Hire Mercenaries

[Johnny Masters]

Since calling/paying for help is of marginal/random helpfulness, and since paying a few silver makes a poor job of explaining why they would put themselves at risk for so little, it might be a good idea to actually control your hired help.

Steps:

1. Reach for the comm console and contact allied faction/mercenary faction
2. Slide the number of people/mercenaries you'd like to hire and perhaps for how long
3. A few hours/days later they come to your map and you control them like any other pawn you own
4. After expiration of time, they are no longer in control and leave the map
5. You are somehow penalized if too many died, or better: gratified by how many come back (so you don't treat them like garbage).

Notes:
*You might have to pay a large sum to control them but you get some back the more mercenaries come back (some sort of insurance). Or having too many losses impact future prices /availability

*There could be a new mercenary faction that always remains neutral and never visits or attacks you randomly (unless hired by other factions somehow). They offer mostly soldier hirelings and might cost more.

*Potentially, you could hire pawns for specific tasks, like hauling. The idea is to hire them for a specific task, usually fighting, and have other functions disabled.

*Hiring a mercenary from a mercenary camp could mean a ling' that is incapable of doing all types of work and has only shooting and melee skills, but are very good at it and come equipped with armor and weapon. Hiring a mercenary from a "normal" camp means it could do more jobs, but is not specialized in anything. There's the potential of specialized civil jobs, like hiring a medic during an outbreak. It might even come equipped with a few medkits.

*You still have to provide food & shelter for your hired help, so it shouldn't be a long term or regular modus operandi (unless you're filthy rich)

*Mechanoid factions. There's nothing saying mechanoids aren't (or couldn't) have their own diverse opinions on how they feel about humans. Who knows, some might even put themselves as mercenaries should you give them something of their interest. So yeah, controlling mechanoids. Yes, including cents. YES PLAYER OWNED CENTS UNLEASHING HELL ON OTHERS FOR A CHANGE

**Potential to have some of your own pawns sent away as mercenaries for a few silver. It fall downs on how these sort of missions will be handed in the future, like send&forget (with random chances of pawn integrity) or you actually control them in another map.

***The main idea is to actively control allies. How exactly it should be done is entirely up to debate, these are just how i currently envision it.


Feel free to +1 or -1 !

(although i do have to mention that for every +1 a stray cat or dog is given a home and for every -1 Tynan postpones an alpha for a week).

[kingtyris]

I like this idea. I would also like to see raider parties split between factions; some of the raiders are 'Killers of the Dead' or whatever faction name, while the rest are 'Charlies Archons for Hire' mercenary company. Also, higher quality mercs(power armor, better weapons and stats) would cost more.

[Minaraho`]

This is a really awesome idea and it sounds easy enough to implement. Now im kind of jumping into factions and stuff. Also it would be really cool if you could send envoys to other colonies, make treaties, and wage war against other factions. Also it would be cool if you could manage your pawns while they are away so that they aren't stupidly killed or something like that. You would need to switch back and forth so that your colony doesn't get destroyed or something. Just ideas, but I really like this idea!

[Kaelent]

Having active control over the merc seems like it may be too powerful. I can imagine people cheesing it where they hire mercs for short term contracts, have them strip all gear and armor while they have control, and off walk the mercs naked at the end of the contract.

Could just use the current faction assistance function and visitor AI. Mercs could be paid and show up and act like visitors. However, they take up rooms and have moods as well. If a merc has a 'mental break' then they simply leave and you suffer a faction reputation hit that makes hiring mercs more expensive. High level mercs have a higher mental break point as they're professionals and expect that treatment. Mercs would have their own AI though which is like the reverse of raiders where they prep and attack hostiles when they appear regardless of if they're outlanders, pirates, mechanoids, or berserk colonists.

[FridayBiology]

The first thought i had after reading this was, where did i put my slave labor mod.

> Buy "temp-colonist" for hauling
next step would be selling your excess/unwanted prisoners?

[Johnny Masters]

The first thought i had after reading this was, where did i put my slave labor mod.

> Buy "temp-colonist" for hauling
next step would be selling your excess/unwanted prisoners?

Speak more of your distant land and its hidden customs, for i desire to understand such cryptic sayings you bring.  (not sure if you just made a snarky remark)

[FridayBiology]

trying to convey that once Rimworld allows "visitor" pawns to receive interaction from colonist without negative effect there will be a rush to make the first slave mod.

[Johnny Masters]

trying to convey that once Rimworld allows "visitor" pawns to receive interaction from colonist without negative effect there will be a rush to make the first slave mod.

That makes no sense. It's like i want apples, and then there are oranges but then you say because there are oranges and i want apples, everything will turn down into tomatoes. Yeah, i know, makes no sense.

But to 'answer', you can't sell what isn't yours. A Merc isn't yours, he's yours  to command, for a while, for a price.

Having active control over the merc seems like it may be too powerful. I can imagine people cheesing it where they hire mercs for short term contracts, have them strip all gear and armor while they have control, and off walk the mercs naked at the end of the contract.

How powerful it will be depends on a lot, lot of things that depend on balance. Powerful =\= exploitable
But yeah, since this is an obvious exploit i guess mercs wouldn't be able to de-equip

I know it sounds silly, but maybe you can make installments or borrow money. It's not like a lot of sim/build games don't have it (so returning a merc without his weapon would be deducted somehow, if de-equipping isn't a solution).

[kingtyris]

A simple way around this would be to disable the option to modify a mercs loadout. Being able to otherwise control them without being able to remove armor and weapons.

[Johnny Masters]

A simple way around this would be to disable the option to modify a mercs loadout. Being able to otherwise control them without being able to remove armor and weapons.

Yeah, that looks like the most sensible workaround. Only exception to interfering with their loadouts might be if they get knocked out (which disarms them) so you might need to equip them with one of your weapons. But then you might not be able to change again?

[Sartain]

Another way to do it would be to have one of the ships you can reach with the Comms console be a mercenary transport. Like other traders, they'll hang around for a limited amount of time but during that time you can call them and pay for a drop of mercenaries to come assist you for a battle almost immediately.

Maybe it could also have a "long-term" contract feature where you hire X number of mercenary guards for X amount of time, which would have the added benefit of the ship being guaranteed to return to pick them up when their contract is over and allowing you to plan for that scheduled arrival.

Of course, long-term mercenary guards could be a whole system of their own. Of course, they'll require food and housing that you need to provide (although they're probably not too picky) and unless they brought a medic your doctors will have to take care of any injuries. If the colony is going to hell or you treat your mercenaries really awful, they might even rebel on you and try to take over the colony, or just get the hell out of dodge.