Why Mercenaries so weak and expensive?

[Crystal meth enthusiast]

I'm trying hard to play on "Hard". But for some reason Mercenaries dies fast as militia even in buildings.
Why they so expensive and a top tier for it's faction when they so close in performance to Founder's infantry? They must have perks at least.

[jbwjr]

Originally posted by Crystal meth enthusiast:

I'm trying hard to play on "Hard". But for some reason Mercenaries dies fast as militia even in buildings.
Why they so expensive and a top tier for it's faction when they so close in performance to Founder's infantry? They must have perks at least.

Mercs are good in the sense each one of them carries some kind of special weapon (rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, AT launcher, ectera). BUT they don't gain XP far as im aware, so they don't even have any perks.

[Nelson]

Slot efficiency, more than anything.

They are a decent unit but still infantry. They die to the same things that kill militia.

Where they shine is as part of the advance force in many missions. They can do everything to some extent, be it fighting armour or infantry while always only taking one slot and can even drive their own transport. Movement troops would need 3 units to cover the same niches, founders 2.

They don't get XP and you tend to get enough goodwill credits in my experience. So they also have a niche as expendables - less time you need to pay their upkeep too.

[Goel]

They are like founders infantry in the sense that they have RPGs and 3 blips of health (according to encyclopedia), but they are also like founder rangers with high hiding and Close Quarter Combat (CQC) abilities.
Like rangers, they can also land via ropes from the helicopter and drive cars, it also seems that they innately carry anti infantry rockets, that you would normally have to grab the "rocketman" perk to unlock.

What I find annoying is that if more than 1 unit dies. they start losing equipment, because there isn't enough of them to carry it all.

If you REALLY want to make them less expensive / give them perks. then someone already provided an answer on how to mod this in, in another thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1839950/discussions/0/7179373376272984773/

[FissileUngulate]

They're so absurdly expensive in supply especially relative to their effectiveness that I tend to just hire them momentarily to steal equipment from their squad.

I think the primary problem with mercs is honestly all of the specialized weapons. The right model is never in the right position in a building, and each individual weapon struggles on it's own to make enough effective fire to do anything.

High utility, low DPS.

[You're My Goddamn hero]

Originally posted by jbwjr:

Originally posted by Crystal meth enthusiast:

I'm trying hard to play on "Hard". But for some reason Mercenaries dies fast as militia even in buildings.
Why they so expensive and a top tier for it's faction when they so close in performance to Founder's infantry? They must have perks at least.

Mercs are good in the sense each one of them carries some kind of special weapon (rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, AT launcher, ectera). BUT they don't gain XP far as im aware, so they don't even have any perks.

Yeah, that's the tradeoff. The mercs don't get XP.

[Crystal meth enthusiast]

Originally posted by You're My ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hero:

Originally posted by jbwjr:

Mercs are good in the sense each one of them carries some kind of special weapon (rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, AT launcher, ectera). BUT they don't gain XP far as im aware, so they don't even have any perks.

Yeah, that's the tradeoff. The mercs don't get XP.

One dude told they get stat buff with lvl just like all units, but they have no perks.

[REhorror]

Starting to think Movement infantries are the best due to how specialized they are, and of course, the numbers help.

[RPS 12324]

They actually do gain XP and can level up and gain the level up bonus (more HP, better accuracy, more damage). However they do not gain perks. For the most part they are both Infantry and Rangers in one, but they cannot replace Rangers because they cannot gain those Rangers specific perks like EMP and C4.