Damn you Techs, stop breaking my Mechs! Also: You expect me to work for THAT?

[CookieCrumb]

Greetings and salutations!

Stumbling upon Megamek & MekHQ recently, and having been a big fan of at least the Battletech novels for what feels like forever, I just had to give in to the urge to try my luck and since I'm new, know nobody who play Battletech in any way, shape or form I thought to myself that I might as well give the Against the Bot rule set a go. (Though that doesn't really effect the matter of this post, now that I think about it).

Anyway on to the meat.
So I set myself up a company and contract and entered the generated data into the "new contract" form in MekHQ and was greeted with these numbers:

Well that's not exactly a stellar payout
Wait a minute, I thought I was supposed to MAKE money

I can only imagine I'm doing something terribly, terribly wrong so feel free to point and/or push me into the right direction

Aaaand the other thing. I haven't touched the MekHQ campaign settings at all.
The first week goes by and the maintenance checks get triggered.
Lo and behold what to me seems to be the most incompetent team of mechanics that ever roamed the universe:

All right, we'll call it a draw
The guilty parties

Same thing here, am I doing something wrong, are the default settings just utterly crippling or is this what is considered normal? (or have I just been incredibly unlucky)

Some other info that is not shown in the screenshots that may or may not be interesting for this.
I have 60 AsTechs (I used the "bring all Tech teams to full strenght" option), a Dragoon Rating of C (using the FM Mercenaries revised method) and I am running the latest version of the MekHQ/MegaMek bundle available on Dylan's BattleTech Emporium.
And as already stated I fiddled with the campaign settings.

Any insight into what I'm doing wrong, what's going wrong etc would be greatly appreciated.

[pheonixstorm]

First off you are generating the contracts all wrong. You will need to get a copy of the Merc field manual (revised) to really get the contracts working how they should as the multiplier is the mission + MRBC rate + house rate multiplied by your total salary (if memory serves). As for the techs... did you hire any temp/perm astechs? Your unlucky roles are probably due to being shorthanded. That or your techs need to be fired due to incompetence.

Also, I think you need one tech per unit (note elite tech assigned to 2 units), so that might kill one unit for quality.

[Jayof9s]

As he said, contract data is a bit more complex, MHQ doesn't roll contracts for you, it just brings up the same default info. The only reason you had different estimated total profit is because of the different locations you selected.

Also, I think you need one tech per unit (note elite tech assigned to 2 units), so that might kill one unit for quality.

You only need 1 tech per unit for a better IO Unit Rating. As long as a tech has sufficient time, they can work on multiple units with no penalty.

[pfarland]

I played AtB before I got wrapped up in my project.  PM your email and I'll send you a copy of one of my saves that has all the correct settings for AtB.

[CookieCrumb]

@pfarland

Thanks for offering this, I sent you a PM.


Thanks for correcting me on the contract Data I'll dive in the Merc Field Manual and figure contract generation correctly.

@pheonixstorm
I told MekHQ to bring all tech teams to full strength and it hired 60 temp AsTechs which I presume is the maximum useful amount?
So is it usually a better idea to assign one tech to each mech even if it means I'll have a green tech doing maintenance on one of my more valuable mechs?
But I assume there's some math in the Field Manual regarding techs/maintenance time as well so off to do some reading I go.

[Sidewinder]

As rule, I never assign any Green Techs to Maintenance.  I'll only assign Regular Techs to maintenance if I have no other options.  Yes, I realize that I am tying up my better techs with Maintenance and leaving them unavailable for repairs, but at the rate even Veterans botch maintenance rolls (using the advanced maintenance rules has about 1 part every cycle dropping one rating, hopefully the next cycle they roll it the other way and repair the damage they've done, but not always) I would never trust a Greenie to maintenance.  Plus using Veterans and Elites for Maintenance usually sees the quality rating of the unit go up, which makes them easier to repair by your lesser techs.  Typically I have My Elite and Veteran Techs assigned to the maintenance of 5 or even 6 units.  Otherwise its a race to A quality, and Mechs falling apart.

[pfarland]

Plus you should keep your Green techs open for repairs.  Always have them do the repairs first*, then work your way up the chain to the Elites.  It gives you an overall better chance to fix things without having to scrap parts.  And always take the extra time to do the repairs, it's worth it.

*  The exception is parts that the higher levels can auto fix without a chance of failure.  Armor, actuators and such.

[CookieCrumb]

Thanks everyone, after I stopped letting green techs interfere with the maintenance there's waaaaaaay less "oops, I fixed it broken" happening.
And after reading through the contract generation rules of the Field Manual I actually managed to roll up contracts that would make me money!
Now, I'm left with one question (which is sort of, kind of, related to this).
How does MekHQ calculate transport costs?
Because rolling those up according to the FMMR comes up with different number than what MekHQ shows me.

[Jayof9s]

How does MekHQ calculate transport costs?
Because rolling those up according to the FMMR comes up with different number than what MekHQ shows me.

For a simple answer, it calculates the # of jumps based on where you're going and then estimates a cost for dropship(s) and the number of jump collars.

Since there was no easy way to select various dropships that FM:Mr uses, (unless you're using your own), it more or less just uses an average cost based on the number/types of units you have.