I get that there are corps that offer hired muscle. So for example, corp A might be trying to move into a region, and corp B is a known PVP corp with good numbers and skilled pilots, so A might pay B some amount of ISK for B to defend them. That makes sense in principle.
What got me scratching my head was replacing lost hulls and getting those replacements to a staging area. So one of my buddies was in a corp where 7 of their contracts in 2021 involved everyone getting in a Munnin, everyone shooting something, everyone getting blown up, everyone self-destructing (?) and reshipping to continue the fight for a loss of 3.1 ships per pilot per fight in those 7 fights, which he described as rather costly victories that still ended up making money for the corp.
If a corp is being hired to provide extra pilots, they either risk their own ships, or are using client supplied ships. If they are risking their own ships, they would need to be paid enough to make it worthwhile. If they are using client supplied ships, well that’s a lot of ships. If a client can pay enough to replace all those lost ships and deems an objective worth spending that much, why not just fight with in-house pilots? If something is important enough that you’re paying a corp that’s losing multiple ships per pilot in a single fight enough that said mercs are still ahead ISK wise, that could be spent on ships for their own pilots right?
Again your a corp that is only in it for the ISK
The fact that your corp didn’t even bother to apply a quote at all? Just ingored it when the quotation request could had been fun roleplay with a few billion laughs but hey I understand now that your corp only calls themself a mercenary corp because you can pick and choose the tasks.
Roleplay forums is in a different section. I am sure they will be happy to play along with you.
And exactly that. I choose to dumpster 3-5 billion isk Paladins into an enemy fleet because the isk lost does not matter. We don’t even get paid for that, but happy to kill almost a trillion isk of their assets as it was payback.
Either way… roleplay… lol. Nobody in our alliance roleplays. Your just going to waste your time and ours trying to.
EDIT: Granted, tonight when the last structure of PARRA is popped it will be around 800Bill destroyed in ships and structures but a Trillion has a nice sound.
If you’re trying to do some mercenary roleplay, why would anyone try to involve real mercs? It’s like asking Nasa to arrange a kid’s rocket-themed birthday party.
Saying a corp has no balls for not playing make-believe merc roleplay when they spend their time successfully put real ships in real combat for a real isk profit is biggest work of mental gymnastics I’ve seen in weeks.
No I know real merc deals exist where the client pays enough for the fighters to come out ahead ISK wise. At one point when seeing how many times they had to reship to save a tarata, I was really surprised they still came out ahead. But the idea that a fight is so “must win” that a client pays enough to compensate for his hired muscle’s hull losses seems a bit odd to me since if it’s worth it that much to them… that ISK can be used to bring their own pilots up to a doctrine ship and then fill the seats.
What people don’t seem to really get is that there are no more authentic mercenaries left in the game. All of the groups that do “mercenary work” are allied with each other, so when you get attacked by one, you hire another, and then they come and “protect” your stuff by making the attackers not come because they’re “too afraid to show up.” Anyone not part of this racket who tries to enter the profession is quickly destroyed by the mega-blob under the guise of some kind of fake vendetta, like a cop arresting you for having your taillight out after bashing through it with his nightstick.
And, by the way, I don’t blame the players for playing like this. This kind of environment is the expected logical conclusion for the set of circumstances that CCP created with their game design decisions. CCP enabled the creation of what amounts to a massive market externality, and are refusing to fix it, despite their role as this game’s governing party. Contemporary high-sec war mechanics are absolute dogshit. At this point I’d be happier seeing them taken out of the game entirely than existing in this zombified, brain-dead manner, and I’ve been doing high-sec wars since 2008.
Mercenaries have always been able to pick and choose their gig, it’s a prerogative. If they had no choice, hence be under orders, they would be regular military force, not mercs.
The express purpose and point of honor for a mercenary is to get PAID so I don’t see the problem.
