Mercenaries

[CrazyGDIfan123`]

-I don't think that adding basic troops mercs (MCs) is good if we want prevent infantry spammes from C&C3. Someone certainly like in but in Generals you usually operated with much smaller armies so let's keep gameplay concentrated on micro instead of economy macro and creating big armies.

if early game merc spam is your issue here, thats easy to address by simply requiring an upgrade to purchase the more advanced/powerful merc units

[Golan2781]

This is especially true for a Generals style game, you could simply tie such third party troops to your generals rank.

[IonorRea]

Basic idea for need of good reputation based on continuous payments and good kill/success ratio with MC's is that you don't want to use them like your Barracks trained cannon fodder but as special tool to special problems.
As I propose only specialists with by rule limited number which is even smaller for higher tiers there isn't chance for spamming anyway.
If you want add just basic infantry for rent you need to ask, it's really that helpful for gameplay?

I tried make sensible rule to be easily understandable so I abandon ideas of limiting access with upgrade or rank requirement for higher MC's tiers as it doesn't make much sense for hiring MC's, while special reputation is both sensible and interesting game mechanism as you are rewarded for good MC's commanding (while you can use your regular troops like you want without effect on MC's which is specially important for GLA with high losses by standart) with access to better MC's which are through your good reputation for handling MC's willing to work with you.
MC's aren't your soldiers without choice, which you also find when you miss upkeep payments for too long and your hired forces abandon you. So it's imo good that access to higher tiers MC's is based on their not your decision, so even teching up is different from rest of your units and adding something new into game.

[Quadhelix]

-I don't think that adding basic troops mercs (MCs) is good if we want prevent infantry spammes from C&C3. Someone certainly like in but in Generals you usually operated with much smaller armies so let's keep gameplay concentrated on micro instead of economy macro and creating big armies.

That really depends on how mercenary units are "hired"/how they operate. For example, if players can only have a total of 5-10 mercenary units on the battlefield at any particular time, then having basic infantry mercenaries probably won't lead to infantry spam.

On a side note, at least some of my ideas for how mercenaries could operate were based on the idea that some faction could get all of its infantry from mercenaries.


On a side note, one possibility is that mercenaries could operate under different mechanics depending on the faction to hire them - e.g., GDI mercenaries cost a one-time fee, part of which is refunded when the player finishes with them, while Nod mercenaries have no "purchasing" cost but require a continuous upkeep.

-You will pay MC's cost of unit (for example 500$ refundable when closed contract and unit leave map alive) + upkeep(10$ per minute payed in advance, if you don't have money for upkeep longer than two minutes which also temporary increase upkeep MC leave map).

While I can sort of understand the reasoning for having to pay upkeep for your mercenaries, the idea seems a bit overdone. I mean, you presumably have to pay the salaries for your regular units, but that doesn't matter in the game because that's not something that you worry about in a regular battle.

Similarly, mercenaries would probably take a one-time fee to fight in a particular battle, rather than checking their bank accounts in the middle of a firefight to make sure that you've paid them.

-If you have good survival ratio of your MC's and you pay on time you can get acces to more advanced type which is more useful but also cost more.

It's important that MC's will have increased survivability in order to have change get more advanced MC's

This sounds like an interesting idea. The longer you have mercenaries on the field without them dying, the less future mercenaries cost. Conversely, loosing mercenaries raises the cost of hiring more mercenaries.

Lose too many mercenaries, and the ones you have will start to abandon you.

[Commander_McNash]

I would like to see the SMERCH back in action on frosbite engine