Fair usage?

[polarnomad]

So, I was thinking that our mercenary troops are rarely likely to come back to us. I mean, if someone has a choice to suicide attack a city (in order to weaken it) with their troops or ours, they are obviously going to use ours. So, are we going to include some returned troop rebate clause? How do we deal with this?

[UnOrthOdOx]

Good idea.

This is why we need new blood.

We'll have to work that into rental costs somehow.

[polarnomad]

Hehe... Glad I can be of help.

[Kloreep]

Good point.

Either we need to drive up the rental price with a rebate for surviving units, or we need to be paid for units destroyed.

I'm thinking the former plays better in people's minds. It also prevents us from nagging teams with little invoices for destroyed units; instead we just worry about the one large fee and then see to the rebates ourselves at the end.

[polarnomad]

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
Maintaining control is my preference. Too much opportunity for abuse gifting.

That's why I'm suggesting 2 costs:

1, our control, tell us how to move it for 10 turns.
2, it's yours forever.

I pulled this quote out of the unit cost thread, since I feel like my next question is more about fair usage than actual cost.

So, we maintain control of the unit to avoid abuse... This I take to mean that if someone is sending one of our units into a situation that implies certain death we have the opportunity to object. If this is the case then do we have some sort of clause about fair usage that we can make public, so that other teams can expect a certain amount of independence from their hired mercs?

Or what are your thoughts?

Do we predefine a certain success rate percentage that should be met in any combat situation, beyond which the mercs refuse to fight? ie: below 60% success rate: mercs throw down their weapons and chew on some c-rations whilst enjoying the sunset, above 60%: mercs bust out the warpaint.

[Kloreep]

I think we'd pretty much have to roll with using the unit to suicide. It's hard to set a reasonable limit to what situations units can be thrown into, and I think we have to acknowledge that bombard units, if nothing else, will often be used in low-success combat; that's what the catapult-cannon-artillery line is for.

If anything is subject to our own judgement, people don't know how much they're getting when they hire us. Hence my liking your idea about rebates for keeping units alive. It's a way to help keep people away from using our units for that, at least not too much, while not telling them explicitly what to do.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Originally posted by polarnomad
So, we maintain control of the unit to avoid abuse... This I take to mean that if someone is sending one of our units into a situation that implies certain death we have the opportunity to object. If this is the case then do we have some sort of clause about fair usage that we can make public, so that other teams can expect a certain amount of independence from their hired mercs?

Or what are your thoughts?

No, it means we gift a unit, how do we get it back? Especially on time. It's a messy situation, gifting.

[polarnomad]

Originally posted by UnOrthOdOx
No, it means we gift a unit, how do we get it back? Especially on time. It's a messy situation, gifting.

Now I'm confused. I understood that you didn't like the gifting idea. In part you quoted from me I was talking about maintaining control. By sending our unit into combat, I meant they would give us the directions for movement, and we would then do as they ask, unless it would mean certain death.

In any case, gifting with a return clause or maintaining control, the decision should be made so we can decide prices.

[polarnomad]

Are you perhaps thinking of maintaining control of units, but also using a returned safely from conflict rebate clause?

I can see how gifting will become problematic when the civ that is trying to return our units is far from our lands. Pain in the butt really. That's why we would need embassy cities adjacent to all civs... Just kidding!

[Octavian X]

If we go just turn control of units over to another team, we could apply an additional deposit fee on the rentals. When the unit is first 'rented,' the hiring team pays rental price plus deposit. If we get our units back on time, and with relatively little damage, the team gets the deposit money back (or some portion of such, again depending on the unit's condition).

[troglodyte]

This has been intriguing me while I have been awaiting authorisation.

My understanding is that we are providing the unit (i.e. control and all) to someone for a certain amount of turns. This implies an easy calculation (gifting unit to target for whatever gpt or an outright payment). This is calculable by both us and them, and their competitors, as is the number of turns.

I don't think that once we've provided the unit we are going to be allowed much say in how it is being used - and neither would we want it, since that may imply at least some (even moral) responsibility for the decisions of the hiring team/client, and I don't see how we can square that with our philosophy. A sensible hiring team will also probably not allow us a veto over whether to attack if the odds don't suit us.

I have never played anything like this before so forgive the naive points: If we retain control of the unit and operate it on behalf of our client (now not to mention the unit upkeep cost), if we have open borders with a team (and this is our best situation for both trade, tech and our "special" relations) how are we going to use the unit in combat against that team for someone else. I don't think the game mechanics make provision for that kind of thing. We cannot, by our philosophy, declare war against anyone so how will that work?

Mercs are expendable. I would strongly suspect that we are not going to be getting most units back if the hiring team has been in the wars. Our Mercs will be suicided against defences, if not just because some of the players in the other teams continue to have reservations about us.

I also have a few other points that require some thinking about, or perhaps experienced team members could clue me in?

We give them soldiers, they give us money. Do they give it gpt or full payment outright? Both have problems. If they run out of gpt during the rental contract based on gpt, how do we get the moolah? We can't take them to court and we can't say we won't play with you anymore as we just lose part of the client base. We could sanction them by escalating our costs second time around, I guess? By our philosophy we can't invade them to get our units back, and taking a city to enforce payment of the contract and arrears also seems a lot of trouble just to gift it back to them - and they may also be very displeased, as will their friends be. If they just buy the unit outright from us, we are just McMercenaries - although then we wouldn't care if the unit came back or not.

The idea of a deposit is pretty good, but that will mean some pretty good off-the-game bookkeeping to ensure we have enough of the cash to pay back the deposit. That sounds like fun! Who volunteers? I guess we could do it like this: This means that we may have to arrive at, say, a Maceman to X for 25 gpt for 10 turns, with 5gpt to be returned to X for 5 turns when unit is received back. It could work, and would mean we don't draw down the cash reserves erratically (especially if we are trying to fill other orders).

I've also been wondering, as technology is going to be moving on as we go through the turns, is it financially viable to upgrade that rented unit (if we get it back). Maybe that's another argument for selling outright, as upgrades appear to cost a great deal compared to the production cost of a better unit (eg. from Warrior to Axeman).

Random thoughts:
1) We are going to have the ability to tailor units to customer specifications, I think. If someone wants a strength 1, woodsman 1 they get it.

2) Also just for good advertising, we should also consider putting a "Merc" in the front of each of our units (i.e. renaming to Merc Warrior, Merc Bomber)!!

3) We also need to make some kind of decision on the state of our own military. How much will we keep? Do we say more than the top two competitors, and can we afford to do this? I am just nervous of a situation (and bearing in mind that some players on some teams don't like our approach, and may wish us harm) where some teams club together to eliminate us after hiring a great deal of our "army" between them (and using our marvellously upgraded units against us).

4) We are pledge to show restraint. From the point above, if someone attacks us, what are our defence plans. Will we just hang around our borders and defend (allowing the strategic initiative to our attackers) or shall we make it clear that if you attack us, we will pillage your country into the stone age, or that if you attack us we are estopped from our self-imposed rules of not attacking for gain and will take a city to punish you. This violates philosophy, but will others respect our self-imposed restraint (I wouldn't necessarily in SP), especially if some players don't like this idea anyway.

==trogs