It takes into account the price of all the equipment still on the mech. To get that salvage value you must also sell the equipment that came with the mech. This is also why a lower tonage mech can be worth more than a larger mech because of the value of the equipment inside the mech.

Thx good to know

Originally posted by crzzed:

can anyone tell me why when I go to salvage a mech at the end of the contract mission it gives me 1 price, but when i go to sell it, the price is much lower.

That's how this is supposed to work... You sell any item at a much lower price than its original value/purchase price.

Originally posted by Muaykai:

It takes into account the price of all the equipment still on the mech. To get that salvage value you must also sell the equipment that came with the mech. This is also why a lower tonage mech can be worth more than a larger mech because of the value of the equipment inside the mech.

if you dismantle a mech and sell it and the parts you removed I find you get much less money. The value of a mech seems to take into the account the cost to install stuff

It's a standard thing in most games: You buy things at full price, but sell them at a (substantially) lower price.

The salvage screen shows the full price of the item, so you will get (substantially) less for selling it.

And this doesn't just apply to mechs. Go to the Equipment market tab and find an item that is for sale and that you also have in inventory, then compare the buying and selling prices. For example, at the system where I'm currently sitting in my current save, I can buy a Tier 0 AC/10 for 180,000 C, or sell one for 80,000 C - the sale price is less than half the item's actual value. (Which, in this case, is actually 200,000 C; I have a 10% reputation discount for buying it in this system, so I can buy for 90% of actual value and sell for 40% of actual value.)

I must say I may not have been playing this particular game as long as some other individuals, but it is offensive that if I were to sell a fully fixed mech ready to go I would get less for it than the same mech they are selling that is all damaged and not even close on the margin. This seems to be a programming issues, you buy a damaged mech at a ridiculous price then have to spend another 2 mil to fix it so its just usable. People like talking about upkeep but what upkeep is done to something in 100% condition. It's just sitting there in space in a controlled atmosphere. I do miss the good old days of buying in Hesperus and selling in Dustbowl. There are various ways to solve this, and various solutions, some good ones provided in some of the forums, but the prices for mechs are ridiculous, I hate buying mechs and would rather salvage them and fix for the same price, but with the mech being useful. I also highly dislike the loadouts, I would much rather be given the tonage and what I could put and let me decide what I want to go with entirely, its probably simpler to program too. And I am talking about Merc 5. Also on the salvage if the points provided would be enough, but is some cases mech salvage would be more points than if I would have stuck all the points into salvage, which is a bit silly. Other than that and the story being a bit weak, the game is fun to play.

Originally posted by Rainhurler:

snip

i do love choosing salvage, but for single mission contracts i typically take money instead. i find for move difficulty ranges the salvage shares aren't enough unless you really work mechs over to make them ultra low value.
but find you a multi mission contract from someone with good rep, and atleast one mission with bad weather and you can get a ton of shares (like 50-80)

as for the buy/sell prices, it's basically just a way to prevent buy/sell cheese, or needing to balance a economy for the purpose of being a merchant.

if i understand correctly YAML would let you mod mechs the way you want too btw, and is always highly reccomended.
i don't really have any personal experience with it though, havn't touched it since maybe the first dlc release or so, as i love merctech. (but it only loosens the hardpoint restrictions a little)

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.