Radio Free Kobold fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Mar 20, 2018

• As we have observed here, not all employers (and not all opponents) are created equal. Even the narrative parts aside, there's a huge difference in the quality of the contract between fighting some Periphery pirates versus a major Successor State or Clan. And just what you'll face will vary that way too, since each faction has their own RATs for available equipment.
  
  
• Location will also be important too: you don't start getting paid until you arrive, so taking a short contract a long distance away is bad for business. Depending on your settings it may also have an impact on your fights: worlds with weird gravity or weather can really throw a wrench into things.
  
  
• Ally/Enemy ratings are a huge deal. Each is generally expressed as a ranking and a letter - ranking for the quality of the pilots, letter for the quality of their equipment. As noted upthread, you don't get paid any better for facing an Elite/A unit than you do for a Green/F, so don't take needless risks that way. (Higher equipment quality will mean better salvage, of course.)
  
  
• The required number of lances is actually static, even though you wouldn't think it would be. It's a fairly straight scale based off of the total number you've got - 50%. Note that this does NOT care about the type of units, so having non-combat or reserve forces can actually tip this up higher. (That's generally only an issue when dealing with battalion-scale units or larger.)
  
  
• Then you've got mission type. It directly affects several parts of the overall contract - primarily your objectives and the situation you're walking into. A garrison or cadre contract is a much different situation than relief duty.
  

• Length of contract is obviously important for several reasons. The longer the contract the higher the overall pay and the more fights to get salvage/XP. But more time in the field also means you're further out from resupply and you're going to get ground down along the way. Also, super-long contracts tend to have a lower per-month payout so it's a question of if you want short but high paying contracts or longer periods of lower but steady income. Note that mission type affects this: each type has a rough range of how long it's for.
  
  
• How much you're paid is obvious. It's expressed as an overall number, but it's really an amount per month. That amount is the salary of your combat forces times a particular amount - the more troops (and the more expensive troops!) you have, the more you get paid. While it seems like a big deal, this is actually only the third most important place for your cash flow.
  
  
• Overhead Compensation is basically a nothing. Each month a unit uses up a small amount of cash for overhead - food the troops, pens and paper for the administrators, so on. The levels are a simple None/Half/Full. The amount of money involved is so low that this is pretty meaningless.
  
  
• Command Rights, on the other hand, are a big deal. It's a gauge of how hands-on your employers are - House means they're literally in the field acting as your officers (with an AI mech to help you in the field); Liason means they're just working alongside you (in which case the random bonus mech is under your control); and Independent means you're wholly on your own. In narrative terms, you can probably see why it's a big deal. Employers want to have strong control in many situations - you're not going to get Independent command during a planetary invasion. Sometimes they want you to have free reign so you're more of a deniable asset, however. Mercs generally want as independent a command as they can get - just imagine the fun we'd have had this contract if there was literally a ComStar representative in the field with us, giving direct orders.
  
  
• Transport Terms are next - it's a percentage of how much of your transport bill the employer will pay. Costs are going to vary depending on both how far you're going and how big your unit is. If you've got dropships/jumpships? You keep the money. Otherwise it goes to paying your fees. It's a nice thing to get but generally isn't that huge a deal. Every bit of money helps, though, particularly if you're getting jobs that are really far off.
  
  
• Support is an interesting one worth noting: there's two types of support that are mutually exclusive. Straight Support is one where the contract will pay a percentage of your non-combat staff's monthly salaries. This is the bad kind of support. You don't want this. You want the other kind - Battle Loss Compensation. It's a percentage as well, but it's how much your employer will reimburse you for damage taken in combat. Use up a few tons of ammo? You have to have the parts but they'll pay you the equivalent in cash. Lose a mech? Guess what, your employer is giving you the market value for what you lost. Battle Loss is by far the better sort in any contract that involves actual fighting. You won't get back more than you lost in combat, but it means that it's far, far easier to recover from a bad fight. In a contract with even a moderate combat tempo, the amount you recoup from this can far outstrip your actual pay.
  
  
• Then there's the big one: salvage rights. It's a rolling percentage of the overall salvage taken during a contract. (Sometimes this gets awkward because it's an Exchange - which means the employer keeps everything but will pay you the market value for your percentage of the take.) We've seen how this works already, and this is the real place you get your cash. In a high combat tempo contract, you can pull in more in a week in salvage than the whole month's pay. Even with a low amount of fighting, this is probably going to be your #1 source of cash and parts.
  

• Garrison contracts are long, low-paying affairs where you're basically the local defense force for a while. Generally these are low combat affairs - in-universe frequently no combat at all - that are frequently taken by units looking to do some recovery time.
  
• Cadre contracts are basically garrison contracts, but with the additional objective that you're to act as trainers. Sometimes you're bringing a local militia/security force up to speed, sometimes you're acting as the OpFor for somebody bigger. Still usually R&R type of stuff with low threat.
  
• Relief Duty is pretty much the opposite. You're the reinforcements for another unit who's had things go bad. The pay is a lot better, but you're getting thrown into the deep end in a situation that's already FUBAR. Good money, lots of fighting, high strategic risk. Really common during major wars.
  
• Riot Duty is all kinds of fun, because you're usually fighting civilians. This isn't JUST riot suppression (though that accounts for a lot of it), but also fighting rebel forces. Generally heavier combat (since they don't hire a merc unit for small stuff), but normally against inferior foes. Of course, when things get this bad there's often a Successor State's intelligence bureau behind it and they will have actual combat-trained troops and heavy equipment.
  
• Security Duty is basically a garrison contract but shorter and oriented towards protecting a specific objective (such as a person). You're very, VERY heavy bodyguards, basically.
  
• Objective Raids are the most common of contract types and cover a wide range of actions. It's short for 'go to place, destroy X, leave'. Mercs draw these a lot because the big guys want deniability. Sending troops across the border to blow up a desalinization plant would be an act of war - but you can't be blamed if a group of mercenaries hired by an anonymous employer does it!
  
• Extraction Raids are basically the same, but it's 'steal X' instead of 'destroy X'. These can be dicer because kidnapping is still a crime even if you have a contract to do it.
  
• Reconnaissance Raids are probing attacks, frequently in advance of bigger things (like invasions). You're generally dropped in with minimal support and told to poke the local defenders to see what they're packing and where they are. Obviously highly dangerous because of the lack of support, but you can often get by with minimal combat.
  
• Diversionary Raid is just what it sounds like. It's an objective raid, but expressly to distract the defenders. So you're even more isolated and unsupported, and generally trying to get shot at. These are REALLY good paying for obvious reasons.
  
• Planetary Assault is also obvious. You're part of an invasion force. Usually you're there either because the Successor State is spread thin during a major campaign or you're there as a supplement for niche duties. Either way, you're probably there for the long haul AND have to keep in mind that standard House units view you as disposable.
  
• Pirate Hunting is the other bread and butter of mercs. House units don't want to bother because it's below them; militias don't want to bother because that would mean leaving their homes undefended. Frequently an easy payday since most pirates are disorganized, poorly equipped and are more interested in living to spend their loot than fighting. But we see here that 'pirates' are not always pirates.
  
• Guerrilla Warfare is all kinds of bad. It pays great but you're utterly unsupported, in there for a long time and generally facing vastly superior opposition. It's a mix of diversionary raid, cadre duty and reconnaissance raid. And generally the bad parts of all of them.