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An idea I've had for mercenaries:

When hiring mercenaries, as well as the actual ships you'll be hiring to carry out an assault, extra EP must be invested both to ensure the secrecy of the operation and to keep the mercenaries quiet. At least 1EP must be used for this.

When the mercenaries hit the system they've been told to hit, the extra EPs is used as Intel for an intel mission, with a difference.

The defensive Intel of the system is equal to the square of the system's output rounded normally (so a standard homeworld with 60EP would have 8 defensive intel, while a piddling outpost with just 4EP would only have 2). Furthermore, add 1EP for every enemy scout that survives that battle (regardless of scout functions), 1EP for every mercenary squadron flagship destroyed, and 2EP if the mercenary task force flagship is destroyed.

With this worked out, work out the MFP. This is to see if the power the mercenaries have attacked have managed to garner any information about who sent the mercenaries. If the roll succeeds, the power doesn't know. If the roll fails, the power finds out who sent the mercenaries.

What do you think?

I like your idea and would certainly try it. If I am the guy hiring the mercenaries I would want to make sure I got a little more for my extra cost. For example, I want the risk of being found out or even the mercenaries misdirecting the defender to be hiring. Do you know what I mean? At a glance it just looks like the cost is still a little higher with two exceptions I see. Do you see any maintenance costs involved? How about basing and control?

When you first said mercenaries, I assumed we were talking about actual hired guns to fill in the ranks on planets and starfleets. So I immediately started thinking about how to create a hiring list and determine cost/loyalty. But this is why have a community of gamers is so nice because each of us has a unique way to approach an idea.

-Jay

murtalianconfederacy wrote: The defensive Intel of the system is equal to the square of the system's output rounded normally (so a standard homeworld with 60EP would have 8 defensive intel, while a piddling outpost with just 4EP would only have 2). Furthermore, add 1EP for every enemy scout that survives that battle (regardless of scout functions), 1EP for every mercenary squadron flagship destroyed, and 2EP if the mercenary task force flagship is destroyed.

While the examples make your intent clear, you left out one little word that radically changes the meaning of the rule - "root". As stated, that homewolrd would have 3600 defensive intel, not 8. =)

That being said, it looks quite workable to me.

I thought it was generally accepted that when someone said "the square of x" they meant the square root?

@ mwaschak: I was thinking that if the dice roll was under 50% then misdirection could be applied, but I only really thought about the basics of the idea. I was hoping that other people could chime in with any mercenary rules they'd toyed with...

As for maintenance, I was thinking that maybe bankrolling them for maintenance as well, but at a lower than normal maintenance cost. However, I'm not the most successful at creating rules from scratch--modifying rules is the best thing for me to do...

murtalianconfederacy wrote:I thought it was generally accepted that when someone said "the square of x" they meant the square root?

I'm not sure about "generally accepted", but I would have scratched my head and probably got it wrong, and I work in a reasonably technical field (the "square of x" sounds like the result you get from squaring x to me),

Either which way, I think that when writing rules for players that aren't necessarily mathematically literate it's best to be absolutely clear, especially as, while squares appear in a few RPG games, square-roots are practically unheard of

So for the sake of clarity I agree that it would be much clearer to say "the square-root of x"

Okay...