Version 1.1.3 adds support for the supercarriers that were added to Merchant Raiders in the most recent patch.

Version 1.1.2b implements a more proper fix for the issue that was fixed with the previous version (1.1.2a)
No gameplay changes were made.

Version 1.1.2a fixes a bug with the mod unintentionally decreasing the number of fugitive bounty missions.

Version 1.1.2 added the laser fighters to the higher tier merchant raider bases.

Version 1.1.1 added a new bounty mission type to destroy a merchant raider carrier.
The new mission will appear from around star system tier 11 and up and will be relatively uncommon (but most star systems will have several).

Version 1.1.0 will support Cosmoteer version 0.26.2 from now on. Previous versions will no longer work due to changes in how stuff is spawned (the new sectors that have been added to the game).
I may have made other changes under the hood, but for now making sure my mods work with the current version of Cosmoteer is my first priority.

Version 1.0.3 is a major update and adds the following:


- Added refactioned merchant raider ships to the merchant bases. These are captured and converted civilian ships repained to resemble another faction and will be fairly uncommon (roughly 1 every 3 merchant raider bases will have at least 1).
These will partially replace the splitter ships, so total amount of enemy ships will be roughly the same)
- Added spy base mission set similar to the ones from the base mod.
Depending on the tier of the current star system, you will be able to get a mission to destroy a spy platform, a listening post or a radar base.
These will be relatively lightly guarded compared to the merchant raider full bases and fill in a spot between a single raider and a full base in difficulty.

Fighterbombers are large fighter-like craft that are armed with heavier weaponry compared to fighters. They feature cannons, lasers, missiles or nukes (the designs were stolen from the main factions and the weapons the fighterbombers carry relate to the faction the design was stolen from).
For now they will guard the high tier merchant raider bases, but the minimum spawn level is a bit lower for the very large merchant raider base.

Premium fighters are quite rare and chances are you will barely see any. These are basically larger advanced fighters with extra storage with a small amount of silver or gold with the main purpose to speed towards a non-aligned ship and bribe them so they look the other way (or shoot&loot if the target is weak enough).

I'm probably gonna tweak the spawns of the fighters some more in the coming patches, but probably nothing too radical.

Version 1.0.2 is a minor update and adds the following:

- Added fighterbombers that help protect the merchant raider bases. These will guard the high tier stations for now (I may make more chances to the spawn levels of all fighter types later).
- Added premium fighters (relatively rare).

- Minor rebalance of the other fighter spawns to fit in the new fighterbombers.
- Some other small tweaks I may have forgotten about.

The main Merchant Raider mod has received an update today which features some new merchant raider ships, especially lower tier ones this time. These new variants will start appearing in this mod as well since it inherits the ships from the main Merchant Raider mod.

The main Merchant Raider mod has been updated today and includes (amongst other things) new flagships and new defense points. Since this addon uses the same spawner categories as the main mod, these new ships will start appearing when using this mod as well (once you enter a new star system).

thank you!

@sam.pool: Enjoy :)

Cool! Thanks for continuing to improve your mod set. This is great.

Version 1.0.1 is now released and adds the following:

- Added more varieties of fighters.
- Added pirate lootboxes to the outer patrol areas.

Some of the merchant raiders will use a temporary storage to store their loot in before taking it back to their main base.
Since there are overall fewer merchants to raid the farther out you go and their main base will tend to be closer to their partol area, the chance of a pirate lootbox being present will also be lower compared to patrol areas closer to the center of the star system.

I've also updated the main mod Extended Tech Tree Mod today which should make the fighters used by the merchant raiders a bit more maneuverable (and help prevent them from getting stuck on another ship).

I should add a mining laser then :)

@sam.pool: You don't need to shoot the pirate lootbox. It's not hostile towards the players, just mine it with a mining laser.

I suspect having to shoot them to access them means stuff gets damaged. I think it's funny.

@sam.pool: Sulfur isn't even supposed to be in the pirate lootboxes. The pirate lootboxes all have a couple exploding structures (the red-glowing bits) which can leave behind sulfur.
I added them because I thought it looked nice and to see if it would make them a bit more visible (it didn't really because they are so hard to see when zoomed out).

Only 1 uranium should also not be. The small ones have room for 4 stacks of resources and all should be filled with resources from a list I provided for it.
Maybe it got partially damaged and them moved or something.

One sulfur in a "small pirate lootbox" you brilliant bastard. (also one uranium ore)

@sam.pool: I've updated the main Merchant Raider base, which will also affect this addon.
The rebalance of the resources has been implemeneted. Feel free to let me know what you think of it.
A lot of new merchant raider designs have also been added, with the purpose of adding some more diversity (some designs are for instance mirrored along with having the usual merchant raider 'upgrades').

Within a week or so I'll be updating this addon as well (implementing the pirate lootboxes and the new fighters), which should further improve the experience.

@sam.pool: Thank you for your feedback and enjoy :)

Thanks, I'm already using base cluster action, but I'll add the fleet mod and see what disasters ensue :) Love your work!

@sam.pool: I almost forgot, I recently also made https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3078669621 , which is actually created because I was working on this mod and thought it would be a nice mod as a stand-alone using only base game ships. This mod does not give extra missions so no extra money for killing them.

It's also savegame compatible, you can enable and disable it at will (changes will only affect new star systems not ones these extra groups already spawned in).

Btw, I'm gonna update the Merchant Raider mod probably sometime early next week. it will rebalance the amount of drops from the merchant raider ships (some of the older designs had a ridiculously large amount of precious resources while some others had literally no cargo whatsoever).
The stations and the flagships will remain having the best loot, as it should imo.

Also I'm gonna be adding some more ships and stuff to make the enemy merchant raiders you encounter a bit more diverse.

@sam.pool: I don't think there are any, like, IF statements regarding the presense of certain files. If there were, us modders wouldn't need to make separate patches for other mods but could include all the edits to all existing mods regardless of whether you have them installed or not.

If you like fighting in target rich environments, I could suggest you have a look at SirCampalots Fleet Action Mod https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2898393505
Especially in the high levels AND combined with Upgraded Enemy Fleets sometimes my post-battle losses were so high I had to go back to a lower tier system to mine and fabricate new resources and recruit to replenish my losses.

The advantage of SirCampalots Fleet Action Mod is that you can enable and disable it at will, so if you had enough or don't end up liking the superlarge fleets (and superlarge mission rewards, just fyi), you can just disable it again.

To be clear, it's not an incompatibility with the other mod. I just wondered whether youmight detect the extra base defences mod or be affected by it, and that's why there are so many defenders around merchant bases. I'm happy either way, I like being in a "target rich environment" :)

part 2 because too long:
Yes, I'm probably gonna doing some rebalancing of the stocked resources some of the enemies contain, especially some of the earlier ships I made before I started working on the stations and the flagships.
Until then, well this mod was never really intended to be for the spartanistic diehards. That is what the mod Enemy Upgraded Fleets is for :P

Enjoy and have a good weekend :)

@sam.pool: Thank you for your feedback :)

I'm not too familiar with the Extra Base Defenses mod, but iirc it simply makes existing default stations have more defenses.
All the merchant raider bases use custom spawners, so mods like these should not affect the Merchant Raider bases, nor should this mod affect existing trade station defenses.
They should be completely separate, I'd be surprised if there were any incompatibilities.
The only potential incompatibility could be other mods that add custom content well outside the default asteroid belt and even then you should be safe to try and see how those mods work together.

The swarms of ships around merchant raider bases are supposed to be there. I've also tried to make them varied in that sometimes you'll find a bunch of extra fighters or heavier base defenses or more patrolling ships around them. So you never know what exactly you're gonna get until you visually spotted them.

Playing through with this mod and really liking it. I'm not sure if it combines with the "extra base defenses" mod or whether it naturally has swarms of ships round the merchant bases but it's awesome. And those little ships with nukes are so trivial one at a time but as part of a swarm.. ow!

The only criticism I have is that merchant ships probably give too many resources. It changes the game balance to "I can build whatever I want, I just need crew" and the combines with cheap nuclear powered thrusters to make insanely fast ships pretty easy to build. I finished the first system with all blueprints and ~1M credits...

@Lucibal: Nice. Yes, perhaps I should have left more time in between the 1.0.2 update and releasing this mod as people have had such issues before (it's on steam -not- updating the mod for youautomatically. which happens quite frequently alas and is totally out of my control).

Usually I'll wait for like 3 days minimum, preferably a week before I update an addon that requires the most recent update of its parent mod.

My apologies for the inconvenience and enjoy :)

yeah you were right. i had version 1.0.1 and reinstall of base mod have helped. Thanks =)

Oh wait a sec, have you updated Merchant Raiders before installing the addon?
You need at minimum version 1.0.2 as that's when I added the file your game seems to be missing and giving an error about.

Thanks for reporting. For some reason I never received a notification, nor has it crashed for me thus far.
I'll get on it.

part II

<D:\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\799600\3111437872\merchantraidersmeernog.rules>/Fringer" failed.
12/12/2023 08:41:57 | ---> System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
12/12/2023 08:41:57 | ---> Halfling.Serialization.DeserializeException: Deserialization from source "<D:\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\799600\3111437872\merchantraidersmeernog.rules>/Fringer/SubSpawners/0" failed.
12/12/2023 08:41:57 | ---> System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
12/12/2023 08:41:57 | ---> System.Collections.Generic.KeyNotFoundException: The given key 'SirCampalot.poi_dpmmerchantraider2' was not present in the dictionary.

crashed, except your mods ( extended tech set , action fleet swarmer, merch riders, megaroids, upgraded fleets) i use only shiphunter and optimal storage. here is output after crash:

12/12/2023 08:41:57 | Halfling.Serialization.DeserializeException: Deserialization from source "<D:\Steam\steamapps\common\Cosmoteer\Data\cosmoteer.rules>" failed.
12/12/2023 08:41:57 | ---> System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
12/12/2023 08:41:57 | ---> Halfling.Serialization.DeserializeException: Deserialization from source "<D:\Steam\steamapps\common\Cosmoteer\Data\modes\career\career.rules>" failed.
12/12/2023 08:41:57 | ---> System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
12/12/2023 08:41:57 | ---> Halfling.Serialization.DeserializeException: Deserialization from source "