BATTLETECH – Contracts
Doing contracts is how you begin every combat instance. It is a simple concept but one you must understand well. Every contract has 5 things you should note, max pay, max salvage, biome, mission type and the description.
Biomes
Biomes differ from one another by terrain and global passive effects. Lunar and Martian biomes reduce the effectiveness of heatsinks, Lunar more so than Martian. While the Arctic biome increases the effectiveness. Different terrain types and elevations are unique to each biome.
Just note the passive effects on heat. It isn’t a good idea to bring an energy mech to a Lunar biome but is excellent in an Arctic biome.
Mission type
Just based on the mission type you can anticipate what kind of enemies you will encounter and the tools you will need to win. Destroy Base contracts will usually have turrets, convoy raid will have vehicles and so on. Use this to determine what to bring into combat. Perhaps an LRM heavy mech is not as effective in a convoy raid contract compared to a mech with an AC10 because there are guaranteed vehicles.
Description
Spend 30 seconds reading the description of the contract. It sometimes hints at reinforcements or the existence of a heavy mechs. Use the description to decide on the negotiation process.
Negotiations
Here you play with sliders to balance Payment and salvage rights. Salvage rights is expressed as “PrioritySalvage/RandomSalvage” as written as for example, 2/8. Priority salvage allows the player to choose which salvage he desires. Random salvage is randomly assigned from the remaining salvage parts after priority salvage has been selected.
The trick is that you don’t know what is going to be in the salvage pool when you are negotiating. First you must know the function of C-Bills and salvage. Salvage is for the progression of your company’s combat ability, better equipment and bigger mechs, C-Bills is for the occasional purchase at the store, paying the monthly bills and upgrading the Argo.
If you understand that, then we now know that amassing millions of C-Bills has little merit since contracts are readily available and you can get C-Bills anytime you want for emergencies. Only have enough C-Bills to pay a couple of months worth of bills plus your next Argo upgrade. Everything else should go into salvage rights.
If you stumble upon an assassinate mission or the description hints to a heavy mech lance, consider going full salvage rights in the negotiation. It is likely to have mechs you want to salvage from.
