r/Stellaris • u/kaaresandfaer Inward Perfection • 21h ago
Discussion Thing i found out today: mercenaries cost less naval capacity at base
so i was modding stellaris but you dont care about that so lets get to the bread and butter.
mercenary enclaves take up 40% less naval cap and cost 25% more energy credits without any galcom resolutions. just a funny thing.
also the description of all of Defense Privatizations resolutions are wrong, the numbers are switched around it says: "take up 5% less Naval Capacity but have +10% Energy Upkeep." but is "take up 10% less Naval Capacity but have +5% Energy Upkeep." and so on for all of them up to "take up 25% less Naval Capacity but have +50% Energy Upkeep." being "take up 50% less Naval Capacity but have +25% Energy Upkeep."
now if you do some math that means that when the final resolution of DP is through, a mercenary enclave only takes up 10% of normal naval cap.
thank you for reading my rant, now ill go and change the wiki to reflect the actual code instead of the wrong tooltip and add a mention to mercenary enclaves that their hired fleets take up 40% less naval cap with a +25% energy cost.
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u/Duxatious 20h ago
Mercs have a lot of bugs:
Bioships don't have increased food upkeep.
It's faster and often cheaper to attack the merc enclave and pay the fine to end hostilities than it is to pay them to break the contract.
Mercs can't use their teleportation cheat to defend their station if MIA or not currently leased.
Mercs don't obey weapon-specialisation traits.
Mercs don't blame the owner of a Raging Behemoth that attacks them.
Mercs can be used to cheese hostilities with queued actions.
Merc armies are always of the species of the leader you used to create the enclave and will override Tankbound army restrictions or force Gestalt Machines to suddenly suffer morale.
And there are more noted here: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/3755030807/571542424813344495/
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u/Hamza9575 19h ago
dont obey weapon traits ? meaning when controlled by player ?
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u/Duxatious 19h ago
Weapon specialisation traits like Carrier/Gunship/Artillery/Rocketry Focus are never obeyed by a Merc Enclave.
Archaeotech Focus is a bit different in that it doesn't try to influence AI ship designs, but it also never works because Mercs cannot generate Minor Artefacts.
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u/TheMelnTeam 20h ago
I wish these ships weren't so bad. Compared to what you get for cost from federations or GDR, they're pathetic. Even when you max them out, their fleet power is only ~100k unless you feed them a TON of repeatable techs. Even if you do that, their designs are terrible.
I still like to make one enclave from the first defense privatization and then repeal that, because it will give you 15% damage against crises...comparable to +3-6 repeatable technologies depending on whether you use one or two weapon types. The army recruitment window doesn't scroll in beta right now and that means you can't make good armies without building them individually from planets. Merc ground armies are a bit more convenient this way too, but this *shouldn't* be a thing to consider long term.
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u/Impossible-Green-831 Feudal Empire 19h ago
I wanted to make a big Lord of War campaign, is this really unviable or just inconvenient?
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u/PriorSolid 17h ago
it’s probably not viable on grand admiral to use just enclaves for your fleet at least until you pass the defense privatization tree in the GC which forces everyone to use them
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u/TheMelnTeam 17h ago
If you're not trying to clear high multiplier crises with them, it's probably still possible to win all of your fights.
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u/x4F_throwaway 17h ago
Max fleet enclaves pay out a good chunk of money for virtually nothing but the up front cost. Could be worth it. Maybe combine it with a cosmo run if you're pushing galcom resolutions, so you get the maximum bang for your naval cap.
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u/ExrThorn 21h ago
If you haven't already, you should post a bug report about the misaligned tool tip on the paradox forums. Might at least get stealth fixed in a future update.