Henchmen

If you go to Gangland or Slagtown, you will find various NPCs who will allow you to hire them. When you hire them, they will attack with you, carry things for you, and perform other tasks.

Hiring Henchmen

If you examine a hireable NPC, you will see that hire is a verb you can use.

When you hire an NPC, they will tell you their price and you'll be given a chance to accept or decline the offer. If you accept, you'll be able to communicate with them and direct them.

Note: the number of henchmen you may employ at one time is limited by your cool. Also, if you do not belong to the corp that controls the Gangland cameras you can only hire scumbags that wander outside Gangland itself, try Slagtown for instance.

You should take note to only hire NPCs that have unique names. If a player and henchman share their name you can't page your henchman with commands. (Using who <name> to check for players with the same name is a good idea.)

BJ-9 in Any Port can be hired for a fee of $1000. He will follow you around a while (not charging anything other than his thousand) and complain if you don't kill anything, he is however relatively weak and does not respond to any of the henchmen commands that are listed in this wiki. Probably best used with caution.

Working with Henchmen

Once you have hired a henchman, you may direct it to do various things by talking to it or giving it various items. You automatically allow gifts, medical, and sex from your henchmen, and vice versa (see help allow).

As you can see, there are a number of commands that you can tell them to do, either using regular say, or with page. This allows you to issue commands even if you aren't in the same room, which is particularly handy for a couple of the commands.

Commanding Henchmen

  come

If your henchmen is in another room for some reason (perhaps because you told him to wait or patrol), you can page him to come to your location. They will also automatically follow you.

  follow <anyone>

This tells your henchmen to follow you or someone else, just as the normal follow command (see CommandFollow). You cannot have your henchmen follow themselves, though -- if you want your henchmen to stop following, use wait.

Note: They currently will not follow you when you are climbing up or down. However, they will come to you once you resurface to a place they can get to without climbing.

  gimme <item>

When you want your henchmen to give you an item they're carrying, use this command. For more information, see Equipping Henchmen below.

  inv

Use this command when you want to know what your henchmen is carrying. For more information, see Equipping Henchmen below.

  patrol <any known room>

  skills

This command allows you to see what skills a henchmen is good at. They aren't always combat-oriented skills, and some henchmen are better at things thing others.

Note: Unlike most other commands, you can use this command before you hire someone. This lets you see general skill level of your prospect and what you're investing in. After you hire them you will get their exact numbers.

  wait

Use this command to have your henchmen stop moving (such as following you, patrolling, or coming to you). They'll stay in whichever room they were in when you issued the command.

  wield <item>

Will make them ready a weapon or try to equip some gear.

Equipping Henchmen

You can give items to your henchmen using the standard give command. You can use this to give your henchmen something to use, or just to have your henchmen bear some of your load (you can hand them packs, for example). Your henchmen are as vulnerable to being weighed down and slowed down as you are, though.

If you give your henchmen a weapon, they will automatically wield the most expensive weapon they possess. (You can change that with the wield command, listed above). If you hand them something else that causes them to stow that weapon, they will bring it out after dealing with the other item.

If you give your henchmen armor, they will automatically try to put it on.

If your henchmen are hungry or thirsty, you can give them something to eat or drink and they will do so right away usually (they cannot seem to store food and eat it right away, for some reason).

Checking on your Henchmen

From time to time, you may want to see how your crew are doing. If they are in the same room, you can use diagnose or tac to view their condition, as well looking at them to see what equipment they're currently wearing or holding.

However, you may also want to know where your henchmen are, or just a quick view of their condition as a single command. For this, use the command

  crew

This command allows you to see the location, life, and status of each of your henchmen at once.

Maintaining Henchmen

Paying Your Henchmen

Once every game week (roughly once per real day), each of your henchmen will charge your corp a fee to continue working for you. In other words, you don't pay for your henchman, your corp does. The fee is drawn from the corp funds.

This is an automatic payment. If you do not want to pay this, you can *fire* your henchmen (see below).

Increasing Your Henchmen's Abilities

Your henchmen gain IP just like you do. You can train them by going to areas that will provide challenging activity for them, just as you do for yourself.

You will also train your henchmen using the teach command (see Teach). Note: Works just like using teach on other players. However, don't just teach them everything you know because the more you teach them the higher their weekly fee is.

Keeping Your Henchmen Alive

Henchmen do not have clones! This is important -- if your henchmen die, your investment is gone. If you have a defibrillator or other means to resurrect someone, you may attempt to do so; however, even if that succeeds, there may be some skill loss. They're also susceptible to radiation, though they can wear a rad suit (but not swallow rad-q pills). Henchmen also have a tendency to bleed if wounded.

Firing Henchmen

When you are done with a henchmen, you can fire them. This will, of course, take them off of your payroll and they will no longer accept commands from you. Once you fire them, they will leave and go their separate way. Should you find them again, you can rehire them, provided they are still available.

Note: They will not return any items currently in their possession. If you want those items back, you need to take them before firing them.