@chrystales: "maybe have some mega fat ship but poorly armored"
There are the flagships which are kinda exactly this, these are larger and (usually) poorly armored since they are based on captured civilian ships.

Also yes I added some of the staryer ships as enemies for you to fight with minimal changes, these have a fairly low spawn chance and are of beginner cosmoteers who lost their first fights and had their starter ships confiscated by the merchant raiders. It is kinda an easter egg :P

Idk, what if the campaign just felt a bit more like dropping into some Cosmoteer MMO where the starting areas are filled with captains who have no idea what they were doing, and advancing deeper you start seeing better designs? Basically just look at the ships from Rimmy's Cosmoteer video, and it's just a whole faction of that of varying scales and sizes.

Finally a proper pirate-like faction! I've always thought that it's a bit off that you normally only fight purpose, disposable combat ships specifically meant for 1v1s, and you never really see a less efficient, multi-purpose ship that most human players would be rocking.

Going a step further, I dream about a faction mod that introduces intentionally bad designs, something you'd see from new players in their first three hours of the game. Imagine being in the second system, and running into a ship that clearly just the Model-L but with a million lasers lazily slapped onto it (I may have not done this when I first started), and it runs out of steam in the first 5 seconds of the fight. Ships like that would be a fun encounter and break from all the competent designs, and help newbies quickly learn about what not to do. Hell, maybe have some mega fat ship but poorly armored, and it teaches flanking and going for very obvious weak spots.

@gigglinggoatgardens: I removed your duplicate report in the MR addon mod since it was identical to the one you put in here.

@gigglinggoatgardens: I was ingame today and didn't receive this error.
Also this mod has had this ship since its initial release, which was in 2023, so another mod youre using has probably recently added a ship with a duplicate name. You're gonna gave to trace the mod that added the duplicate name because this mods Laborer is the original.

mod: error Duplicate built-in ship ID 'Laborer'
I traced it back to the Expanded or the regular mod

Patch notes 1.1.8b is a bugfix


- Minor improvements to the mission descriptions.

I had re-uploaded the previous hotfix version by mistake (because I mistakingly thought I hadn't done so already due to me not having backed up the 1.1.8 version), which did include the improvements to the mission descriptions, so I did a second upload today with a proper version number.

Make sure you have version 1.1.8b.

Version 1.1.8a is a hotfix:

- Fixed Imminent Danger and Imminent Doom not getting their thrusters respplied properly (bugfix)


Thanks for reporting!

Version 1.1.8 changes the following:

- Added some of the more recently added civilian ships as captured ships for the merchant raiders.

@hupo.jh: Yes, it will crash your game, melt your pc and explode your continent so hard it will get you ejected from the solar system right into the nearest black hole :)

Will this crash the game like so many other career modifiers?

Version 1.1.7 changes the following:

- Added 11 more merchant raiders in total.

The newly added ships (mostly cabal) are based on ships that were updated/added to career mode a few patches ago. One merchant raider was added that is based on a ship that has been removed from the game a long while ago.

Version 1.1.6 changes the following:

- Added 4 more of the fighterbombers.
- Also added more of the other fighters, but not implemented yet.

The rest of the new content wasn't ready yet, but expect this mod (and a few of my other mods) to get more updates soon-ish.

Along with adding more fighters in one of the coming patches, I revisited all existing fighters along with doing basic further bugfixing for the carriers that were added in the previous patch.
The new fighters are ready, but the missions to add them with are not and these will need testing before a release.

Version 1.1.5 changes the following:

- Made numerous fixes and tweaks to all existing fighters
- Made minor fixes to supercarriers Bad Request, Harms Way and Videtur Infinitus

The super carriers are larger and have a much more capable fighter screen with fighters that are larger, faster and hit harder (and often also more numerous).
Of course they are fighters after all so it's not a fleet of battleships you're facing. A definitive step-up from the previous 2 tiers of carriers I added a couple patches ago.

The supercarriers will be replacing the older carriers in the higher tier star systems, but the total number of merchant carriers per system has not been significantly changed.

I will later update the Merchant Raiders addon to feature the larger carriers as well.

Version 1.1.4 changes the following:

- Added the supercarriers
- Retiered the old carriers to make room for the new ones. The tier 11 carriers are now tier 9 and the tier 13 carriers will now be tier 11. The new carriers will have tiers 13 and 15.
- Updated all the old carriers as well.
- Updated supported tier versions.

Version 1.1.3 changes the following:

- Added 2 more pirate bases based on new trade stations that were added to the game in the last few patches
- Rebalanced the resources carried on all the tiny (the level 1 disabled transport ships that function as starter tier merchant raider base), small and medium pirate bases.
- Added 1 more fighter design
- Made miscellaneous fixes to the fighters

Version 1.1.2a fixes a couple potential bugs.

- Implemented bugfix for a potential bug, even though the bug didn't seem to be affecting this mod in any way, I think it's better to be safe than sorry. Also implemented a second potential bugfix that was suggested to me on discord.

No (other) gameplay changes were made.

The laser fighters are a type of heavy fighter with up to 4 light laser blasters. Sometimes fighters with disruptors will spawn instead.
I've reduced the spawn chance of the other fighter types to make room for this new type of fighter so overall the total amount of enemy fighters will overall be the same.

These laser fighters only start spawning from roughly tier 10 and up.

I've also reduced the spawn chance of the new carrier mission by around 25% since the carrier missions are now also added to the Merchant Raider Addon.

Version 1.1.2 focusses on adding a new type of fighter to the game.

- Added the laser fighters to the spawn pool of the merchant raider bases.
- Slight rebalance, now that the carrier missions are added to the addon, I've slightly reduced the spawn chance of the carrier missions.

(continued)
This new mission type will be fairly uncommon and will start spawning at around star system tier 11 or so. There will be 0, 1, 2 of these bounties, but the chance that 2 will spawn is pretty low and the chance of a total of 1 of them spawning is at roughly 50%.

I will be adding this mission type to the addon for this mod, for which the spawn chance will be a bit higher.

I wanted this ship type to be fairly uncommon in the base mod and a bit less uncommon for the people who want to use the addon for this mod. I may tweak the spawn ratios a bit more once I add this mission type to the addon of this mod.

So if you see this type of bounty, expect to be fighting maybe like 10 small fighters. There are 12 carrier designs added to Merchant Raiders now.

Version 1.1.1 adds a new mission type and ship type.

- Added merchant raider carriers along with a new mission type. The mission type is quite similar to the bounty for a single ship. The new ship type is the merchant raider carrier, a type of splitter ship that consists of one larger ship with many smaller fighter-sized ships attached using explosive structure.
Once you get into range, the fighters will detatch and fight on their own.
The main carriers will be poorly armed, their fighters are their main weapon.
Be sure to destroy the main carrier after it has launched its fighters or it may spawn even more fighters once you get into range again.

Version 1.1.0 supports Cosmoteer version 0.26.2. Previous versions of Cosmoteer will no longer work with this iteration of this mod (impossible to support both at the same time).

Some other changes under the hood, but don't exactly remember what.

Atm I'm working on several new mission types, but it may take a bit before these are all ready.
New ships have mostly been added to the mod already, but these won't spawn yet as the missions and balance aren't ready yet.

@STR4NGER_D4NGER: You need to visit an unvisited star system before the changes from this mod start to take effect.

If you want, you can do a save right before you do a hyperjump to a new star system with this mod active, but it's not required.

If I add this "mid-game" will the next galaxy spawn a ship or will a new save be required?

The grand flagships will only appear in the highest tier star systems and will be fairly uncommon. They will later be added to the addon as well where its spawn chance will be somewhat higher (and earlier) for the larger main merchant raider base.
Laster fighters I added now since the planes are ready, but I want to do some more testing to determine how strong they exactly are, but adding the planes themselves now makes me able to add them to the addon faster (it just saves me some time later).

There will also be a new mission type soon (it includes another new type of merchant raider), but still working on those.

patch notes 1.0.11

- Added the grand flagships.
- Also added laser fighters, but not implemented yet.
- Some grammar errors have been fixed (thx for reporting).

Version 1.0.10 is a minor update.

Minor tweaks done to a few of the ships and adding lore to some of the ships that still had it missing for whatever reason.

Version 1.0.9 is a fairly big update and adds the following:

- Added a new mission type (split across 3 basic sub-missions). Added accompanying new ships used for the new mission types.
- Added one new flagship.
- Lowered the tiers of some of the types of fighters (has no effect on gameplay).
- Added some ships for future use.

The new mission type is to destroy a spy platform (low tier systems), a listening post (mid tier systems) or a radar base (higher tier systems).
These smaller bases spy and collect data on civilian shipping and their movement and help coordinate attacks on them and therefore must me destroyed.

These missions sit somewhere between the single ship merchant raider ship missions and the merchant raider base missions in difficulty.
It will be (lightly) guarded by raiders and fighters which will increase in size and numbers as the star system tiers increase.

Version 1.0.8 is a minor update:

- Added one new flagship.

It's not much of an update, but I had this ship ready for a few weeks now and the rest of the planned new content isn't ready yet.

Version 1.0.7 adds the following:

- Added more new variants of the standard merchant raiders (especially the lower tier ones). These ships should start appearing in the Merchant Raiders Expanded addon as well.

- Rebalanced the drops of some of the lower level merchant raider bases as some of their drops were excessive for their tier. The tier 1 stations and the mid and higher tier stations have not had anything changed to them.

Version 1.0.6 adds the following:

- Added the fighterbombers.
- Added 2 more of the small defensive stations.

The 2 more defensive stations will start appearing in the Merchant Raiders Expanded mod as well and will add to the variety of smaller defensive extra bases that help defend the main base (total number is not changed).
The fighterbombers are a bit larger than advanced fighters and carry weapons that are appropriate to the factions these designs were stolen from by the merchant raiders (missiles, cannons, lasers or nukes in stead of the PD the usual fighters have).
They have a chance to appear at mid-tiers in very small numbers and a higher number may appear in higher end systems.

Version 1.0.5a attempts to fix a crash caused by one of the new ship (cassiopeia) which by sheer coinsidence happens to have an idenical name as one of the ships in this mod, so I had to rename it.
If you're getting a crash which mentions this ships name, please update to the 1.0.5a version of this mod.

If this version also crashes, please let me know.

Originally I wanted to add 8 new flagships (2 for each faction), but the 2 new flagships I made designed around Cabal ships I found both better fitting in tier 12 (they are I think both a bit on the small side to be mated to tier 14), so I made a 3rd to fit in tier 14 (tier 12 and 14 are the 2 main tiers right now in which I fitted the flagships).

I had originally wanted to include a new class of fighters, but when I was about to upload, I noticed I hadn't actually included them, so I'm going to add them to the next patch which gives me more time to refine them a bit better.

I'm probably going to keep making new flagships, but probably not as many as before as I think there's a good amount of them in the game right now (but there will be more of them for sure).
There will also be more of the other ships, but progress is slower atm as I'm still taking something of a break from Cosmoteer and doing all the modding in between for little bits.

patch notes 1.0.5 which is a reasonably big update.

- Added 9 more pirate flagships. Total pirate flagships is now 25.
- Added 4 new Defense Points so all factions now have about an equal number of different designs.

- Made edits to some of the old Defense Points, Flagships and some other ships (very minimal).
- Moved 1 of the old pirate flagships (Pyrrus Troglodytum) down from tier 14 to tier 12 to make room for the new (tier 14) pirate flagships. The tier has no influence on actual gameplay except that the tier 12 ones will spawn a bit earlier, so I sorted the bit more bigger and strong ones a bit higher to make them appear a little bit later in the game.
- Did miscellaneous other tweaks to some of the older ships in this mod.

Sounds like you're covering 2 different things players might be looking for in mods, all the better!

In a way, the merchant raiders and the upgraded enemy fleets are polar opposites of each other, with the upgraded enemy ships being much tougher to fight against vs the merchant raiders being relatively squishy (with the bases going for numbers instead of for quality) and having their own kind of diversity.

@Dj0z: Yes, I ended up liking this mod more than I previously thought. It was also a lot of fun to make because of the somewhat more wacky design choices I could make while trying to stay lore-correct, so to say.

I'm also waiting for career 2.0, but I really do hope it won't cause me too much work fixing existing mods.

Always down for extra content for career mode, this sounds interesting
I can't wait to see what it becomes once the base game adds more modding support for stuff like story events. Should be right around the corner with Career 2.0 incoming.

I've updated ETTM today. It features updated Hyperium Powered Fighter Cockpits which have a tiny (and invisible) thrust forward, left and right.
Since the merchant raider fighters in this mod use this cockpit, this should aid in making fighters (that have thrusters pointing only backwards) that run into an object, unstuck themselves and should make the merchant raider fighters a bit more agile.

Some of the earliest merchant raider designs had a ridiculously high amount of valuable cargo and some had no carge at all. This is now better balanced with the stations and the flagships holding most of the precious loot. Merchant raiders will still drop valuable cargo though and the addition of pirate lootboxes will offset some of these changes.

The Pirate Lootboxes are similar to storage pods and come in 4 variants and can sometimes be found in the same area where a merchant raider is present.
Once you get close enough, a new icon will appear making it a bit easier to find. However, I';d advice you to put a map marker at that location as when you visually spot it, the marker will disappear (similar to how the ? marker will often disappear from certain asteroids).

I tried to make these storage pods a bit easier to find (don't we all love the storage pods that we can't find anymore?) and the additional map icon will be helpful for this purpose.

patch notes for 1.0.4, which is a fairly big update.

- Added more merchant raider variants to make the enemies encountered more diverse.
- Rebalanced the cargo dropped by some of the older merchant raider designs.
- Added the small, med, large and huge Pirate Lootboxes which are essentially the pirate versions of the storage pod and hold stolen cargo that is intended to later be transported to the main merchant raider base.
- Fixed a bug with the heavy fighters not firing.
- Added more fighter variants for future use.

patch notes for 1.0.3

- Added 8 more pirate flagships. Total is now 16.
- Tweaked the pre-existing pirate flagships (mostly minute changes and a bit more lore).
- Tweaked the spawning of pirate flagships so they will start appearing at level 12 with a 60% spawn chance (a little bit earlier) and the spawn chance and number of flagships will overall gradually increase as the level goes up.
- Changed the level of the defense stations (the smaller bases that, in higher levels, guard the main pirate base). This has no effect on gameplay.

Patch notes for 1.0.2

- Added the heavy fighters.
- Added a pirated version of the new trade base the most recent Cosmoteer patch added.
- Updated flagship Beyond All Reason.

Version 1.0.1 is now released and is a minor patch which adds 5 more models of pirate defense points (basically larger variants of defense platforms). Slight alterations to the 5 pre-existing defense points.

Hahaha I just realized that you are the creator of Extended Tech Tree Mod...boy am I on fire today. All your mods kick ass man thanks!

Thank you for your feedback and I hope you enjoy :)

Dude sweet! Awesome write up describing the mod and its backstory and all that. I really enjoy this level of detail going into stuff like this, really makes the universe feel much more alive after you read some backstory on what you are fighting. Good choice too making it compatible with all the Extended Tech Tree mods, certainly been my go to mods for recent runs. Looking forward to checking this out, thanks man!

@SHINZOU: It shouldn't require a new save, but the changes will only take effect in star systems you haven't visited yet.
I've playtested using new started games but also with my own old save which is like more than half a year old now and it worked perfectly.