any idea how I can make sure Mackie always is available?
I think that bug was fixed in an unreleased development copy. I have a stack of hard drives on my desk now...I'm going to see if I can find it, clean it up and release it as V056.
EDIT:
Found it, and have spent the past several hours fixing misc bugs and things. V056 should be out in a day or two.
Incidentally...
calling Mackie gives me no option for him to retrieve the boomer
There
is a bug in V055 regarding salvage, but I just noticed the way you phrased this. Are you certain that there
is any salvage to be retreived? Boomer salvage is not generated at time of destruction. Boomers use the same component system as hardsuits. What parts are left over after combat is a function of what you destroy during battle. With tactical mode enabled, you can see damage to a boomer in the upper right. Red is completely destroyed. Any location that goes red will leave no salvage.
The trick to getting good salvage comes from the fact that boomers can be destroyed in one of two ways: either by destroying their torso, or destroying everything
other than their torso. Either way, the parts that you don't destroy can be salvaged. But if you damage everything to red, there will be no salvage.
Are you guys running into the bug, or are you just completely destroying your boomers? If you're using melee attacks, there's no way to control your targetting. Only ranged attacks are affected by the "t"arget toggle.
Also...not sure if it's V055 or not, but at once time there was an issue with the "back" location on a boomer not being targettable, which meant that if you destroyed head, legs and arms, the back was still intact and thus the boomer wouldn't be destroyed. If you want to get salvage, to be safe, try destroying only the torso, rather than everything but the torso.