Dear author, may I ask why mercenary boats cannot board? If this is the setting of this mod, can you add a setting to allow boarding?

Can we have options to set cost by a percentage or something?

Like 50% of normal hiring cost or 150% of normal.

I mean in like mod menu so we can choose how we want to utilize mod cost wise more.

I LOVE your mods, but I suck lol, so I wanna play like a merc and hire your mercs to be my "fleet" I fight in to gain money, but sometimes it makes me go broke lol

So If I could spawn fleets either as a percentage I could hopefully find a sweet point, where I can hire mercs to do jobs and go with them as my "contract" with that empire and such.

P.S. Could I using headhunter etc, spawn a merc attack force, than change to other team and fight the mercs I just hired for rep gain and money? lol

humm 7.0？

Loving the mod but there is an issue I've encountered, there is no difference between hiring rookies or elites, I spent over 10 million to hire elite mercs to take out a defence platform and they sat right next to it, 6 destroyers and 10 fighters got wrecked by pulse turrets in about 2 minutes and did virtually no damage. I know the problem is likely egosoft's legendarily crappy AI and not a problem with the mod but is there a way to implement smarter use of tactics or better positioning for higher price mercs? If so then that's a change I'd love to see.

I like that idea too. I'll note it if I return to modding X4 at some point.
@Rekkit: it's possible, yeah. Probably implement a monthly "invoice" for their services that's automatically deducted. With some work done to make sure their fleet is replenished if destroyed which the current time limit sidesteps.

Is there a way to implement permanent hiring? I like the idea of being a trade/mining mogul and out sourcing security and such. Berys32's idea of different prices providing different level of service would be awesome as well.

Love the idea, Berkys32

Idea - there could be option under which flag they fight.
1) Regular price - they would be in player faction (affecting its reputation as if player doing it itself)
2) Increased price - they could just pretend theyre pirates (so stations will take defensive measure sooner)
3) Expensive price - they could pretend they are another faction (maybe chance to reveal player as real backer with huge rep loss?)
4) Really, really expensive price - fighting under their own flag, so no rep loss to player

Haha. Unintended consequences are fun. I ran with the idea of having the mercs factionless to avoid them getting caught up in these kind of issues but found that it was also kind of lame, when it comes to station sieges, that the enemy ships and station would just ignore them lining up until they actually fire on the station. Like you could send a siege fleet deep in to Xenon territory and they'd just waltz right by all Xenon and setup shop on the station unopposed.

tried again on another station and the destroyers ended up chasing a Kha'ak fighter while the fighters killed the station

and a fun side effect of station sieges in general, any and all ships in the vicinity that are owned by the faction that you hired can and will be fired upon by the station

tested a bit, this only happens if the faction you hired is hostile with the one you're targeting, and only if the ships get to close while waiting for the open fire order

New problem, which may be an effect of the attack police issue, if the station launches defence drones, and they attack the mercs before they've started to actually attack the station, they'll all die to the station while chasing defence drones around

the list you see here is the list you'll find in game

Does the mod only cover specific tasks, or does it also include actions like boarding, placing satellites, or scanning stations?

I'll keep an eye out for it, thanks

Updated. Let me know if that helps at all next time it happens.

ah. that one will take a long time to recreate getting something to police scan a merc on a mission. I'll put something in to have the merc just attack any police scanners. Official business and all. If that doesn't work I may just need to put in a timeout that the group leader waits to rally on sieges.

by the way they are curb mercs hired to kill a (xenon) station in free families territory, and it was (probably) a free families security vessel that scanned them

New Problem for you: 1 ship is now sitting around doing nothing because I believe it was scanned by a system security vessel. it dropped some laser towers and is no longer moving, meaning that the mercs won't begin their attack as not all their ships have arrived.

thanks for the quick fix, much appreciated. The xenons love building stations in split territory haha

Fixed the issue. Made a video for fun. https://youtu.be/AHQy0BkSUYg

Interesting! Not a super common instance where a station to attack is in the same sector as a faction representative. I'll take a look and see if I can recreate this scenario somehow.

also, they burn their shields boosting in place when I view them or a ship near them

my mercenaries appear to be broken, they're just sitting where the fleet leader spawned not doing anything. I had hired them to attack a xenon station (in the same system they were hired in) but in the time they have been sitting there, I have arrived with my own ship and killed half of it already

This is implemented now. But note that only Patrol and Protect missions can be extended. Attack missions automatically become Patrol missions after the target is killed. Siege missions are one-offs by design.

That's a good idea. I'll see if I can swing it.

Maybe you can have one of the mercenary pilots converse with you, telling you that the mission is going to expire and ask whether you want to extend?

No feature like that. I could see having some options for mission length instead of 30 minutes firm.

Question: Is there a feature where once a mission is expired I can have that same order repeated against an additional payment?

You don't wanna know what's in them satchels. It's probably Werther's tbh.

Possibly the best mod image you've come up with so far. #OldLadyThugs

No idea tbh. I'm not touching SWI until it comes to 6.0. Give it a shot though. Worst that can happen is it just doesn't work.

Can i use this with star wars interworld mod?

Thanks! Came out of nowhere and will disappear to the same.

Where did you come from lmao love your mods and the ai thumbnails

Ah, yeah - till now I just always tested 'attack a fleet' type of missions.

Hm. I'm glad they're keeping their butts in formation. Nice lads.
Any particular mission type Mycu? All the missions use a different custom AI order. Might help track down which are acting up with movement.

It had to be 'beginers luck' with 0 Cr hire cost as I also wasn't able to reproduce it again :)

Although tested hiring a fleet two times in a row and in both cases the merc ships were just sitting ducks, not moving even a little for around 15 minutes.
https://i.imgur.com/89R8Jpq.png
https://i.imgur.com/u7GlF9J.png

I'll keep testing it within next few days.

Yep! Mercenaries never rat out who hired them :)
@Mycu: I'm adding a debug catch for any 0 cost missions in the next update. Going to give it a while today to see if any other bugs crop up to include in v1.1 update. Not able to reproduce it so far on my end.

so u can hire mercenary ..and let's say have them attack HO.P. for example and not ruin ur rep ? that's freaking awesome!

ok thanks for the quick response and info and ur mods! i think i have all of em :P

@knight: mercenary missions don't affect your reputation or theirs.
@Mycu: dang. The credit cost was the last thing I added in and least testing. I'd bet there's some combination of setting the mission selections that is causing a variable to be null so it's multiplying the cost by 0. I just have to fish out which combo.
I have tested launching them extensively though and have never saw just one launch. They're probably there, just lagging behind. It is tough to see them all with livestream view and then to top it off they don't exactly stick together when traveling especially.

This one looks like a great fun and a nice way to act with white gloves.
And and such flavors like being able to live stream of mercenary fleet or mercenaries radio chat when starting mission are very cool.

Got two isuues when testing - somehow I was able to hire them for free: https://i.imgur.com/0OMHOAG.jpg
And the second one - when hired squad od 12 ships - only single one was actually sent (judging via the livestream views), not the twelve.

Anyway, really great mod - should be very useful for some dirty job.
Thanks.

yes sound very nice but...Attack: Can attack any ship regardless if they're friends of the faction or you. No attacking self-faction or player faction though. Attack missions are more like assassination missions that turn the extra time into a Patrol mission in that sector.
won't this wreak ur reputation with faction u want to stay friendly with???

Ooh nice