I did the merchant empire part quite a few levels ago, like around 6 and i am currently 17, so have been using their repairs at times, but recently, i noted they where not able to do much to repair my equipment, did not think much off it for hours, then i wanted to fix a few things and saw crazy wolfgang had only repair 15, so went to the guy, that we pay all the money too, but as i thought, i had paid for all 4 merchants, but the repair skills have dropped back to basic???

have this been heard of before? and can it be fixed, if not are there a cheat that can be used on the merchants to fix this?

been playing a new game, but same result, 3 caravan merchants repair skills dropped to their original values, leaving crazy wolfgang at high value. only mod i am using is one to make merchants essential. but since i am playing on very hard, that might suggest they got "killed" and their skill reset to start level???

When merchants die, they don't respawn. It's about whatever your mods are.

i have uninstalled f3 and reinstalled it on c: and not as game wanted too, updated it and added the only mod i use, a merchant/companion essential mod.

now i am again experiecing the problem, that after doing the merchant empire, they did increase their repair skill, but it have now dropped back to start level for 3 of them, except wolfgang, whom i have sofare not found.

but now they are also stuck at certain points, doc and lucky at the tree, tried to wait for 2 hours next too them, but they are still stuck!!!

am i experiencing an unknown bug, since the merchants skill dropped? besides a bug, are there any commands, to actually increase them or manually edit some game file, to change their skill in the current game???

Yes, they do get stuck at the tree. You should feel cheerful that they do, because that means that they won't get the opportunity to get killed some more by giant albino radscorpions and similar stuff.

What happened to your caravan merchant is that he got slaughtered by one of these (or just by a yuaoi guar (can't spell them)). He dropped unconcious to the ground, got back to his feet by being reset in some way. The reset did not just reset his life, but also his repair skills.

I'm using the same mod, and I encountered the same issue. Since I rarely invest in them at all, I didn't feel the need to go ahead and look for an alternative mod that makes them not to forget their repair skills yet; but I think that the problem is with the game mechanism of reviving essential NPCs itself, not just with the mod.