Emperor L
[ Posts : 1237 ]
 | [Post Date: 04-Mar-2006 01:06]
I have found that the bigest problem is if mercs decide to attack a non merc empire. They often have huge fleets that can destroy planets easily without other empire having any real force to stop them or defend.
If a merc sends a 1000000 strong fleet or more even human orbital bases cant do much to defend. It is not possible to place a huge fleet on every system/planet to defend because building this many ships it too expencive and maintenance costs would be too high to keep decent ammount of resources comming in.
Also fighting back is almost impossible because merc bases are invisible mostly meaning only other mercs can find them and even if you can see them (expecialy as human) attacking base does no dammage or even gives them more modules than before!
I think it would be a good improvement to try to minimise this 'unfairness' so other races can fight mercs easier. Mabe increase Orbital base attack power for humans (not sure how this could help fagur/krong) alot so defence is easier or weaken the power/ increase cost of merc fighters alot.
The main issue is that the strongest merc in the galaxy has very little opposition that can harm them. If there base is well defended and invisible no non merc empire or even alliance can attack them and even the weaker mercs could not do much because they are not strong enough.
Anyways, this is just what I think, does anyone else think this or agree/disagree.
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shatteredrummer
[ Posts : 33 ]
 | [Post Date: 05-Mar-2006 23:03]
the biggest problem is that mercs aren't supposed to have scores as high as they have been getting. This is caused by abuse of the missions system. You can pay 1billion and have a merc only kill 1 base and the merc gains the cash. I would suggest a set price or a max price for each structure wanting to be destroyed, this would eliminate that problem because it would be alot harder for mercs to complete that task. Mercs are ment to grow by raiding, and it ruins the game when all people do is abuse the game so they can look like they are good players.
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Emperor L
[ Posts : 1237 ]
| [Post Date: 06-Mar-2006 13:56]
Also, once science rate is high enough mercs can make a profit from just making and selling fighters and spy units. There shuld be a limit to this or the production cost should not be less than the price of selling on the market. It may also be an Idea to make mercs buy all fighters and spy units from traders and instead of producing them players can set a number of fighters to be alutomaticaly bought from the market every turn. this could replace the production screen or what ever its called where you set %of fighters and spy units to make,
This would also be ok because mercs are meant to by everything from the traders.
I know this is also possible as other races like human as there was an issue with capital ships at one point.
This is a little different though because the cost of resources used has to be taken into account and by buying too many resources, the prices increase anyway. With mercs this is not the case as only UC is used and the value of this is always constant.
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Shinobi-Thief
[ Posts : 30 ]
| [Post Date: 07-Mar-2006 00:56]
I agree, I worked REALLY HARD on Virgo as Fagur, but now a powerful Merc just came and literally disasembled me, I looked at the battle system seeing what the damega and HP values were, I thought they would be a lot higher than 15 and 20!!!
The only reason why I am still around Virgo is because the Merc made a proposal to join him and leave my alliance!!!! 
He has been a kind ally but I did not plan this at all!!!
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Maverick
[ Posts : 1331 ]
 | [Post Date: 07-Mar-2006 10:05]
We'll take a look at this isue.
I think mercs seam to be very strong because there are few strong Krongs. A node of CECs in orbit can doo great damage to merc fleets. Also, Krong can make Merc baze stall and visible. And usualy very few attacks on base can stop a merc 
PS: You can even WH a merc base into a BH
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Emperor L
[ Posts : 1237 ]
| [Post Date: 07-Mar-2006 13:37]
Quote
PS: You can even WH a merc base into a BH
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 , thats a good idea, will have to try it, probably explains why the mercs often hide in systems, at the cost of being found
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shatteredrummer
[ Posts : 33 ]
| [Post Date: 07-Mar-2006 19:51]
that technique was a killer when LRH first began doing it, they eliminated half the mercs before people caught on. I was one of the first hit with this manuver.....
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MickeyMouse
[ Posts : 6 ]
| [Post Date: 11-May-2006 01:29]
i agree that merc fleets are big, but that's usually because the fleet comprises of all of their unit or a big part(atleast from what i seen and remember, and if their not raiding), and the biggest merc bases usually aren't cloaked because of maintenance costs and the need to have insane amounts of cloak modules, but they will probably have lots of defense modules to discourage attacks,
if you do find their base it's really easy to kill or cripple them if you have a good size fleet, but you'll most likely loose the fleet in the attack.
from what i remember from when i played as a merc i had a uncloaked base with around 1-2 million points that would need around 300k to 500k capitol ships to kill but would kill some 800k. but i also had a fleet of 10+ million fighters
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Emperor L
[ Posts : 1237 ]
| [Post Date: 12-May-2006 00:07]
When I posted this there was a merc that had 20 or more fleets with about 5 million fighters in each, there was also a bug on the market that allowed you to get infinite UC and this is probably what was happening
I think that it has been fixed now though
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MickeyMouse
[ Posts : 6 ]
| [Post Date: 12-May-2006 04:39]
yes, but there were also fleets with over 20+ million fighters without that bug when i played
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