Mercenary Space Dock

[Ozymandiaz]

Just out of curriosity, do you guys use this a lot?

I sometimes use it if I got a good flow of resources and is at my unit cap. But at 10x the ammout of resources I must say its not very often. I think it just costs too much for Mk II units to be generally worth it as it depletes my entire resource chache too quickly.

[Voodoomancer]

Heh, I've sometimes built a merc dock just for the aesthetics of it.

Then again, I like playing with more than one homeplanet so ship caps aren't really a problem.

[HellishFiend]

I never use it. I would rather hoard resources incase I need to rush some defense somewhere.

[x4000]

I tend not to use it, also, because I'm never rich -- if I have that many resources, I'm attacking and dying, and then all that money goes away nice and quick.  But I do know of some players who use it extensively (Haagenti was one, I believe) because they use a really methodical approach with a lot of repairing and wind up having tons of extra resources that are then well-spent on mercenaries to keep the ship cap really high.

This feature was really built around that sort of situation, to essentially allow another outlet to burn off excess metal/crystal if you didn't have something more productive to do with it.  If you're playing at your real difficulty level, and not using really unusual tactics, odds are fair you will never find yourself in a situation where you need the mercenary space dock.

[SgtScum]

I use the merc dock to make a home defense fleet for those gosh darned cross planet attacks that always come around when your main fleet is off 15 jumps away raiding knowledge. With a decent tractor and turret defence you don't really need very many to knock back even a largish incursion.

[Ozymandiaz]

I use the merc dock to make a home defense fleet for those gosh darned cross planet attacks that always come around when your main fleet is off 15 jumps away raiding knowledge. With a decent tractor and turret defence you don't really need very many to knock back even a largish incursion.

This was my thought as well for another use, if my main fleet is far off I could pump out a few new units. But it does deplete your resources horribly fast, and I mean really really fast .

My friend also repairs his units a lot, maybe will suggest the mercs to him .

[SgtScum]

Yeah it does suck up resources pretty quick but one of the first things I do with my starting knowledge is unlock the mobile repair station so I rarely lose any ships as I advance into the first mk I worlds. This lets me build up a nice stock so I can online the z gen as soon as possible once a trader wanders through the home system. Once that is running I can then scrap three mk III power plants freeing up all those juicy resources and then really go on a rampage with near instant reinforcement of an assault on a higher level world. Makes for a bit of a slow beggining game by the razors edge balancing of building the main fleet vs getting the z gen running and then building up a merc home defence fleet but once all of those are in place its just a matter of time till those ebil ai are ejected from my galaxy.

[Ozymandiaz]

I never really tried the mobile repair station much, maybe I shall give it a go. I usually pump all my tech points towards more ships and high Mk level, then use my brute force to take more worlds and use the resources to pump out new ships on the go .

But as long as you can keep units alive with it I can see the use of the Mercs, tho I think they still might be a tad expencive .

[quickstix]

I play a very slow and methodical strategic game myself, using specific hit and run strikes when I attack enemy planets, pulling my forces back for repairs using an array of MRS units after each strike. When I'm not doing that, I spend a lot of time scouting and being very picky about what planets I take. As such, I'm usually fairly awash in resources, and more often than not I'm at the cap. The only time I'm not is if I've unlocked new ships and I'm building them, or if I screw up my planning and lose my forces faster than I can retreat them. So I find myself using Merc Docs every now and then to increase my defensive ranks, especially in the later game when I'm deep raiding and can't easily and/or quickly move my ships around the battlefield.

They do suck the resources down fairly quickly though, so it's important to know when to use them in case you suddenly need major main fleet replacement. They're not economical at all, but they do give you a little extra 'oomph' on the battlefield. Just don't rely on them too much.

As an aside, my style tends to arise from a background of strategic games where unit survivability is extremely important and reinforcements are limited or non-existent. For example, Ground Control 1/2, Advance Wars, Super Robot Taisen, stuff like that.

[Ozymandiaz]

Even tho my tactic is usually straight forward with a brute force, I do plan accordingly where I want to apply my force . But I secure a core planet cluseter of oabout 10 planets for enough resources to make a mobile production force viable.

When using only engineers I perfer to just rebuild units then repair them, but some zeniths that I get form cathces I am more careful with, limited supply and all . (except shredders, they just replicate themself, nice for WH defence I think)

On anohter note, pure brute overkill force aslo do ensure that I get minimal losses, but I do use some surgical strikes when I get the units to do so. I.e. inclding raptors in my main fleet is not soo good.

[SgtScum]

I never really tried the mobile repair station much, maybe I shall give it a go. I usually pump all my tech points towards more ships and high Mk level, then use my brute force to take more worlds and use the resources to pump out new ships on the go .

They are a great way to keep your stuff alive when doing deep knowledge raids as you normally have to cross several hostile systems to get to the one that has the optimum amount of connections for max knowledge gain vs the ai progress hit. Also there is a trick to really amp up the repair effeciency where you keep your mrs at the back of your group slightly outside the blob and only use 100% tugs. This has the effect of immediatly pulling ships out of the line of fire before they are heavily damaged so they will repair  quickly and will usually pull the attacking ships deeper into your killzone so they die in detail instead of hanging back at their optimal and bypassing most of your shortrange ships like bombers and fighters. They are also perfect for beachheads when you use several in one fleet with the increase in repair range they recently received just make sure you have enough resources in stock to support them all along with your reinforcing space docks.

But as long as you can keep units alive with it I can see the use of the Mercs, tho I think they still might be a tad expencive .

The real cost is in replacing them which is why I only use them for a small mobile force to back up a systems static defences. I build about 50ish of each over the course of the first few hours of play and that seems to be plenty to kill off any leakers even if they are a higher mk level. Add in some mk III engies to rep them up during and after the battle and they will last you the entire game with very minimal reinforcement. So in effect they are quite economical compaired to the constant replacement cost of your main normal fleet units.

[raptor331]

Because they have such a high cost, I normaly save them for later on in the game. But once I finaly cross that economic barrier, I start to mainly use the mercenaries. I save the regular units for when  I want to quickly build a defensive force for that planet.

[vonduus]

Also there is a trick to really amp up the repair effeciency where you keep your mrs at the back of your group slightly outside the blob and only use 100% tugs. This has the effect of immediatly pulling ships out of the line of fire before they are heavily damaged so they will repair  quickly and will usually pull the attacking ships deeper into your killzone so they die in detail instead of hanging back at their optimal and bypassing most of your shortrange ships like bombers and fighters.

Hey, thanks a lot, I always bring my mrs along with the main fleet, but I never understood what the 100% tugs are for (except for doing paint jobs).  I must definitely try out this tactic in my next session.

edit: Something went wrong with the quote tags, actually it is SgtScum who shall have the credit for this tactic. But thanks both of you, for bringing this to my attention