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[Darrian Wolffe]

So, several folks have asked why we bother keeping track of sundries like "pilot salaries" and "maintenance costs" in a game where C-bill costs are usually running in the 6-figures.  The reason we've been tracking them is because they're part of the FM:Merc ruleset...but that doesn't explain why we bother tracking them in the first place.  The long layover had almost every lance (might have been every lance, actually - I haven't gone line-by-line) actually *making* money while the unit sat idle, and IMO, that's a problem.

At the conclusion of this contract, "resting" costs are going to go up, a fair bit.  This will include maintenance on Mechs and pilot salaries, primarily.  The fluff is very firm on that a merc unit doesn't want to *stop* working - that costs are too high to do that.  Normal StratOps rules get around that by making your parts fail so often you're constantly replacing them, which I feel is a hugely shitty and punitive way to accomplish that goal.  I'm personally a fan of what HBS BattleTech did with their cost system, so that's roughly where we're going to end up. 

I have not yet finished writing the rules, so don't ask me now what they're going to be.  As a ballpark, though, you should expect maintenance costs on stock Level 1 Mechs to increase by something like 10 times, maintenance costs on stock Level 2 Mechs to increase by something like 20 times, and double each of those for customized units (and yes, the LAM still ends up with a x5 modifier to THAT value).  Personnel costs for MechWarriors are likely going to end up increasing by 10 times (a 1500 CB/month Warrior becomes a 15,000 CB/month Warrior); personnel costs for vehicle crews and support staff will increase, but not by as much, since MechWarriors are still the stars of the show. 

I realize that these sound like extreme cost changes, and to a point they are, but to actually make these costs relevant and not rounding errors, this sort of change is necessary.

I now open the floor to relevant comments, questions, and the panicked screaming of accountants who fetishize balanced budgets.

[deadlyfire2345]

Would wealth, well-connected, or those that generally would add funds to the lances be adjusted to reflect these changes at all?
I understand the reasoning for all this, but it seems there would be money issues overall in the long run, or will that be by design?

[Hat]

Ok, this is more stream of consciousness, so apologies up front if it's not as "coherent" an argument as perhaps it could be.

First, I understand the concerns about salaries and rounding errors.  I don't inherently have an issue with increased costs during down times.  I would contend that it may be better reflected in increased non-salary related costs (housing), higher maintenance or something similar.  This could also be leasing space for dropships, not sure.

I have Wealth 6 and Well-Connected.  That provides a monthly income of $140M / month.  The maximum the traits provide at Wealth 10 and Well-Connected is $220M / month.  If the change in costs is going to render the benefit of Wealth meaningless, then why bother investing in it?  Alternatively, will you increase the funding provided by the trait to offset especially at the higher levels the increased costs being put in?

Conceptually, deployment time would draw a higher salary than peace as it's higher risk. 

One other thing to consider is the impact on newer lances vs. established ones.  Established lances have earned and been able to take advantage of things like full factory refits (engine changes) etc.   Significant cost increases will greatly decrease those opportunities.  That may be intentional and if so, that's fine.

Is the concern the flavor/pressure on time passage?  You could trigger additional retirement rolls if we sit too long as pilots get antsy and want to get back to a mission.  You could also consider having skills degrade (lost XP) on a per month basis.  That's probably too harsh and even worse than the financial cost.

I'm flexible with changes.  I support the goal to make this a fun and sustainable campaign with a rule set we can use for the future and am good with whatever changes will help make that happen.

[Ice]

Ok, this is more stream of consciousness, so apologies up front if it's not as "coherent" an argument as perhaps it could be.

First, I understand the concerns about salaries and rounding errors.  I don't inherently have an issue with increased costs during down times.  I would contend that it may be better reflected in increased non-salary related costs (housing), higher maintenance or something similar.  This could also be leasing space for dropships, not sure.

I have Wealth 6 and Well-Connected.  That provides a monthly income of $140M / month.  The maximum the traits provide at Wealth 10 and Well-Connected is $220M / month.  If the change in costs is going to render the benefit of Wealth meaningless, then why bother investing in it?  Alternatively, will you increase the funding provided by the trait to offset especially at the higher levels the increased costs being put in?

Conceptually, deployment time would draw a higher salary than peace as it's higher risk.  

One other thing to consider is the impact on newer lances vs. established ones.  Established lances have earned and been able to take advantage of things like full factory refits (engine changes) etc.   Significant cost increases will greatly decrease those opportunities.  That may be intentional and if so, that's fine.

Is the concern the flavor/pressure on time passage?  You could trigger additional retirement rolls if we sit too long as pilots get antsy and want to get back to a mission.  You could also consider having skills degrade (lost XP) on a per month basis.  That's probably too harsh and even worse than the financial cost.

I'm flexible with changes.  I support the goal to make this a fun and sustainable campaign with a rule set we can use for the future and am good with whatever changes will help make that happen.

Im in same thought as deadly and hat the rolling and investing in wealth kind of gets nullified

I know its all ballpark and may or may not be set in stone. I agree sitting idle with no drawbacks makes no sense and the cost should be increased just maybe not quite to that extent.

I would suggest maybe 8x instead of 10x and 16x instead of 20x its still high but not so high that those who invested in wealth get nullified. with this suggestion i get roughly 30k instead of 130k in idle time while others who might be at wealth 5 about break even since you can only get to realistically wealth 10. Wealth 3-4 lose maybe 20k - 40k per month. (I know this may not go just because its not easy math)

this is all unless my math is off...i am just ballparking while multi tasking

[Timberwolfd]

So, to give this some scale, 300 per mech as a base would become ~3,000 for a L1 mech, ~6,000 for a L1 Custom or L2 mech, and ~12,000 for a L2 Custom mech at the proposed 10x/20xdouble cost schedule.
Personally, I think it's a bit off and would look at something more in the 10x/20x/+50% progression. And let's reduce the LAM multiple to x3.
L1 = 3,000
L1 Custom = 4,500
L2 = 6,000
L2 Custom = 9,000
L1 LAM = 9,000
L1 LAM Custom = 13,500
L2 LAM = 18,000
L2 LAM Custom = 27,000

[agustaaquila]

A few thoughts about these changes

a)  Most merc units fall apart during the first year for financial reasons, and rarely after the first year for finances.  The unit as a whole has been around for more than a year and so the fluff and rules seem to be in agreement that unit costs should be less of an issue.

b) there is a huge new vs establshed lance problem with contract selection, and its only going to get worse as time goes on.  The newer lances have not had the time to build up reserves in units, personel, and money the newer lances have.  In the contract selection world, this means there is more desire to sit around and wait for a contract with best level salvage.  I watched as several perfectly good contrancts, which would have benefited the new lances with lower opfor strength, were passed over given concerns of not being able to recover the costs of repair to some of the customized mechs.

c)  The costs at character creation of wealth and well connected have shown themselves to be undercosted.  Undercosted to the proportions that Jumpng Jack originally was.  Everyone bought wealth up to a point so that they could didn't have to worry about the month to month cost of maintaining a lance.  This shows the GM in me that while the campaign was presented as a fairly gritty book intensive campaign, the players really don't want to deal with the bookeeping of lance upkeep.  Perhaps to solve this wealth just needs to be rewritten so that wealth over a certain level just pays for lance upkeep and nothing more.  

d) If the concern is that you don't want the unit to sit around waiting for the perfect contract, and even with the computer doing the lions share of the work there is still a fair amount of gm input needed per contact, then some mechanism to punish not selecting contracts is needed.  Something like, " At the end of a contract, the GM secretly rolls a d3.  When the number of months the unit had a contact market generated and did not select a contact equals or exceeds this roll, then roll a d4.  1) unit loses all jumpships  2) unit looses all dropships 3) all non lance combat personal leave the unit.  4) 1/2 of the personal of each lance retire per the normal rules, generated who retires randomly."  Something so heinous no sane player would touch the table at all.  This will better represent that merc units take what work they can and its whatever the houses give them.

[Darrian Wolffe]

This will answer Hat's question as well, since you're both asking roughly the same thing and it's easier to quote a smaller post

Would wealth, well-connected, or those that generally would add funds to the lances be adjusted to reflect these changes at all?

No.  Because that would completely remove the point of the change in the first place.  The goal is, if the merc unit is not working, it should be losing money.  This is consistent with the fluff.

The advantage Wealth, Well-connected (etc) give you - aside from the bonuses on acquisition rolls - is that when you aren't working, you're losing LESS money.  But under pretty much no circumstances (barring extremely high values of Traits and relatively low maintenance/personnel costs) should any lance member be able to look at their lance and say "naw, I don't need to work, because I have a guaranteed income that will never make me lose money".  Or, to put this another way, the fact that you have income coming in from Weath (etc) is ALWAYS an advantage; it's simply no longer allowing you to offset the entire set of expense from your lance.  The fact that it's SOME guaranteed income is unchanged.

The problem is that we used the values CGL gave out, which are inconsistent with the fluff.  Since my major goal in this campaign has been to try and reconcile rules and fluff, and I don't want to change the fluff, the rules are what must change.

Finally, please understand something.  I am not interested in a debate over whether or not something is appropriate.  I am more than willing to take feedback and to adjust details, but my primary purpose in posting this is to give people advance warning that the rules ARE changing.  That fact is not up for debate.  Popping this on you with no prep time would be a genuinely shitty thing to do; this way people have something like 3 IRL months to make adjustments to what they planned to do.

[Timberwolfd]

I have no major heartburn with the costs increase in principle.

My concern revolves around whether wealth and/or well-connected may become gates on being able to reasonably support an upgraded lance and sufficient personnel. Since traits can't be bought with XP, there is no way to get W/WC after character creation. With the increased costs, I worry a bit more about the players that didn't get W/WC being able to support competitive lances with the attendant problems of playing fewer games and getting less salvage creating a death spiral risk. I don't think the problem is unavoidable, but more the kind of thing to keep an eye on as we go. 

[Darrian Wolffe]

Side note for those making alternative suggestions:

I'm trying to make this work while using the AtB program and minimizing out-of-program labor effort.  I can't change the frequency of retirement rolls; it's hard-coded into the program.  I CAN change personnel salaries and maintenance costs (under File>Campaign Options>"Personnel" tab).  Adjusting these values simply means the AtB will roll with those new numbers from Point X forward, and we don't have to do anything else.

This change will ALSO increase contract payouts, since contract payouts are based on personnel costs.  This WILL NOT hurt you during contracts.

My general "middle ground" figure is that a character commanding a 6-person, 6-mech lance (with x4 L2 customs) should require ~$150,000 (APPROXIMATELY) in cost.  Offsetting this is Wealth 3/Well-connected 2 - essentialy the median value of the PCs, in aggregate - which brings in $60,000/month.  So potentially losing ~$90k/month in idle costs will hurt, but won't kill, the lance with 2-3 months of downtime.  This also ensures that a person with higher Trait Values will still be losing money (albeit not as much), and a person who chooses to employ less people has a valid reason to, because there's no reason to not have 7 people and 6-7 Mechs in your lances 100% of the time.

b) there is a huge new vs establshed lance problem with contract selection, and its only going to get worse as time goes on.  

I mean...we could start over with the new rules.  There's always and forever going to be a "new vs established" problem in any sort of continuing campaign system.  It's not avoidable; the only thing you can do is try to limit advancement over time, so new people can catch up.  Which is what increasing XP costs and so forth do.  The equipment will sort itself out over time, and there's a couple of big reset buttons in the timeline for equipment anyway.

Something like, " At the end of a contract, the GM secretly rolls a d3.  ... Something so heinous no sane player would touch the table at all.

See, your heart is in the right place, but this is just as bad, in the other direction.  The point is to have players make meaningful choices.  If the costs of waiting on the perfect contract are so low that everyone is actually MAKING money each month that they wait, then there's no choice at all. If the costs of waiting on the perfect contract are so high that "no sane player" would ever wait, then there's also no choice at all.  This is the sort of game design that I want to avoid.

c)  The costs at character creation of wealth and well connected have shown themselves to be undercosted

They are.  Hugely so, in comparison to the canon numbers for Mech Maintenance and Personnel Costs.  Re-costing Wealth (etc) is functionally impossible.  It would require everyone to rebuilt their PCs, and that isn't reasonable.  But I CAN adjust the Personnel and Maintenance costs, which reduces the relative value of Wealth (etc) and therefore brings them closer to a correct relative cost.

I have no major heartburn with the costs increase in principle.

Consider this correcting a mistake in the base rules.  A revision to the norm, in other words.  And do examine the bolded text above closely; a minimum Weath (etc) score is unnecessary because the contract payouts will shift upwards to ensure you get paid more during the contracts (enough to cover the increased costs).  If a person FEELS a minimum Wealth score is necessary, that doesn't mean it actually is.  

[Hat]

<snip>The goal is, if the merc unit is not working, it should be losing money.  This is consistent with the fluff.<snip>

Noted.  Let's get the revised numbers sorted out so that we can plan on the cash reserves needed to cover costs.

So I'm clear, mech pilot salary and maintenance costs will increase in general, impacting both contract and downtime.  During contract times the cost increase is offset by increased contract payout as salaries are higher.  Correct?

[Darrian Wolffe]

So I'm clear, mech pilot salary and maintenance costs will increase in general, impacting both contract and downtime.  During contract times the cost increase is offset by increased contract payout as salaries are higher.  Correct?

100% correct. 

As for "sorting the revised costs", I've been playing with them this afternoon in between checking this thread, keeping in mind my target of "sample lance" having roughly $150K in total costs.  Here's what I'm currently liking:



I'm leaning heavily towards Version 2, personally.  It makes both sides much more important (maintenance AND personnel)

[Timberwolfd]

I assume this will hit the non-lance personnel as well. When we get closer to implementation, I would like to get a complete roster of ranks and wages for all of the other personnel, admins and such. Also, will our courtesans' income improve as well? We'll be paying the staff more for the "cooks" to soak away.

[Darrian Wolffe]

When we get closer to implementation, I would like to get a complete roster of ranks and wages for all of the other personnel, admins and such.

It's already there.  All personnel types which we track are listed in those images, along with the multipliers.  If I went with Version 2, salaries would look like this:

[Hat]

Ok, I plugged in the values of version 2 into my spreadsheet.  As a quick reference I have the following:

Mechs - L2, Custom (x5)
Mechwarriors - PC (Reg), Pilots (Vet) (x4)
Techs - Elite (x1), Vet (x1), Reg (x2), Green (x1)
Doctors - Reg (x2)

I'd consider that probably on the lighter side of numbers and skills.  My monthly cost would jump from $22M to $119M per month.  With Wealth 6 and Well-Connected net income drops from $120M / month to $21M / month.  Modest improvements in staff and/or adding another mech or two would certainly put me in the red.

I figured it might help to get a data point or two, though I expect Jon or someone could crunch the entire unit.

[Timberwolfd]

I figured it might help to get a data point or two, though I expect Jon or someone could crunch the entire unit.

At the moment, my free time is focused on getting as many of the 3D printed mechs assembled as possible to get them to Rob for painting. I'll look into doing a unit breakdown in a couple of weeks, since there is really no rush on this. Mission 2 will be in September, The Large Scale Game will be in October and Mission 3 will be in November. Even if Mission 3 somehow ends the contract, it will still be 3+ months before this really matters.