recalling mercenary fleet, only ending up with like a 2 ship fleet

[adamfrye]

whenever i recall one of my 2 mercenary enclaves, the fleet i pay like full price for, and end up with, has like 1 destroyer in it, and is completely useless, when i return it, its also immediately rented away as well... i've NEVER been able to rent a neutral mercenary fleet, as they are ALWAYS booked, and mine are also always booked, so recalling them, is useless, and i can never get a mercenary fleet.

this happening to anyone else?

[Midas]

It seems they only build fleets at home or via events.

[nikoliy]

My subject seems to be fond of booking my mercs. Also I keep getting fleets that appear to be escaping battles. Three fleets so far of one battleships and two corvettes. I dont see them fighting... wish we had more detailed interface for mercs.

[Oakshadow]

I haven't had a lot of trouble hiring my own mercenaries. But that said, you don't actually want to be using your own mercenaries.

The benefit of mercenaries is their dividends. The more they're used (successfully) the higher the dividend will be when it comes in. And those dividends are pretty big.

1000-6000 energy
2000-10000 minerals or food.
2000-4000 research of each type

With lord of war those pay outs come rather frequently. The request for a recall is there mostly to ensure that another empire can't use them against you.... or so that you can pull the rug out from under a rival empire that thought they could use your mercs to win a conflict.

Considering the rep hit and cost to recall their fleet its not something you should be doing just to hire them yourself. Besides why would you want to?

Their tech level is going to be roughly the same as yours. Even upgraded. They use your fleet capacity as well as require upkeep while hired too. And on top of that you're paying them upfront to use them.

The only benefits to a mercenary fleet is that they auto reinforce their fleet and the expenditure is in energy rather than alloys. But by the time you're founding mercenary enclaves your alloy production is probably good enough to maintain a fleet over capacity anyways.

guess what I'm saying is that unless it's an emergency Mercenaries are more valuable as someone else's hire rather than as something to use for yourself.