Hire Star Traders as mercenaries against the Aliens

[hlo]

In the ST RPG, some of the regular Star Traders' ships are so powerful that they out matched most faction navies. Unless the Star Traders stragglers that made it to the new quadrant are weak, can we hire them as mercenaries to go search / fight the Aliens?

They obviously have encountered aliens and managed to get away according to the turn events.....

[starfixer]

Computer AI ships working for you for pay. Interesting. Maybe a temporary "rescue" operation that summons a fleet or a "military" operation that summons mercanaries and colony invaders. Especially considdering you can't subsidize ships for emergencies. If the AI friendly ships are too powerful though, it could be overbalanced.

[Brutus Aurelius]

I like it, having them do military action against random Xeno ships, or being hired to be temporary units would be cool.

[hlo]

I am not sure what/where to put it. I suppose it can go under politics. Call it "Hire Mercenaries" and say it has 1 year time limit along with a upkeep cost. During that year, these mercenary star traders will do the 1 specific task for you. Tasks like: Scout to this location (select on map), Search-n-destroy aliens toward this location (select on map), World Killer mission, etc.

In ST RPG we had these talks about what kind of crazy nasty ships we can create and how we managed to use them to kill the navy vessels with ease. I for one (others have theirs) have these crazy strategies to kill (by guns, torpedoes, boarding party) Aliens with relative ease. Unless our kinds were all killed in the exodus, it should be easier to deal with these Aliens warships we have been seeing.

[starfixer]

It could be a pretty major change though, so the devs would have to be really careful about implementation. And again, you shouldn't be able to hire ships of doom that can obliterate half of the Xeno forces in one turn.

What would be the advantage of AI hired guns? Finished faster? More ships than you have the resources to normally build otherwise? No maint cost because it's not your ships? More powerful than normally available ships? And would xenos be able to get xenos from across the quadrant also?

Maybe you can unlock the ability to call foreign ships through research, with high-end foreign ships requiring more RP to unlock?

[hlo]

Pay a lump sump to hire the mercs maybe a better option than building a swarm of "canned ships". (Even custom designs are not that much beyond canned.) And then you have to pay for maintenance of all kinds when they are in deep space. That kind of things have brought me into massive debts. With mercs: you pay your money you take your chances.

[pendell]

How about this: When a faction core world (De Valtos Prime) for example, is attacked by aliens, there is a random chance, one time only, that you'll suddenly find X number of additional fighters or other ships under your command.

It turns out that the faction was embezzling some of the production from your factory order towards building its own fleet come the day. When the aliens suddenly threaten their homeworld, the faction suddenly decides it's time to pull out the spare box of ships under the sofa, and 'gifts' it to the Templars along with some pious apologies.

Make it a probability rather than a certainty so that the player doesn't simply exploit this to get free ships.

Of course, if you're defending De Valtos Prime from an alien invasion you've probably lost already, but it might be neat flavor-wise.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Cory Trese]

Lots of cool options for future politics

[starfixer]

Maybe a new 'reinforcements' category, allowing you to call AI ships from other galaxies and ask for temporary help for pay. It would be a kind of 'consumable': things that are purchased for one-time use and then have to be purchased again A new research category could be unlocked that finds other colonies and ships, from scouts to explore the map to regular carriers and cruisers to ships with special weapons not available normally. Or maybe diplomatic relationships with other star traders in other parts of the universe can be a new part of the political mechanics.

Reinforcements would be temporary unlike ships that you build and is more expensive, but you get ships quicker and the ships on the high end of the spectrum can be more powerful. Certainly not something for next update but I can see it in a distant future release.