Sometimes merc ship images are shown white. Attempt to hire t hem fails with an error. I think there is some refactoring/renaming error going on, I could fix the bug for myself reading the error message.

The error - It tried to read the files:

"ship_data_(support_carrier_1_ecm).{txt,png}" from "ships_npc" folder

but all files there are prefixed with "npc_ship_data". I fixed the issue for me making a copy of the files under the expected name. I did not rename, as I was not sure if the correct name is references somewhere else.

I'v seen some white images before but did not hire the mercs and so did not know it does not work. Only hired this time and noticed it... So there must be a few more cases.

Hmmm. I'v installed the game again. I had some saves from cloud, but they failed to download, so I disabled cloud save sync. I did not plan to play the saved characters anyway, because they were from much older build. So I'v removed all characters and started new one. The issue was on such a new character, after fresh install.

Yesterday, I did a reset again, nothing that bothers me much, its all fine. Just wanted to clean up everything and start fresh. I will observe if that happens again.

I know its sometimes tricky and even if you think "impossible" things somehow sneak in, so that might have happened somehow to me. But from things I'm aware of, everything should have been "up to date"