Question regarding Mercenary difficulty

[Jan]

I played the game first on release and even completed many missions on mercenary difficulty. Recently I've started returning to it and I've noticed something odd regarding it.
Mission 1 is clearly harder, mission 2 is basically impossible, mission 4 is simply ridiculous (in the best way possible).
But after that it seems to calm down. In fact, the other missions don't feel any harder than their hard difficulty versions. Sure, frost uses missiles and Crimson found some cultmembers, but aside from that I failed to spot any changes.

Is this normal or did I bug my game through accessing the mercenary missions out of order via the free mission select?

[Kappatalism]

That's just the game so far. You experience the majority of the remixing by mission 4. I think operation blackout is unchanged. Clear skies just has double the intercept team as I recall.

The dev has stated an overhauled mercenary campaign is something he intends to implement, but it's been over 2 years now since anything on PC has been updated.

[SideZeo]

What the above guy said and I also think Merc Mode mainly changes the behaviour of enemies, especially enemy fighters; When I played through Merc Mode, there were basically ALWAYS missiles flying towards my tail, with the enemies constantly trying to take me down... the three fights against Crimson Squadron IMO showed it off the best as to how much more aggressive they are on Merc

[Jan]

Thank you for the replies.
After researching a bit myself, it seems that only mission 1 to 9 (as well as the final boss) have been changed. The major changes happen during missions 2,3,4 as well as the final boss. Missions 1,5,6,7,8 and 9 also feature changes, like additional high level fighter or air ship spawns, but they are far less overkill than the previously mentioned ones.
Finally, missions 10 to 20, remain completely unchanged.

I can't confirm any change in enemy AI. However I have seen enemy fighters using flares during mission 2. I'm unsure if this is a constant feature during mercenary mode (as I rarely saw my enemy after firing at them due to my playstyle, aka speed demon) or if it's an ability of that specific enemy fighter/ace.

[GhostHawk196]

Mercenary difficulty is impossible, even the first mission

[King Fossil]

Originally posted by GhostHawk196:

Mercenary difficulty is impossible, even the first mission

Well, it is designed to be over the top hard. It's still not impossible though. Guess you have to either switch to a better plane or get better yourself. Or do both of those options.

[Jan]

Originally posted by GhostHawk196:

Mercenary difficulty is impossible, even the first mission

Get the PW, aka the plane the final boss was flying.
With this, the missions are an absolute breeze.

[Karl]

Originally posted by GhostHawk196:

Mercenary difficulty is impossible, even the first mission

It's actually very easy with the PW, but outside that it's not impossible either. Just be sure to get yourself a good plane and be a bit cautious with how you approach things. Good use of the limiter and lots of dodging of missiles is to be expected.

Where you're flying and positioning yourself becomes a lot more important with mercenary difficulty, you don't want to be somewhere where all the special defenses can open up on you. You also want to target the things most dangerous, mercenary difficulty puts in more railguns, advanced sams and etc that you don't want to be there constantly firing at you.