[SCRIPT] Mercenaries Guild V2.90 : Updated 13/03/2007

[Fistantantilis]

The mercenaries Guild is a great mod indeed, however
Mercenaries Guild + Xtended = rather grandiose mercs stations.

Any way to use normal x3 shipyards for mercs in xtended games?

Cheers.

[blue fox]

Is the mercenary guild script compatible with XTM?

If not what are some of the known issues?

[Cycrow]

i've not actually used XTM yet so i dont know if its compatble or not. It should be.

as for the stations, the merc guild does use the standard X3 Shipyards, unless XTM has replaced them. If thats the case, then a script wont be able to access the older ones

[Sandalpocalypse]

confirm that merc stations in Xtended are the fancy new race stations. It does look kind of grandiose

Unfortunately turning off 'spawn shipyards' doesnt despawn them, either.

I'm having the same problem as blueman. The only thing I can think of is that i once hired a single fighter to attack a customs patrol and it got blown up.

I dont think im using the latest version tho, using an older mega-pack. Ill try using the newest one.

Mercs does work pretty well otherwise, though there seems to be a problem with Yaki mercenaries attacking sector units during missions.

I haven't found an Assassins Guild station yet. I'm not sure if its broken, or just hard to find.

[Cycrow]

the yaki is a know problem, and i will be fixed that once i've finished the new plugin manager, which is getting closer now.

i wil lalso be looking into the assassins guild compatablity issues with XTM.

but the stations are completly random, so it could just be hard to find.

not sure y the al setting is not removing them however, i will have to check up on that, not sure if its a script problem, or a problem with XTM

[Blinki1984]

Can you increase the difficulty of your mod ?

I am now at level 4 and though I usually gain 6 mil per mission, I wonder why they are so easy. Those Khaak invasions only contain of some clusters and fighters.

Up to now I havn't seen any corvette etc.

Up to which level this mod goes ? Will there be more difficult missions ahead ?

Here is a mercenary idea of mine.

release some satelites at the following cooridnates ... in the Xenon sector, and protect them for ... mizuras.

Destroy ... numbers of the following transporter type... from race ... to lower this races economy.

[Cycrow]

i am planning on rebalancing all the missions at some point.

unfortuatlly due to the limits of the game, making it more difficult usually means adding more ships which can have ap roblem with performance.

the level 5 kha'ak invasions do have the kha'ak carriers in the battle. I plan to increase them for level 4 missions as well. As for Corvettes, kha'ak dont have corvettes, so cant add them

[Blinki1984]

There are also other ways to increase the difficulty of a mission.

First you can add multiple protection tasks a time to a mission. This forces the player to choose his position, and to command his army.

Also you can add escort missions, protecting weak and slow units.
For example a Carrier without any shields.

A possible mission would be to protect delegates, or Diplomates, and escort them safely through several sectors.

[Cycrow]

the escort mission already exists, in the form of Escort a VIP to target sectors, its part of the Merc Guild.

where ships will start to attack the ship and you have to protect it

[Sandalpocalypse]

Hrmm... increasing difficulty... you could

-Randomly add fighter drones to some of the heavy fighters
-The invasion missions rarely seem to have attacking corvettes
-Assassination or AttackAllEnemies squads during invasion missions to add pressure to the player
-Attackers could come from multiple jumpgates? Difficult, theres only a few sectors that could do that.
-More solid waves: you could have groups of identical ships, they would all be the same speed and thus move more as a group. Speaking of which, it would be nice if race invasion missions tended more towards race ships.
-Turncoats: Mercenary 'allies' could sometimes change sides... unless you offer them a share of the fee?
-Transports that drop laser towers along the invasion route

A thought: It would be nice if mercenary missions tried to be more local.

[aka1nas]

I got burned a bit badly the other day when the Khaak offered me a sector invasion mission against the Split. Evidently, this works out in Xtended because there is a single khaak sector connected to the gate network. Unfortunately, it seemed like the khaak completely ignored the split defense forces attacking them and both the khaak and split sides would attack me on sight even if I tried setting khaak as friendly. I lost a couple of my fighters before I gave up and reloaded as I had been forced to kill too many of the khaak myself to have passed the mission.

[Sandalpocalypse]

Another thought.. a great mercenary task would be able to hire mercenaries to clear out a sector or maybe just attack-all-enemies-land from the station.

[sylvimaus]

Sorry, but ... Aaaargh!!!

I've tried to take a mission on mercenaries level 4, where I should helped the Argon to break through a pirate sector.

Believe me, I got a very fast and state-of-the-badass-art PC...but this was even to much for my one:


[ external image ]
(...maybe 250 ships??)


Please, Cycrow, could you please do something in the next update, that not THAT MANY ships fight each other in a sector? The guild script is excellent, but this mission is (due to its high hardware requirements) completely inplayable...


PS: I find the reward for this mission of about 34.000.000 was quite "acceptable"...


And something else:
When I abort the mission by jumping out of the sector, and I get back here, all blue ships are still there and WITHOUT PILOT (!) That means they all can be salvaged by the player.

[Sandalpocalypse]

while we're at it i noticed that defense ships in 'help attack a sector' missions dont always despawn if you fail the mission.

[sylvimaus]

while we're at it i noticed that defense ships in 'help attack a sector' missions dont always despawn if you fail the mission.

That's what I meant...

[Sandalpocalypse]

i thought you were talking about the attack shiips..abyway, mine arnt blue, theyre red abd active.

[sylvimaus]

Right right. The blue are without pilot and salvagable, the red are still attacking. Both are not despawning.

[talonmaster]

How do you know right away if this mod is working? Should i get a message confirming it or not? Also wondering the same thing for your other guild mods. I installed all of them with the script installer, when i started the game i only got a message from the assassins guild. Is this normal? I have a few other things running 90% done by you actually, but i also have the extended and a few others, just wondering if there could be some interference.
Thanx

[Cycrow]

theres no confirmation message when you run the game, u could check the artifical life settings, some of the scripts will have entries in there

[talonmaster]

Ive heard about that before but never actually seen it. Is it part of the script editor?