i think adding a few TO's is boring and tedious, needs to be something FUN, not just statistical and efficient, but actually enjoyable... if you know what i mean...

i like the idea of calling someone to your BT, but if its a 40 hour ability it cant be abused so thats fine
also resetting action counter, very interesting



also to elaborate upon someone elses idea-
maybe give either this thing or a totally new peice of content the passive ability to seperate player and planet alert timers permanently, this would be fun. not being able to alert both a player and a planet at the same time has drawbacks.

To me a mercenary is someone who does a task for you. So you activate this ability and you alert a person or planet and you legionmates can invade/disable/raid/hack but they get a mercenary badge instead of the colored badge and the reward for action goes to the person who alerted.

So say I use this on a person. I alert them and Clang hacks them. I get the research he gets a new badge.

If I alert a planet, and someone invades successfully I get the planet but pay for their invasion cost. To make this a bit balanced I pay for failed attempts too. If their cost for invasion is lower mine, I pay my cost. If I can't afford it, then the mercenary pays and keeps it.

Then there is plenty of things that can open up with new badges. Upgrades for modules, allies etc. Medals can be added for this etc. etc.

While i love the random temp allies - VERY cool idea - and what i want which is immunity to traps for x hours (the merc ship takes the hit) i suspect something much more simple:

+10% attack, invasion, and base attack for 1 hour; 20 hour cooldown

--myst

ps your already 'paying' for the mercs in your upkeep i doubt the ability will have a credit cost.

Just to be clear they come in as my rank so right now I am 1912.

So I get ~11.4k attack and 5.7k defense for hiring this guy for 30 mins? And in addition I get 4 hrs of production?

I got distracted with vetting a base...so to flush out the rest of this idea.

First a few regulations:
You can only receive mercenary badges if you have a rank 100 Vortov, Hired Mercenary.

A +1 bounty effect is put (unknown to the person) on the target, so to prevent multiple people putting them up and gives a set duration (maybe 12 hrs)

The mercenary gets the action count, ie the hack/raid/invasion/disable, so the person who used the call only gets the reward for it, so as no to mess up the medals like elite or pirate. Disables give no bonus to the person who used the call, useless the person who has the bounty placed on them kills themselves and only once.

If a person is attacked or zero'd while the effect is activated the person gets a mercenary badge regardless if they are in the same legion as the person who placed it on them.

ie. I use it on teneka and someone in badgers decides to zero his hacks to "help" him. I get the research and crits.


Rewards:

Invasions give 2 mercenary badges
Disables/hacks/raids give one and same as before can't be within 12 hrs.
Badges:
2 Merc badges can be a trap, that goes off when someone puts a bounty on you.
20 merc badges can be a planet structure that is +1 all resources and has the option for either another +1 all resources, +% att bonus, +% def bonus or +% pop bonus
100 merc badges is a weapon like the composite ray where you get a fixed amount of attack and an option for a second stat, but it upgrades.
MkI, MkII up to MkV.

So say you can choose between energy cloak, scan attack and defense. You can mix them so that you have all the stats at a level 1 or you can upgrade so that you have level 5 of one stat or 2 of one and 3 of another etc.

So it can be
size 25 +100 attack +50 defense or +150 attack
MkII +150 attack +50 defense +50 cloak or +150 attack +75 defense or +200 attack
.
.
MkV +250 attack +50 defense +50 energy +50 cloak +50 scan +energy or +250 attack +100 defense + 75 cloak or +500 attack

level 5 of a stat can unlock abilities. Attack being a chance to do % damage to a person.
cloak can give a % bonus to cloak
energy can be like using 10 sacs or something
scan can be increase to hacking ability
defense can be a trap that when activated doubles the defense of the ship and last for 2 hrs and is removed if they attack something.

Medals
Hired gun
5 medal points
Do 50 acts as a mercenary

Name TBD
10 Medal points
Do 200 acts as a mercenary
unlocks ship design

Name TBD
20 Medal points
Do 1000 acts as a mercenary
Unlock title The Mercenary.

Yes so for this particular random ally.. for the low price of (6 billion per day?? and 25 omniforges) you got I am guessing an approximate 10% boost to attack and 5% to defense non-cm-able for 30 minutes.. and a tribute cache.. to me that doesn't sound particularly strong or weak..

I believe it is 10B after bots, but I make more than 10B in 4 hrs from research/mining and the 4 hrs of ap can easily make up the omniforges. Plus I can save them and just dump into a ctl.

Plus with konqul and autoranking I can boost my attack up for invasions and a base I want to blitz.

I think this one is a bit OP.

I believe it is 10B after bots, but I make more than 10B in 4 hrs from research/mining and the 4 hrs of ap can easily make up the omniforges. Plus I can save them and just dump into a ctl.

Plus with konqul and autoranking I can boost my attack up for invasions and a base I want to blitz.

I think this one is a bit OP.[/quote]

Fair point on tribute cache.. This is the only ally I suggested as having this particular drop so its a 1 in 7 chance of getting this anyway.. but I could easily sign on for a 2 hour cache or something .. And the attack/def bonus is not based on your current stats .. it's based on your level

Trap Planet Type : 1 week
When applied, the first ship to attack the target planet alerts
a group of mercenary ships to protect the planet.
Boosts planet attack by 1000 and planet cannot be invaded.
Lasts 48 hrs.

If the planet cannot be invaded .. why boost the attack by 1k?

And we have rift traps.. that are very rare .. I am going to see hes not going to implement a trap that makes a planet immune to invades for 2 days refreshable every 40 hours..

nix the boost then, unless you think mercs wouldn't return fire that is

Well a 40 hour timer and the trap lasts 1 week = 4 permanently protected planets.
Just like Trellith, at first super exciting, then realized it's only used on 3 planets.

I know but adding 12k unbuffed attack purely because I am 2k+ seems...rather a lot. That is certainly more than a 5% boost for my attack. The numbers might need tweaking is all I am saying, so as to make them not game breaking.

while i love this idea, WHY not make them into individual ALlies bought via Badges.
CTL item : Merc bay - allows purchase and usage of smaller tempory allies
then assign each ally a cost in badges for a item to add them, with a CR cost to use each ( 1 time CR cost)
then introduce new NPC's that drop rank ups for some and others rank via badging.

MAYBE even
ArconZX Prejor Renegade.... different name maybe but i LOVE the idea of a Prejor Ally. maybe even a second Prejor chain if need be to earn it

Because in this case we are tossing around ideas as to what we think a good "Mercenarys Call" ability is going to be for the current ally given by the legion missions.

yah, but it wouldnt be right to hijack thats nice list he stareted for what i was suggesting so had to post the thought here to give himt he criedit, id had a floating idea for it, but he'd done so much of the work already it be wrong not to point of mine was a modifcation of his list

+1 to that! =)

Its probably going to be another Ally ship.

Mercenary Call is the ability you get from the Mercenary Ally, I doubt it's ability will be to give you another Ally Chakotay.. Mayhaps you were posting vs. something else?