Author Topic: Peace time operating costs and active contracts/missions in MekHQ  (Read 285 times)

dgorsman

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Just trying this option and... some things are looking a little out of place, or just don't have a good descriptive label.  Maybe it's just one of the quirks of the Campaign Operations rules that hasn't been fully considered into all the nooks and crannies.

There's a monthly entry for "Your account has been debited 136,447 C-Bill for training munitions" in the log and a matching "Maintenance - Monthly ammunition" entry in the financial ledger, even though there is an active contract.  Should there be money going out the door on training munitions, when there is active combat and it is definitely not 'peace time'?  If ammunition costs are already considered when purchasing supplies, should this be present at all during an active contract?  Otherwise you're effectively getting double (or worse, as it is monthly) billed for actual (as opposed to training) ammunition costs, unless you're running with the option to not pay for supplies.  In some ways this seems to be set up to handle Chaos Campaign style management, or Alpha Strike, where it would take the place of detailed tracking of ammunition.

There's a similar conflict with "Your account has been debited 4,790 C-Bill for spare parts" and "Maintenance - Monthly Spare Parts", although less of an issue due to the low cost.  If you're already using the option to pay for maintenance, should that not already be covered under those costs?

Another factor is with salvaged units.  There are operating costs being charged - ammunition, fuel, spare parts - for units which are not just salvaged but uncrewed, unmaintained, and in some cases cannot be repaired to functionality/salvage-only.  Such units are unlikely to be consuming ammo, live or training, nor would they be using fuel or spare parts.
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