Campaign Ops: Advances, Overhead, Transport Costs

[MrJake]

Feel free to point to what I'm overlooking instead of answering.

1. Are advances on Final Payment available?  Used to be 25%, I seem to recall.

2. Overhead Support: How much is it exactly. Again, Used to be binary and 5%, I think.

3. Finally, are mercenary commands required to pay their own transport costs up front, only to be reimbursed afterward?

Thx.

AJH

[pheonixstorm]

Don't know if this was answered prior to the blackout but...

1. I haven't seen anything about this in CO so I doubt it. You could still RP it for your own campaigns though.

2. Overhead is no longer part of the rules and was removed.

3. The example was paid monthly with reimbursement part of the contract payment.

[MrJake]

Hey, thanks for noticing my lonely little post. I was starting to wonder....

In regards to #3, "Die first, pay later" seems like a terrible business plan. No deposit at all? That just doesn't seem right.

[pheonixstorm]

Transport costs are month by month as far as a command making payments iirc. As for reimbursement, if the command is lucky enough to get it, it would be included in the monthly contract payment just like everything else. I think the only thing that doesn't get paid until the end is BLC. Need to reread that section, but it would also follow all the previous rules if it is the case.

[MrJake]

Well, I think I've identified the problem.

I totally overlooked the monthly payment aspect. Clearly I need to make a more careful reading of that section of the rules.

Thanks, again.

ajh

[MrJake]

Okay. My search-fu must be weak. I cannot find anything about schedule of payments. Sorry to ask you to be my search engine, but can you give me a clue?

ajh

[Colt Ward]

Didn't overhead morph into ammo costs?

[pheonixstorm]

From FMMr

Overhead compensation is the amount of money the employer
provides the mercenary command to cover out-of-pocket
expenses incurred during a mission, such as food purchases,
spaceport taxes and run-of-the-mill supplies.

Merc HB 3055 listed overhead as mostly office supplies and the like.

The original Merc Handbook actually had something different for overhead as it was listed more as administrative overhead. I take this to mean administrative salaries most likely. There was also a section for Consumable Supplies as well which covered food, uniforms, water, medicine, etc. This was paid out at 500 C-bills per squad (1 MW counted as a squad or 7 infantry).

Personally I would continue using overhead as a means to track items that the current rules don't cover same as what was in FMMr. Even if you don't include it as part of the contract keeping it as a monthly expense does add on to the realism of what your own merc unit might face.