Yeah salvage crates are random but you can occasionally get some good stuff in them.

Originally posted by Bovril Brigadier:

Yeah salvage crates are random but you can occasionally get some good stuff in them.

And the contract's value more or less corresponds to the salvage crates on the map for that contract because people have pointed out that just doing the objectives on a contract with let's say 100K C-Bills as the payout, the mission results screen would show a significantly reduced C-Bill payout than the 100K the contract told.