A few changes to Mercenary Enclaves that I don't believe were documented in the patch notes

[Chuunibyou Imouto]

So I've been a massive fanboy over the Merc Enclaves since they were added, but have also been begging for a few updates to make them less janky. I was pretty disappointed when I read the patch notes and saw that they still weren't getting the love they deserved. Well, it seems like they *did* get some love and someone forgot to add it to the patch notes!

A few things I've noticed that was updated

1. You can now find the owner enclave of a Merc Fleet by clicking the Emblem on the fleet, which takes you to the Enclave building. This is massive, because before that, you would get attacked by your own Mercs and if you had 5+ Enclaves you had zero way to know which one to issue a recall for.
2. You now get a pop up to auto renew contracts when they expire, although this is not reliable (see below)
3. You can now see who is renting your fleets (usually).
4. Armies you rent from them seem to appear faster. This may be my imagination but they seem to spawn a LOT faster now, and show up in my capitol within a month or two when they used to take a little while
5. The Great Khan will now rent your fleets and beat the living crap out of you with them. He auto targets the starbase, which means you no longer own the Merc Enclave and can't recall the fleet

A few things I've noticed still aren't working right / need to be updated

• The Auto renew contract pop up is not working very well, because by the time you get the pop up saying "Hey your fleet is expired, you wanna renew?" the fleet is already rented out by an AI. The pop up appears and the game pauses a split second later, but in that single tiny window between the pop up and the game pausing ,the AI will rent your fleet right out from under you. Had this happen more than once now in a single playthrough, and once it was by the Khan renting my fleet I was in the middle of using and booty blasting me with my own fleet in the nano second opening
• Sometimes it just says "No fleet available" and doesn't tell me who's renting your fleet for some reason. Not sure what's up with it, but it wasn't destroyed since I was looking right at the fleet that I wasn't allowed to rent. Maybe tied to Merc trust level? Not sure
• Your fleets still won't have admirals
• Mercs have access to Armageddon Bombardment when the player that founded it / shared research may not have that. This may be intentional
• There's still no way to tell where a fleet is at before you rent it, so you might rent it and it auto dies because it's in hostile territory
• If there is a gateway in the system where your Enclave is, you can't see the Enclave from the galaxy map anymore
• There doesn't seem to be a way to tell how much time is left on your contract, unless I'm overlooking it

A few things that would be nice to have

• The ability to tell your Mercs to focus on one type of combat style. Like "Focus on Kinetics / Lasers" or "Focus on long range artillery" or "Focus on building armor" etc. The combat rework was mentioned to have a focus on the auto ship designer having these type of functionalities, so this would be amazing to have for your Mercs
• Ability to gift a merc fleet rental to another empire. Would be nice to give your ally a helping hand 130k deathstack they can't afford, without having to actually go in and fight yourself
• Ability to request the next open slot. Sometimes you want to prepare for war in a few years, but aren't ready yet. It would be nice if you could request a Merc fleet contacts you on the next opening to see if you are still interested before the AI nab them, without you having to recall the fleet
• A notification when your own mercs are flagged as hostile to you, so you could know you need to recall them.
• A way to tell where the fleet is at in the galaxy if you are the patron at least. This way you don't waste time renting a fleet that's 900,000 light years away or sitting somewhere that will cause it to auto explode when you rent it, like inside the enemies fleet doom stack

Overall I'm quite happy with the stealth changes they got, they are definitely a very fun addition to the game. The Great Khan changes are neat, if dangerous to the player if you aren't paying attention. I'm tempted to try submitting to him on a playthrough just so he can have access to my 5+ Merc Enclave fleets and wreak havoc on the galaxy with them

A few minor issues with them persist like the no admiral thing, and a few QoL changes would be nice to have, but overall, they are extremely good!

 

[legionof1]

snip

• Ability to gift a merc fleet rental to another empire. Would be nice to give your ally a helping hand 130k deathstack they can't afford, without having to actually go in and fight yourself

In the trade deal window you can actually lend out fleets now, thou i doubt for reasons of current control issues that enclave fleets are included.

 

[DtheDnonator]

In the trade deal window you can actually lend out fleets now, thou i doubt for reasons of current control issues that enclave fleets are included.

Trading fleets only works between subject and overlord

 

[RabbaDooDabba]

In the trade deal window you can actually lend out fleets now, thou i doubt for reasons of current control issues that enclave fleets are included.

But you can only lend fleets between Overlords and Vassals, not independent or allied empires.

 

[Chuunibyou Imouto]

Yeah, I don't think it'd be that OP or anything to be able to gift merc rentals to ally nations. They could accept / reject based on whether they had the Naval Cap, or maybe even use the renters naval cap. There's times where you see your neighbor getting beat up by a devouring swarm that you don't want to have to fight yourself lol

 

[legionof1]

It would be nice, but my experience so far is that they don't do squat with them. Played a handful of games since i last commented and none of the fleets i loaned out ever did jack shit.

More then once i loaned out a fleet while it was on a lane that was being attacked, and every time the fleet ended up going to the allies homeworld and sitting still for the remainder of the war. And most of the time the loaner fleet had more power then both participants combined. Im talking im handing over my 100k+ fleet to a minor vassal that has maybe 50k combined. I would have been better off every time just being in the war.

But i was trying for the 200 years peace achievement so had configured the vassals to not pull me in.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

The Auto renew contract pop up is not working very well, because by the time you get the pop up saying "Hey your fleet is expired, you wanna renew?" the fleet is already rented out by an AI. The pop up appears and the game pauses a split second later, but in that single tiny window between the pop up and the game pausing ,the AI will rent your fleet right out from under you. Had this happen more than once now in a single playthrough, and once it was by the Khan renting my fleet I was in the middle of using and booty blasting me with my own fleet in the nano second opening

This is giving me PTSD flashbacks to how the slave market used to be.

Literally the same issue where the AI would insta-buy the thing you wanted as soon as it was available.

 

[Chuunibyou Imouto]

This is giving me PTSD flashbacks to how the slave market used to be.

Literally the same issue where the AI would insta-buy the thing you wanted as soon as it was available.

It's basically the exact same situation atm. There's a thread on Reddit with others complaining about it again now, and it literally just happened to me AGAIN in my current game and basically crippled me. I'm stomping in a war, suddenly the merc fleet contract pops up, except I'm not able to rent my own fleet despite it sitting right where it was when the contract ended 0.02 nanoseconds prior. Enemy suddenly no longer wants to agree to status quo and is massively stronger than me

It's pretty annoying honestly, and just makes it so it's not worth using Merc fleets if you don't constantly refresh the contract every few minutes "just in case". It's a legit game ruiner when it happens, I just alt f4'd my iron man save because of it, in the hopes that *maybe* the last auto save is early enough for me to just ignore the useless auto renew pop up and just manually extend the contract. If not, I'm 100% fubar, again, because of my love and insistence on using merc fleets lol

 

[Pancakelord]

The ability to tell your Mercs to focus on one type of combat style. Like "Focus on Kinetics / Lasers" or "Focus on long range artillery" or "Focus on building armor" etc. The combat rework was mentioned to have a focus on the auto ship designer having these type of functionalities, so this would be amazing to have for your Mercs

I think this could apply to all empires not just mercs. I'd love it if AIs (or AIs mercenaries) focussed on lasers or armour or whatever, to become niche specialists.

 

[Imp0815]

I made a mockup of a better Merc Fleet interface some months ago:

You guys are awesome, thank you very much for your hard work! ♥
____
Do you have any plans to overhaul the Merc Fleet Outliner?
Maybe like this? ^^
View attachment 841046

Btw. my Mercs still miss thier Admirals all the time.

 

[Chuunibyou Imouto]

I think this could apply to all empires not just mercs. I'd love it if AIs (or AIs mercenaries) focussed on lasers or armour or whatever, to become niche specialists.

Very very much agree, I am really hoping this is a thing when they do the combat rework.

I would love if we had more control in general over custom empires, like AI aggressiveness, willingness to form federations, target goals or focuses like alloys / research etc, focus on specific weapon / armor types or combat styles etc.

It would be awesome and make your custom empires shake the game up a lot between playthroughs

 

[Refuel]

Another thing I discovered is that if you do a trade deal and lend a fleet to an ally, sometimes they will use it to setup a merc enclave in your own space so it counts as your merc enclave by without having to pay the setup cost.

 

[Sutopia]

The easiest way to avoid ai “snipe” merc is to enforce a rental cool down after the contract ends. 1 month minimum, may take as much time as it takes to restore fleet to full strength. It’s not something new, apartments for rent all do that so the company running the property can restore unit to prime state before next tenant moves in.

Mercs should also have proper rule of engagement. If their fleet is rented by faction hostile toward their current fleet location, they should be forced to subspce jump as if retreated from combat immediately.