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« on: January 24, 2024, 08:23:44 AM »
So checking the comms, see the nice officer with the green text in his name and think: "Cool, this guy has 4, 5 or 6 skills, a few of them elite, unlike grunt with just his name in plain text with just Helmsmanship. Costs a story point to hire and gets double pay, so he must be worth it." Ok, let's hire the guy, stick him in a ship. Look at my Overdriven Hammerhead rip like there's no tomorrow! Wow, cool, he doesn't count against the officer cap! Can't wait till this guy gets extra levels and elite skills from my player skills. Eh, they don't get new levels? And I can't give them new elites? What's the point?
- me, the first time I've hired a merc, circa 2023 AD
Has this, or similar happened to you? Well, you're not alone! It's a neat idea to be able to hire some "real pros", but ultimately the current Mercenary Officers seem to be 100% functionally identical to regular Officers. Albeit with drawbacks, such as: 1SP to hire, not benefitting from player skills directed at officers, or not being possible to improve.
Until you are below the officer cap it seems to be a waste to hire them, afterwards they are just "legit" ways to bypass it. In a late game scenario their only purpose is to fill in empty ship slots and possibly man unofficered frigates to win the ECM war. Although ECM will get an overhaul in the next update, so that won't necessarily remain a relevant use for them.
What's also not optimal is that you have to hope you get one with the right skills, because you won't be able to change anything in their skillsets later on. That in and of itself is arguably harder than picking the skills you actually need out of the 4 or 6 offered while leveling an officer.
Anyway, now that I had my rant to my heart's delight, I have some suggestions what would, in my opinion, make mercs a bit more interesting.
The player should have a cap on one (maybe two, with a skill) mercs at once. However they should bring some bonuses in proportion to their increased value. I would think on one fleet-affecting skill. Possibly new merc skills, which the player cannot get themselves. These could be a boost to carriers, or speed, some kind of DP reduction, or a buff to Phase ships. Something that forces the player to choose whether one merc type of merc to use, or another.
Other than that, I believe that the merc should be customizable, at least to a limit. Say they have 6 skills, 3 fixed and 3 which the player can change similarly to AI Core skills. At the same time to change the SP dump mercenary employment nature of getting even with the Alpha Core spam of late game ordos, I suggest either an increase of the base officer count, or an increase of skills giving officers (either increasing the number of officers given by Officer Management, or have more skills increase the number of officers).
So in essence you get a bit of the old package (an officer who doesn't care about the cap), and also an officer who provides a fleetwide buff, hence receiving a function actually different from regular officers and making them worthy of the distinct green text in their title.