I approve of your goals.

The roles set in StaticShipBluePrintDefs mean nothing. Those were the first thing I tried modding. They have no effect other than changing the description in the bazaar. The tooltip shows the actual stats.  I modded the threat and value settings of the mercenary components so the calculation the game uses for all ship roles gives the desired results. I suppose I should change the non-functional fields to match the in-game effects to avoid confusion, but I forgot other people would be using the thing without having gone through the experiments that determined which description mattered and which didn't. Also at the time I didn't need to edit StaticShipBluePrintDefs for any in-game effect so it wasn't included in the mod. Now that it is in there for the colony mercenary changes I might as well fix the non-fnctional text-only role settings.

If you buy the ships you will see they have the role the tooltip says and not the bazaar description.

Also, Pewpewpewpew is in the readme. The first post is copied from the readme and Pewpewpewpew is there.

Feel free to drag in the stuff I pointed out here:

https://forums.galciv3.com/485237/page/1

https://forums.galciv3.com/485260/page/1

Mostly, that's minor tweaks to the special survey modules (Tier1MercenaryComponent01 through 03) they use, and adding a section for Sensor Power similar to the generic Sensor Module:

    <Stats>
      <EffectType>SensorPower</EffectType>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Ship</TargetType>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
      <Value>8</Value>
    </Stats>

And, of course, some resource, range, and other values tweaks.

If we get this right, Brad, just import it directly into the main game, because, frankly, the Mercenaries really need these fixes, as they're pretty much completely useless right now (or in a few cases, massively overpowered).

MercenaryComponentdefs does work. That's where I increased the threat or value settings of mercenary components. It's just the <Role> part of StaticShipBluePrintDefs that doesn't function. That's also why auto-generated ship designs sometimes have bad roles. The ShipBlueprintDefs file would set the roles of combat ship to something appropriate, but instead many smaller ships end up as support because one engine's value can surpass the threat of one weapon.

I didn't actually change the role of Pewpewpewpew. The StaticShipBluePrintDefs said it was an assault but it was functioning as a capital and I was fine with that.

Forgot to post updates here.

• Version 3.05

  • Made economy boosting ships much cheeper
  • Changed most threat/fortitude/value settings
  • Halved all mercenary fleet wide evasion bonuses

• Version 3.00

  • Updated for 3.00 and Intrigue expansion
  • The Path of Rhuin gets 80 range, shared by the fleet.
  • The Sabre has +50% beam range as stated instead of of +100%
  • The Retribution gives a 50% bonus to fleet beam range and beam accuracy instead of a flat 0.5 bonus.
  • Removed the prototype weapons from the tech tree so they're only available on mercenaries and government ships. Mercenaries advertising "powerful or "prototype" weapons get faster fire rate.

• Version 2.80b

  • Fixed some merc roles that where changed when I changed the values of some basic equipment. They should all be back to normal.

• Version 2.80a

  • Updated for 2.80
  • Increased durantium driver attack.

If you unzipped the mod into your My Game\GC3Crusade\Mods folder, you installed it in the correct place.  However, mods only become active when you start a new game.  That sounds like it might be what you missed.

See the wiki for reference, and let me know if there's anything there that is unclear, since I wrote that section and would like it to be helpful.

Re-readong the Wiki, I see that I may have skipped the step where I create a new folder. I currently just placed all of the files above directly into the C:\Users\nklei\Documents\My Games\GC3Crusade\Mods folder. Do I need to create a new folder to move the files into? Something like "iRedEarth Merc Mod?" And then within that new folder do I need to add a sub folder named "core" or "gameplay" or what not? I'm not sure what category of mod from the list in the "example mod" this mod would be. As it stands now, the files named in my original post are simplt "naked" in the above named file path. Thanks for your on going advice!

Just so I am clear, as a general rule we are supposed to create a new sub folder in the larger GC3Crusades/mod folder for each new mod? And under that new sub folder we create, we should create additional sub folders according to the categories in the example mod (core, game, etc.)? If so, how do we know which file from the mod goes in which sub folder? Thanks so much!