Wingman

The Wingmen are mercenary pilots that can be hired in Galaxy on Fire 2.

Hiring Wingmen
Wingmen will offer their services at a Space Lounge. Between one and three wingmen will be available to enlist for a couple thousand Credits, which scales with difficulties. Once the contract has been agreed upon, they will stay with Keith for 10 minutes while in space (not docked or otherwise paused) or if their ships were all destroyed. After the timer expires, the representative will notify of their leave with the message "Our contract has expired. We'll go our separate ways now. See you in space!"

It is not possible to hire more wingmen while a contract is active.

After getting all base game medals, you will instead gain credits for hiring wingmen, and the prompt will be "Take the fans with you for [Amount of credits they offer]?"

Behavior
Upon exiting a space station after hiring wingmen, they will follow Keith's ship and will not do much else until given orders. Regardless of his reputation, wingmen will appear as friendly green dots to any scanner. The following orders appear as a submenu within the options menu:

Other Behaviors:
 * Fire at will - Wingmen fly near Maxwell and attack any target hostile to him.
 * Attack my target - Wingmen attack the same target Maxwell attacks.
 * Secure next waypoint - Wingmen fly directly to any waypoint (space stations count as waypoints) and attack nearby ships hostile to the player.
 * Use EMP blaster - Wingmen will attack foes with EMP Blasters that can paralyze a target. Only appears if they are currently using lasers.
 * Use Laser - Wingmen will attack foes with Lasers which do normal damage. Only appears if they are currently using EMP Blasters.
 * If wingmen detect pilots of their opposing faction, and if they have no orders currently given to them or if the orders were performed to completion, they will engage combat with the opponents.
 * Because wingmen are considered friendly to the scanner, repair beams will actively repair their ships.
 * Wingmen can carry small amounts of a certain item like every small ship. It is possible to steal them with EMPs and a tractor beam.
 * These items will respawn if you return to the station and leave again.
 * If a wingman encounters a pilot of an opposing faction or hostile to the player, they will open fire if not given any orders. They do not attack allied ships, but can be ordered to assault neutral ones and will automatically siege hostile ones.
 * Wingmen will never use any weapons save for the lasers and EMP blasters avaliable to them.
 * You can attack your own wingmen and even destroy them, and they will never return fire nor turn hostile. However, if they belong to the 4 main factions this can still provoke station security and affect your reputation if possible.
 * It is recommend to hire wingmen if you want to steal a convoy of freighters that is accompanied by a swarm of ships. Wait for the freighters to fly far out away from the station and fighters, follow the freighters, then attack one of them until all security forces become hostile, which your wingmans will go back and attack the ships instead of the freighters. This can serve as a distraction for the fighters while you can destroy the freighters far away from the enemies without any threat around you.
 * This does not always work, as hostile ships usually goes for the player first instead of your wingmans, but if you are far away from them, they will go for the nearest ship and keep attacking until they shoot down all the wingmans.
 * Wingmen will support Maxwell on freelance and story missions and are capable of following him even if he jumps via the Khador drive, but they will not enter irradiated airspace.
 * Ships piloted by wingmen only vary by model, and their performance is consistent.

Trivia

 * Terrans, Pirates, Midorians, Nivelians, Octopods, Greys, Deep Science and Bobolians can appear as wingmen. However, if they do not belong to one of the four major factions, they will pilot Pirate ships.
 * Due to this, Wingmen will always appear in a playable ship, but not any of the following:
 * Vossk Ships
 * Most Wanted Ships
 * Black Guard ships (Specter and Scimitar)
 * Special Ships (Ghost, Dark Angel, Phantom, Wraith, Vol Noor, and VoidX)
 * Kaamo Club-Exclusive Ships
 * Deep Science Ships
 * Ships introduced in DLCs
 * Wingmen are the only individuals that can switch primary weapons during battle.
 * As mentioned before, the appearance of a wingman's ship can vary but their performance will not. It is possible to see a wingman piloting Cormorant, which is ironic, considering that it has no slots for primary weapons.

Bugs
''The following is unconfirmed. Perform freely for yourselves, as this will not break the game.''
 * Wingmen will always have the same amount and kind of cargo whenever they leave a space station. This can be exploited to produce massive a massive profit by stealing the cargo (with EMP weapons and a tractor beam) every time the player leaves the station, and immediately docking. When the wingmen's contract expires after repeated tealing, it will be possible to have gathered up to 100t of the cargo Unfortunately, using EMP weapons on your wingmen in this fashion also affect your reputation.
 * Wingmen piloting the Anaan, Dace, or Mantis always carry three Hammerhead D2A2s, making them ideal targets of this exploitation.
 * In GoF2 SD, the health of the player's wingmen will suddenly drop to 60%. This can be healed with a repair beam, but if the player travels to another planet or system, the health will drop to 60% again.
 * This is also present in the HD Version.
 * Even if you have all the regular medals, you cannot hire wingmen if your account balance is less than their offer.
 * This may be attributable to the fact that the game simply subtracts a negative amount of the displayed value (which, in turn, cannot be negative in the first place), and will not proceed with the transaction if you don't have enough credits.
 * You can be shot, damaged or even be destroyed by your wingmen if they unintentionally hit you.
 * The Targeting feature of Wingmen do not require you to damage a target, thus you can easily destroy a Terrain Battleship if you order a group of 3 Wingmen to attack it - The battleship will not attack you nor the wingmen, untill it was destroyed.