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[raledon]

Greeting Dwarves, (Dwarfees?) and small beer chuggers.
I was considering attempting my hand at introducing mercenaries into DF (fortress mod, mind you. I never connected with adventure mod).
(1)The general idea- mercenaries comes every now and then, offering their service.
(2)Upon hiring them, the mercenaries will act as an active squad, ordered via the military screen.
(3)Said mercenaries will require the usual dwarf requirements of lodgings, food, drinks and a barracks, as well as a supply of cash (=coins).
(4)Not paying them will result in usual unhappy thoughts, leading to tantrums and hysteria.
(5)Upon leaving they will spread reputation about you, increasing/lowering the likelyhood of mercenary bands visiting, and the amount of cash they will request. (A well paying, safe fortress is a much better workplace than a fortress that you lost half of your squad).

What I wonder is how feasible creating the mod is, since I don't know what can, and can't, be changed via a mod.
Thanks with the help, and may Armok look find your enemies especially savory.

[silverskull39]

can't be done.  modding in game behavior is very limited. most of the things you can do with modding are creating new things (items, creatures, materials, bodyparts, buildings, reactions, etc.), and changing the way things look to an extent, mostly through tilesets. The AI, etc. you'd need to do this is hardcoded.

[Darkgamma]

Not at all: we can't even get the dwarves to not bring their toddlers into the f*cking battlefield yet 

[TheCoolSideofthePIllow]

Not only can this not be done, half of what you want to do is actually already part of the game. At least in Adventure mode.

[raledon]

Not only can this not be done, half of what you want to do is actually already part of the game. At least in Adventure mode.

Which was part of the reason I hoped it will be possible.

Thanks for the help. Not very happy to hear it's the case, but better to reach it this way instead of wasting time attempting by myself .

[LordSlowpoke]

it can probably be dfhacked in, just like anything else, but you'd need a fair amount of mad skills

dfhack for 0.40 isn't done yet though

[raledon]

it can probably be dfhacked in, just like anything else, but you'd need a fair amount of mad skills

dfhack for 0.40 isn't done yet though

Does dfhack allows that kind if hardcode-level changes?

[silverskull39]

Not that I'm aware, but I'm not on the up and up on that. DFHack can do more than regular modding, to be sure, but I think this might still be beyond its scope.

[Ruludos]

There actually is a (n admittedly roundabout) way of doing this. The My Little Pony/Fallout crossover mod had slaves you could purchase from caravans, then 'reform' into working members of your fortress. In essence, you create a separate caste in your civilization's creature file named 'mercenary' that has a stupidly low pop_ratio (keep in mind that pop_ratio:0 defaults to pop_ratio:50). Make a wild creature named 'mercenary' that can be tamed and brought to your fortress by a civilization, and create an interaction that allows one of your civilians to transform the mercenary creature into the mercenary caste at will. Add a workshop and a reaction that gives this interaction to a civilian for a short period of time, place a purchased mercenary nearby, and the creature will turn into a functioning member of your fort. They will require clothes, food and drink, and other niceties that normal members will. Beyond the initial cost of the mercenary, however, they won't require money and will stay in your fortress until forcibly removed.

Note that this method comes with several bugs that might make it problematic for you; the most notable is that the new member of your fortress won't actually be recognized as such in several instances, most importantly the military. Once the mercenary performs an announcement-worthy action (such as creating a masterpiece), the game will realize that he exists and add him to the list of fortress members, allowing him to be in the military. More information can be found here, in the original mod.

[locustgate]

Not at all: we can't even get the dwarves to not bring their toddlers into the f*cking battlefield yet 

Exactly why I gave up on creating an amazon fort, 1/2 of my best dwarves had kids.