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Hiring & contracts

1.13 keeps the vanilla hiring structure — A.I.M. and M.E.R.C. on the laptop, an I.M.P. character of your own, recruits found in Arulco — but touches nearly every part of it: both rosters are much bigger and fully data-driven, mercs can be hired with a choice of gear kits, stat growth is now governed by per-merc growth modifiers, and a fourth "agency" exists: Kerberus, a private military contractor that sells you militia by the head. This page covers where fighters come from, how contracts work, and how your people develop and get along. For what all of this costs, see Money & economy.

All setting names and defaults below were verified against the current GitHub-era Data-1.13\Ja2_Options.INI and TableData XMLs; most hiring settings live in the [Recruitment Settings] section.

Where mercs come from

A.I.M.

The Association of International Mercenaries works as it always did — browse the site, video-call a merc, agree on a contract — but the roster has grown far beyond the vanilla 40: the current TableData\MercProfiles.xml marks over 70 profiles as A.I.M. members, including returning characters from earlier Jagged Alliance games. The site roster itself is externalized in TableData\AIMAvailability.xml, so mods can reshape it freely (see custom mercenaries).

The member page shows each merc's stats, their skill traits from the new traits system, a bio with additional info, and their fee for one-day, one-week and two-week contracts. When you hire through the video conference you pick the contract length and the equipment:

  • Gear kits. Instead of vanilla's single "buy equipment" checkbox, a merc can offer up to five named gear kits at different prices (the New Starting Gear Interface — kit contents live in MercStartingGear.xml, see starting gear modding). Hovering over the displayed items shows their item tooltips. Once a merc's kit has been bought it is normally gone on later re-hires; set GEARKITS_ALWAYS_AVAILABLE = TRUE to keep kits purchasable forever.
  • Medical deposit. Some mercs still demand the vanilla refundable medical deposit on top of their fee.

Merc availability is also configurable. In vanilla, part of the roster is always away "on assignment" for other clients and some of those mercs can die out there. 1.13 exposes both mechanics:

;Mercs can be on assignment?
; 0 = default behaviour, mercs are on assignment at start, mercs go on assignment during campaign
; 1 = all mercs available at the start of the game, during the campaign they will go on assignment
; 2 = all mercs at your disposal. nobody goes on any other assignment than yours
MERCS_CAN_BE_ON_ASSIGNMENT = 0

;Can AIM/MERC mercs die while away on other assignments?
MERCS_CAN_DIE_ON_ASSIGNMENT = TRUE

How many unhired mercs may die this way is capped per difficulty in TableData\DifficultySettings.xml (MaxMercDeaths): 2 on Novice, 4 on Experienced, 6 on Expert, 8 on Insane.

Two more [Recruitment Settings] toggles change who you meet: with MERCS_RANDOM_STATS (default 0 = off, modes 1–4) merc stats, and in mode 4 even traits and gear kits, are randomized each campaign; and MERCS_RANDOM_START_SALARY = TRUE (the default) varies every merc's starting salary by up to ±30% (MERCS_RANDOM_START_SALARY_PERCENTAGE_MAX_MODIFIER), so Ivan may be a bargain in one campaign and overpriced in the next.

M.E.R.C.

Speck's discount agency still bills you daily, in arrears: charges accumulate on your account page at the website and you settle them there. Keep the balance under control — once your outstanding debt passes MERC_BANKRUPT_WARNING ($5,000 by default) Speck starts complaining on the site (the INI notes this threshold is independent of whether M.E.R.C. actually goes under).

The site normally opens when Speck's introductory e-mail arrives, and new faces join the roster over time; two settings speed that up: MERC_WEBSITE_IMMEDIATELY_AVAILABLE sends the e-mail on day 1, MERC_WEBSITE_ALL_MERCS_AVAILABLE makes every M.E.R.C. merc hireable as soon as the site opens (both default FALSE). The roster itself is externalized in TableData\MercAvailability.xml and has grown from vanilla's ten-odd characters to over forty profiles, including the four Unfinished Business mercs (Gaston, Stogie, Tex, Biggins). Three additions are gated by their own settings:

Setting Default Effect
RECRUITABLE_SPECK TRUE Speck himself becomes hireable from his own website. While hired he no longer runs the site's comment desk, but comments from the field instead.
RECRUITABLE_JOHN_KULBA TRUE John Kulba (with his UB stats and voice set) appears on the site some time after you finish the "escort tourists" quest — RECRUITABLE_JOHN_KULBA_DELAY (14) days later.
RECRUITABLE_JA1_NATIVES TRUE The native guides from Jagged Alliance 1 appear on the M.E.R.C. website.

I.M.P.

Your own custom mercs, created at the I.M.P. website. Point-buy attributes, traits, disabilities and backgrounds are covered on the IMP page; the number of IMPs you can create is no longer an INI setting but simply the number of profiles marked <Type>6</Type> in MercProfiles.xml.

Locals and RPCs

Arulco itself is full of recruits — Ira, Dimitri, the rebels, and many more NPCs who join for free or for a daily wage. Who, where and how is on the recruitable NPCs walkthrough page (spoilers). One INI setting matters here: EARLY_REBELS_RECRUITMENT (default 3 = vanilla) controls how soon Miguel's rebels can be talked into joining, from "right after Omerta" (1) to "after the food delivery quest" (4). Related trivia: SLAY_STAYS_FOREVER = FALSE keeps the vanilla rule that Slay only sticks around temporarily — with a SLAY_HOURLY_CHANCE_TO_LEAVE of 15% whenever he's left alone in a sector.

Interrogated prisoners of war can also defect into your militia — see prisoners.

Kerberus: militia by mail order

The PMC feature ([PMC Settings], PMC = TRUE by default, in the game since 2014 — so it is also in the old r7609 builds) adds a third recruitment website. Some time after your first militia training session completes — the e-mail event fires one to six hours later — you receive "An exciting offer" from Stan Duke, chairman of Kerberus Inc., "a well known international private military contractor", and the Kerberus bookmark appears in the laptop browser.

On the Team Contracts page you buy regular and veteran security personnel who arrive as ordinary regular/elite militia — there is no separate soldier class, and once they land they behave exactly like militia you trained:

  • Stock is limited. Kerberus starts the campaign with a random stock of up to PMC_MAX_REGULARS (35) regulars and PMC_MAX_VETERANS (20) veterans, and replenishes toward those caps hourly (each hour: 50% chance of +1 regular, 30% chance of +1 veteran).
  • The price is steep but honest. The cost per head is derived from your militia INI settings: what four training sessions would cost you, divided over a training squad, plus a week of that militia tier's daily upkeep. With current defaults that is $440 per regular and $810 per veteran, paid up front (the finance log entry reads "Payment to Kerberus").
  • They need an entry point. You pick a drop-off sector from a list of sectors that you control, that are peaceful, and that contain a facility flagged as <pmcentrypoint> in TableData\Map\FacilityTypes.xml. The INI comment mentions airports, harbours and border posts, but in the stock data only the Small Airport facility carries the flag — found in Drassen B13 and Meduna N3 (see facilities). Mods can tag more facility types. If you control no valid sector, the site tells you: "You do not control any location through which we could insert troops!"
  • They arrive in about 24 hours. The quoted ETA is randomized a little (up to an hour early or two hours late). You get a message when your "reinforcements have arrived", and pending deployments are listed on the website.

The locals notice

Every Kerberus arrival lowers town loyalty everywhere: 0.1 loyalty points per regular and 0.15 per veteran hired. The population is wary of foreign guns with no ties to the country. Since militia mostly stay where you put them, also plan how you'll move them — see moving militia.

With the optional individual-militia system active (INDIVIDUAL_MILITIA), Kerberus hires get persistent named profiles of the "PMC mercenary" origin defined in TableData\MilitiaIndividual.xml — and the payment model changes: the down payment shrinks to a single day's wage, but PMC personnel then draw double the daily wages of locally trained militia ($40/regular, $60/veteran per day instead of $20/$30).

The site's third page, Individual Contracts, is a dead link — Flugente teased hiring individual Kerberus operatives back in 2015, but it was never implemented.

Contracts

A.I.M. contracts still come in the vanilla three flavors — one day, one week, two weeks — paid up front, each with its own rate. M.E.R.C. mercs and most recruited locals have no fixed term; they charge day by day until dismissed.

Managing contracts happens on the map screen: click a merc's contract time (or press C for the selected merc — see hotkeys) to open the contract menu with Offer One Day / Offer One Week / Offer Two Weeks / Dismiss. The game warns you with "Contracts Expiring Soon" and "Mercs Contract Expired" popups.

When a contract runs out (or you dismiss someone), the merc goes home. You choose whether they leave their equipment right where they are or drop it off at the airport on the way out — the gear then becomes available in the sector inventory of Omerta A9 or Drassen B13. The laptop's Personnel Manager keeps a record of everyone who left, and why: killed in action, dismissed, contract expired, quit, or — it can happen — married.

Renewal is where 1.13's economics bite: every experience level a merc gains raises their salary (default +25% per level, capped by INI keys), so the next extension is priced on who they've become, not who you hired — numbers and knobs on the economy page. Whether a merc wants to keep working for you is a separate question: unhappy mercs can refuse to extend or quit outright — see morale.

Life insurance from Malleus, Incus & Stapes (the vanilla laptop brokers) integrates with contract handling: when you extend an insured merc's contract the game asks whether to also pay the premium for the extra days, and it will block an extension you can afford if you can't afford the matching premium ("While you can pay for the contract, you don't have the bucks to cover this merc's life insurance premium."). Premiums, payouts and the projected-expenses window are covered under expenses on the economy page.

Growth & development

Mercs improve by using their skills, accumulating hidden "sub-points" per stat; the sub-point cost of each stat point is set in Ja2_Options.INI (25 for skills, 50 for attributes, 350 × current level for experience — the *_SUBPOINTS_TO_IMPROVE keys in [Tactical Difficulty Settings]).

Since August 2023 (GitHub-era builds only — no SVN build has this), the old per-profile Evolution tag is gone, replaced by growth modifiers:

MERCS_GROWTH_MODIFIERS_ENABLED = TRUE
MERCS_RANDOM_GROWTH_MODIFIERS = FALSE
MERCS_RANDOM_GROWTH_MODIFIERS_RANGE = 5

Every profile in MercProfiles.xml carries eleven <GrowthModifier{Stat}> tags (Life, Strength, Agility, Dexterity, Wisdom, Marksmanship, Mechanical, Explosive, Medical, Leadership, ExpLevel). The modifier is added to the sub-point cost of that stat: negative values mean faster growth, positive values slower. A merc can at best learn twice as fast as normal (the cost never drops below half the base). In the stock data almost everyone uses 0 (normal growth); the exceptions are the mercs who barely evolved under the old system — Pops, Len, Spike and a few others sit at 10000 in every stat (effectively frozen), Carp learns everything several times slower (150 across the board), and Wally's marksmanship alone is near-frozen (1000).

Set MERCS_RANDOM_GROWTH_MODIFIERS = TRUE and each campaign rolls every merc's modifiers randomly (bell-curve) around their XML values, within MERCS_RANDOM_GROWTH_MODIFIERS_RANGE — e.g. with the default range of 5, a merc whose GrowthModifierLife is −5 ends up somewhere between −10 and 0. You'll never know in advance whether this campaign's Barry is a fast learner.

A related 2023 addition, MAX_GROWTH_CHANCE_AT_80 / MAX_GROWTH_CHANCE_AT_90 (default 100 = disabled; recommended 5 and 1), slows stat gains past 80 and 90 so that naturally gifted mercs stay special instead of everyone converging on 99 marksmanship.

Remember the flip side of development: levels raise salaries at the next contract signing (economy), and the AI-controlled colleagues notice wage differences (below). To change how an individual merc grows, edit their GrowthModifier tags — see custom mercenaries.

Keeping mercs happy

Hiring is not just shopping — JA2's cast has relationships, and 1.13 deepens them:

  • Buddies and enemies. Each profile in MercProfiles.xml lists up to five buddies and five hated colleagues. Teaming haters up, or getting a buddy killed, has consequences for morale and for whether mercs stay — the details are on the morale page.
  • Dynamic opinions (DYNAMIC_OPINIONS = TRUE by default) let opinions evolve from what actually happens in your campaign, feeding hourly morale checks. One hiring-relevant wrinkle: mercs compare pay. If a colleague earns more than WAGE_ACCEPTANCE_FACTOR (1.5) times what their experience justifies relative to their own wage, they start resenting them. Overpaying one star can sour a squad.
  • MeLoDY. With dynamic opinions on, the laptop gains the "Mercs Love or Dislike You" website — analyze your team, compare mercs pairwise and review personalities before you sign someone who'll wreck the squad's chemistry.
  • Dynamic dialogue (DYNAMIC_DIALOGUE = FALSE by default) makes mercs voice those accusations and compliments to each other, with a chance for your IMP to interject.

Check before you hire

A cheap merc who makes two others miserable is not cheap. Cross-reference buddies/hated pairs (MeLoDY, or any merc guide) before filling the roster, and see starter tips for proven first-hire combinations.

Sources