Change the Mercenary market tab to give ships a timer, causing the ship to become cheaper as the timer ticks down each turn, and then be automatically removed from the marketplace when the timer hits zero.


This is a "Dutch auction," where the auctioneer starts at a high price and works their way down, encouraging bidders to wait until the price is low enough for them but not so low that another bidder takes it first. This allows players to always bid within their budget by buying ships which have been ignored by wealthier players, and provides the chance for a weaker player to buy a strong ship if a wealthier player gets greedy and waits too long for the price to fall.


This also moves towards solving the problem of Mercenaries being terrible, as the current system is that players can only choose from among the 20 ships in the "shop window" while all sold ships are held in a queue until space is made, requiring players to purchase swaths of bad ships to reveal more recent sold ships. By removing ships which nobody wants, the market inventory keeps moving and better ships, both neutral and empire-made, can be put up for sale.


Edited in light of Vaulter DLC changes to Pirates