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Mercenary Trader: Complete

Now Compatible with version 0.9.5

This is a large-scale economic rework mod. It contains numerous changes to the economy to allow the player more interesting and meaningful trade opportunities as the game progresses. I didn't achieve this entirely to my satisfaction, but elements of the goal are there.

Overall, you should find it more desirable to travel to specific locations for specific reasons, in particular faction headquarters now have a lot more going on. Includes all the changes from Mercenary Trader Light to mitigate unstoppable faction growth so you can travel without worrying about that TOO much.

Production of goods is more highly concentrated, so this does mean a Q-faction conquering a station can cause some drastic shifts in the economy, either by preventing manufacturing of a high-demand good, or by eliminating a major consumer of a good.

Faction HQs now play a much bigger role faction-specific goods manufacturing, and also in helping the factions gain power and tech, so there's many more reasons to travel and trade as the game progresses.

For a more technical list, check the change log. Here's the highlights:

Mission Economy:
- Mission durations increased between x1.5 and x2
- Factions change strategy based on power and ranking. They will burn more power to expand while ahead, and accumulate power while behind.
- Mission difficulty (skulls) start low, and increase as the game goes on depending on the victim faction's tech-level.
- Halved points allocated for floor loot on missions.
- doubled points allocated for mission rewards.

Station Economies:
- removed random non-economic trade items.
- removed random faction tech distribution from non-hq stations.
- removed (most) non-economic manufacturing from non-hq stations.
- each non-hq station generally produces one type of trade-good.
- reduced tech/power gain for most stations.

Faction HQs:
- Each faction now consumes a specific good to produce each level of their faction tech at their HQ.
- Based on their current strategy, each faction will consume specific goods at their HQ to increase power or technology.
- At tech 5 and above, factions will consume specific pact-skulls to greatly boost tech over a roughly 1-month research timeline. Q factions consume a different high-end good for a similar tech-boost.

Stock Market Window:
- Now displays stations that consume and produce goods regardless of active missions.

Tech:
- Increased tech required to reach levels 6-10.
- reduced tech required to reach levels 2, 3, and 4.

Magnum:
- Multiplied cooldown of Recycler and Monitoring abilities by 24 (essentially an x-hour cooldown is now an x-day cooldown).
- doubled crafting times of all items.

Because this mod contains some pretty extreme alterations to the economy, you will need to start a new save if you install or uninstall this mod. You can maintain multiple saves for different versions of the game, but you'll need to keep track of which one goes with which version. I can't guarantee compatibility with other economic mods, particularly ones that adjust the barter tables. Built for Version 0.9.0, so I can't guarantee compatibility with beta branches or future releases. The next update for this mod will likely be in September '25.

This mod is very heavy in terms of overall modifications, so if you're just looking to fix the mission economy, both Mercenary Trader: Light and Timesmoker's Faction Growth Control mod are good choices.

Github page with code and non-steam releases:
https://github.com/GatvinDev/MercenaryTrader/tree/v2.0.0