instead of mercenaries being able to get planet tags and mc from it, make planet grabs a loyalist only domain. mercs instead are told how much mc theyd get at the end of a contract when they sign it, but theyre players need to play x amount of games to get the mc, which is paid at the end of the contract. then you can mess with mc payments for the mercs, and tie it to leaderboards.
so, give every mercenary a base payment of 1 mc. then multiply that one mc by 2 if the contract is with the faction that lost the last attack wave, and them multiply that by a number that is determined by the units rankings in the leaderboards. when the contract is up, every individual member of the unit who played the required number of matches is payed half of the mc from the above little word problem, and the other half is put directly into the unit coffers for the unit.
for increasing the likelyhood that units will spread to different factions, you would have to replace the current leaderboard sytem and have it give players a number value for their performance that combos several factors to create a unit score, and that score will have to be heavily influenced by who youve beaten or lost to. so a unit ranked 100 is going to see a much higher leaderboard jump from beating the unit in tenth place, then the unit in 14th place would get from beating the unit in 10th place. in this system though, there would have to be a cuttoff point, or thered be no point in being loyalist, so any unit that is in 100th place or higher (that 100 can be a different number, its just a starting point for discussions sake) wouldnt be paid in mc, and theyd get maybe a few million cbills, and down the line in decreasing amounts of cbills as the rank # goes higher.
this would encourage a new overarching, career based playstyle that i think pgi had hoped wed take in the original pitch, but tweaked. youd be much better off as a solo or new player starting off as a loyalist, because their rewards are better to start with, but once youve put together a loyalist unit, and your unit is high enough ranked on that leaderboard that you could get into the top 100 merc units, then itd be more beneficial for you to go merc, and thats when you break faction loyalty and continue fight, instead of for your faction as youve been doing from the get go. and if something happens, half your unit leaves and your rankings drop, you can go loyalist again to get those rewards while you rebuild and grow into a powerhouse unit again.
plus itd give people kind of a goal, and an overarching kind of career, in addidtion to fixing merc based imbalance.
Edited by naterist, 17 December 2016 - 04:51 AM.


















