "tally" of who is available and changes daily with some new showing up some being removed from the list and some staying for weeks at a time.   I would really like to see this done with the contract generator and the unit markets as well.

I actually wrote the contract generator and unit maket code to make it easier to implement something like this, but I never took the time to work out a system that would keep the offerings equivalent to the monthly system, and I haven't though about it for a while.

[BLOODWOLF]

I ran into an issue trying to load a mission from MekHQ.  I have no issues loading the campaign up in the new MekHQ 0.3.30 - everything seems to work just fine.  However, when I try to play the mission in MegaMek 0.41.20, it will not load.  I get a message saying waiting on server.  I started a new game under MekHQ 0.3.30 and I am having no issues playing it.  I went back and loaded another campaign that was working just find in MekHQ 0.3.29 with the same results. I have attached my game file and my custom unit. Thanks for the help!

I will try to duplicate your concern tomorrow night if nobody else has yet?

[BlueThing]

Just change the personnel market used in the campaign options to FM:Mercs

Each market option has its own way of populating the market.

Thanks.  This setting is so much better. :)

[pheonixstorm]

BloodWolf if you can duplicate it post the log file. That particular poster still hasn't after I mentioned it..

Thanks.  This setting is so much better. :)

The FM:Mercs market generation is a bit off though as if I remember correctly it shouldn't be generating so many people each month. But, it is better than the other market types  O0

[BlueThing]

The FM:Mercs market generation is a bit off though as if I remember correctly it shouldn't be generating so many people each month. But, it is better than the other market types  O0

I've always thought the BT recruitment rates were insanely low. You can be on a major planet with a population in the hundreds of millions or billions, and there is only 1 job applicant for a mechanic position. That seems odd. :)

[pheonixstorm]

True for the civilian market maybe but out of those billions how many do you really want to risk life and limb in a merc unit, plus leave behind your family??

[Mukaikubo]

True for the civilian market maybe but out of those billions how many do you really want to risk life and limb in a merc unit, plus leave behind your family??

Plus there are probably lots of other outfits on those huge worlds hoovering up your job pool!

[Sir Chaos]

True for the civilian market maybe but out of those billions how many do you really want to risk life and limb in a merc unit, plus leave behind your family??

And how many applicants from the civilian job market have experience in repairing battle damage?

[jedidino]

The post is on this page so its not like its buried... But you do need to post the log file. It your aren't able to load a game from HQ into MM there should be something in the log file.

I knew I had forgotten to attached something!  However, my hard drive failed so I do not have access to any of the files now.  Thanks for following up though!   O0

[BLOODWOLF]

*Ok the first issue I see is that your scenario doesn't list a date for when it occurs......did AtB generate this or did you create this scenario?  And in your HQ log file you've got:

Loading GameOption Nodes from XML...

Invalid option 'allow_advanced_units' when trying to load options file.

Invalid option 'allow_advanced_ammo' when trying to load options file.

Invalid option 'allow_experimental_ammo' when trying to load options file.

Invalid option 'is_eq_limits' when trying to load options file.

Load Game Option Nodes Complete!

*And the MM portion of the HQ log I get a camo file that doesnt exist(on my machine):

Tried to load camo that doesn't exist: ALL-camos/Camolicious/CL161.jpg

Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Row index out of range

Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.NullPointerException

   at megamek.client.ui.swing.ChatLounge.refreshEntities(ChatLounge.java:1281)

   at megamek.client.ui.swing.ChatLounge.gameEntityNew(ChatLounge.java:2607)

   at megamek.common.event.GameEntityNewEvent.fireEvent(GameEntityNewEvent.java:62)

   at megamek.common.Game.processGameEvent(Game.java:3114)

   at megamek.common.Game.setEntitiesVector(Game.java:953)

   at megamek.client.Client.receiveEntities(Client.java:975)

   at megamek.client.Client.handlePacket(Client.java:1327)

   at megamek.client.Client$1$2.run(Client.java:219)

*And it's just those two errors repeated over and over again.

[pheonixstorm]

That is not an AtB generated scenario. Not even an AtB contract fro that matter. If AtB is on then the contract and mission where made prior to it being turned on.

No clue about the NPE though, arlith might have an answer but it is not an error I have ever seen.

[BlueThing]

True for the civilian market maybe but out of those billions how many do you really want to risk life and limb in a merc unit, plus leave behind your family??

Even if that person were literally one in a million, that would yield 1000 candidates on a planet with 1 billion population.

To put it another way, I know people who work in Afghanistan for a US based company doing engineering work. They are willing to do a risky job because it pays and they enjoy it. It isn't my thing, but a lot of people do jobs like that.

[scJazz]

Even if that person were literally one in a million, that would yield 1000 candidates on a planet with 1 billion population.

To put it another way, I know people who work in Afghanistan for a US based company doing engineering work. They are willing to do a risky job because it pays and they enjoy it. It isn't my thing, but a lot of people do jobs like that.

stop comparing IRL... this isn't RL... it might take literal years to go from Merc last contract location to back home.

And while you might have the skills to fix that wind evaporator... fixing a Mech is far different and much more rare.

[BlueThing]

stop comparing IRL... this isn't RL... it might take literal years to go from Merc last contract location to back home.

And while you might have the skills to fix that wind evaporator... fixing a Mech is far different and much more rare.

Sorry, but IRL is the frame of reference we all have.  It is impossible to not compare to it on some level.

In many cases, BT lore contradicts itself and doesn't work when you look at it.  The HPG discussion earlier in this thread is a great example. 

The recruitment similarly falls apart for me when I look at it in detail.  For example, vehicle crews and technicians are only slightly more common than mechwarriors and mech techs.  Canonically, there are several times as many vehicles as mechs.  Each vehicle has multiple crew members (driver and one or more gunners).  Yet, the difference on average is around one more vehicle crew member than mechwarrior per month when you use the FM:Mercs method.

I could go through and pick apart other parts of the recruitment rules, but I think that makes the point. 

The rules don't make sense for me, either with by IRL intuition or by the canonical description of the universe.

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All of that said, MekHQ seems to be more or less implementing the rules in the book.  These rules work well enough for me to generally just use the Personnel Market despite the fact that I don't think that the rules really make sense when I examine them. :)

[mchapman1970]

that is why all the great merc units have training back at the home base of operations and why the great house have training bases....