I want to fire the payroll department

[Nine-ball]

Has anyone else noticed that our mechwarriors are paid obscene amounts of money? Consider a rookie pilot earning, say, 30,000 C-Bills month. Over a year, they make 360,000 C-Bills.

To put that in context, the price of an LCT-1V Locust is about 1,700,000 C-Bills, presumably with manufacturer and retailer markup. This in turn means that it would take 4 years, eight and a half months for our employees to buy a Locust.

Battlemechs are supposed to be hideously expensive due to rarity, but for comparison's sake we'll use the modern and relatively cheap Commando Stingray light tank, one of the cheapest modern tanks you can buy, which retails at around 5 million dollars.

All factored up, we're paying our mechwarriors just a little under 1.25 million dollars per year. That's outrageous. Yeah, they're risking their lives and are supposedly elite specialists, even as noobs, but what soldier, mercenary, pilot, or even astronaut do you know that gets paid over a million dollars per year? Again, for comparison, the most elite astronauts get paid about $145,000 per annum.

Thus, I would like to fire the payroll department, which in truth is only Darius. Granted, he apparently works for free, as does everyone else (unless they're Yang or paid out of travel costs) but I'd be willing to shell out a few hundred C-bills per week to get a better finance specialist. No wonder our loan payments got all ****ed up.

[AbsynthMinded]

Hazard Pay is a ♥♥♥♥♥

[MinenSpecht]

Did you ever read one of the books?

You should know that you need an army of techs and other personnel to run a merc company. I guess they work for free eh?

Just take that as a sum to pay the pilot and everything related to operate 1 mech.

Oh and btw. The elite astronauts you are mentioning shoudl have learned to code Java. A Java Developer nowadays earns 60-100k€ without the dangers of radiation and other life threatening stuff and can do this all his life.

I will notstart to talk about wall street bankers...

[Nine-ball]

Originally posted by MinenSpecht:

Did you ever read one of the books?

You should know that you need an army of techs and other personnel to run a merc company. I guess they work for free eh?

Just take that as a sum to pay the pilot and everything related to operate 1 mech.

Those are the maintenance costs we pay per mech, plus additional charges for repair and replacement work.

[Sentient_Toaster]

PMCs tend to pay substantially more than government, from what I've heard.

[MinenSpecht]

Originally posted by Nine-ball:

Originally posted by MinenSpecht:

Did you ever read one of the books?

You should know that you need an army of techs and other personnel to run a merc company. I guess they work for free eh?

Just take that as a sum to pay the pilot and everything related to operate 1 mech.

Those are the maintenance costs we pay per mech, plus additional charges for repair and replacement work.

So you didnt read any of the books. Merc companies like the Wolf Dragoons or the Kell hounds and the Gray Death also bring their families that have to be taken care of, ground support units, cooks.. They have to replenish ammo, coolant, clothes, food and other stuff.

Also you have to pay retirement money for retired mercs and insurance fees. Retirement money for the families of the fallen etc etc..

[CravenCoyote]

What about the ridiculously paid soccer/football players?

[Dr Bunnypoops]

I was thinking the exact same thing the other day and I have over 240 hours spent in this game. Imagine the money I could have safed for.. I don't know... an Awesome?!

[:WTF: Grendel]

Originally posted by Nine-ball:

Originally posted by MinenSpecht:

Did you ever read one of the books?

You should know that you need an army of techs and other personnel to run a merc company. I guess they work for free eh?

Just take that as a sum to pay the pilot and everything related to operate 1 mech.

Those are the maintenance costs we pay per mech, plus additional charges for repair and replacement work.

lol that's just expenses for the Mech... not even Staff. Honestly... my merc unit should cost far more for me than a mere $800k a month. 2 Assaults, 4 Heavies, 6 Mediums, 6 Lights ready for drop... and another 20 Mechs in storage plus another dozen incomplete salvage Mechs. Each of those active Mechs cost me for service, maintenance and upkeep. Factor in upgrades to the Argos... labor for payroll on active MechWarriors... we're getting off light and the OP wants to fire Darius for paying too much?

I'd say... pay the pilots less, add in another dozen lines on the monthly expenses and call it good. My merc unit alone should run around $1.2m Cbills a month if all things were taken into consideration.

[veryinky]

"Life is Cheap, Battlemechs Aren't."
Except when you have 8 pilots costing more than the entire crew of a 100,000 ton dropship, with a smaller 1700ton dropship attached (and its crew), along with the maintenance of both ships and keeping a dozen battlemechs in good repair. Really, battlemechs are the smallest part of my monthly expenditures.

[Luke]

The fully burdened cost of the typical office worker (whom is not piloting a battlemech or being shot at) is around 2-3x their sallary. Most people won't want to read every line item in the companies GL, so it is summarized by the things that affect the game. Also why you can vary your monthly costs so broadly -- that isn't simply giving the mechwarriors more money.

MinenSpecht has the right of it. We can assume these costs include all of the overhead and support costs of maintaining that mechwarrior. And it seems pretty reasonable.

Also, it is an abstraction for balancing game progression and power curves. Don't read too much into it.

[Nine-ball]

Originally posted by MinenSpecht:

So you didnt read any of the books. Merc companies like the Wolf Dragoons or the Kell hounds and the Gray Death also bring their families that have to be taken care of, ground support units, cooks.. They have to replenish ammo, coolant, clothes, food and other stuff.

Also you have to pay retirement money for retired mercs and insurance fees. Retirement money for the families of the fallen etc etc..

I did read many of the books, but those are also really big merc firms. Are you suggesting we cram all that crap on the Leopard?

I'm not taking this too seriously, this is a joking thread, but the salaries are crazy. As for the Argo, we also pay for that. It doesn't make any sense to say that support costs are factored into mechwarrior salary. Besides, even if everyone we hired came with their own tech or two, it's still gross overpayment.

Fire Darius nao!

[Ramage]

Imagine you have a battletech lance, something that you build armies around, something that wints wars.

Candidate one can reliably headshoot mechs, is an expert guts so can keep firing well into the red of heat, and on top of that can reliably indirect fire lrns. He's bringing your mech back in one piece with a ton of salvage.

Candidate two is ok - but can't called shot and has real trouble hitting moving targets or damaging braced targets. Hes going to go down in flames.

How much would you be prepared to pay to have candidate one in your merc squad rather than have him on the other side?

[Nine-ball]

Originally posted by Ramage:

How much would you be prepared to pay to have candidate one in your merc squad rather than have him on the other side?

A lot more than I would a rookie, and I am talking about a rookie's salary.

[wesnef]

Originally posted by Luke:

Also, it is an abstraction for balancing game progression and power curves. Don't read too much into it.

This.

[Grey Buddhist]

Costs you are not seeing:

1) Mech Techs - to keep that shiny mech running. You don't want to have it fall apart in the middle of a battle because you skimped on maintenance.

2) Medical Techs - When your mechwarriors get themselves hurt (in combat, or in bar fights) they need to get patched up. These are the medical 'peons' who do it.

3) Doctors - When your mechwarriors get hurt BADLY, they need higher level care. The Doctor(s) cost more than the Med Techs.

4) Ground pounders (Infantry) - Even if you don't do infantry fighting, Infantrymen are usually used for security to keep your precious mechs, personnel, their families, and your dropship(s) safe. Your Mechwarriors would leave in a heartbeat if you had them pulling basic security jobs.

5) Supply Officer - All good sized units have a specilized person in charge of making sure they always have the supplies they need. You do not want to run out ammo....or food.

6) Personnel Officer - All good sized units have a person in charge of hiring, firing, finding good people, etc.. While you (the leader) may start your unit by doing this yourself, at some point you will be unable (unless you don't need sleep) to handle this yoursefl for long.

7) Contractor - This is the person you need to locate, and research, contracts to avoid those "oh crud, here I am with my 4 mechs and I have to fight 2 Regiments of an Elite House unit because I did not read the fine print on my contract that was on page 2067, section A, subsection 5g". Starting out you get small, usually inconsequential contracts that are offered to anyone, as you get higher Rep you have to carefully research contracts to avoid becoming another Merc Unit that dies out on an unknown planet.

8) Dropship Crew - Sailors. You won't get anywhere without these folk. Your mech cannot fly from one planet to another without them.

9) Dropship Navigator - The person who actually knows how to navigate that dropship planet to planet.

10) Dropship captain - The person who keep the Dropship running and the Dropship crew organized.

Those are just the basic ones if you dont have your families with you. If you have families with you that opens up about 20 more personnel types (teachers, etc...) that you need to ensure less....issues.

Some of the above, and definitely more than in this game, are actually used in MegaMek/MekHQ which is alot more detailed than this when it comes to running a Merc Unit in the Battletech universe. The graphics are better in this game though, just fyi.