We got a bureaucratic nightmare of a federation navy, kamakazing space-insurgents, warcrime-loving pirates, and uninvolved civilian stations. The only thing we’re missing is morally ambiguous, greedy space-mercs.
This suggestion is split up into two parts: Gray TSC ships and stations.
Ships
Gray TSC ships are typically found supporting both syndicate and NT fleets alike. The vessels themselves are long, sleek, painted in grays and blues. If one manages to board a TSC ship, they’d find a great deal of technology, funds, and a skeleton crew of lightly armed, squishy humans and IPCs reinforced with a swath of cyborgs and ED-209 security bots. The notable distinctions of TSC frigate interiors are a massive hanger that entirely bisects the bow and stern of the ship. The bow is filled with a small bridge and large weapons bays while the stern has engineering, robotics, and large cargo hold.
TSC ships are equipped with a mismatch of scavenged syndicate and SolGov technology along with whatever weaponry they could get on the open market. While their frigates are well-equipped, they lack in manpower. Their unique swarms of scantily armored, unreliable automated fighters are easy to dispatch. While the TSC ships utilize borders more liberally, their cheap and mass-produced security drones are much easier to dispatch compared to syndicate droptroops.
While loyal syndicate crews fight to the death, contractors actually value their lives. Simply damaging their armor or hull to a substantial degree will make TSC ships flee and FTL away. This damage number isn’t persistent, TSC ships can cower at any number from 15% integrity to 60%.
Stations
Gray TSC stations offer recruitable support ships, crew reinforcements, and miscellaneous weapons.
- Support ships, after purchase for about 90k, will follow the player ship on the overmap, spewing cheap fighters, torpedos, and lasers, at enemies, including enemy-aligned TSC ships. In accordance with TSC ships in syndicate employ, if your pet frigate takes too much damage, it’ll FTL away from combat, requiring you to go and buy another TSC ship to follow you.
- Purchasing a crew reinforcement package, costing a cheap 60k credits provides the ship with up to five crew, a mixed bag of IPCs with mismatched parts, or humans with a mix of random cyborg and prosthetic limbs. These crew will be offered up to ghosts, with 5k being refunded for each un-available crew or a full refund if none of the roles are taken. (30k refund if one crew, 5k refund if 4 crew.)
- Purchasing a shipment of miscellaneous weapons for 85k credits provides 3 crates of random weapons and ammo, anything from mosin nagants, sawn-off double barrels, and makeshift shotguns to syndicate machine guns, retro laser guns, and rare NT ERT equipment.
*Matching ammo not guaranteed
*Gray’s Technosecurity Contractors take no responsibility if merchandise is involved in ongoing murder investigations.
tldr purchasable respawns, different enemy ships and purchasable follower ships