I've never heard any such clairification. My impression was the opposite, that it had been clarified somewhere that everything needed to be paid for, but nothing was kept. So it is an expensive choice nobody will make (except in unusual circumstances). Similar to Bounty Hunters.
I guess this is another case of that 'automatic filling-in-the-blanks' someone already mentioned recently... Well, I'll just 'officially' House rule it to make sense (the way me and my group have been playing it by common-sense agreement), as in Pay the (30 creds) Hiring cost and the (60 creds of) limited equipment is 'free of charge', cause otherwise it doesn't work at all (named characters come with more unique/rare equipment and additional skills/rules, so their exorbitant hiring cost seems more justifyable, and anyway anybody hiring one of those will do it using the Underdog's bonus 'free creds' so it isn't such a big pill to swallow then).
Anyway, if you go with the RAW Hiring cost + Equipment cost both adding to the rating/costs for hired guns, the Iron guild's party is 3-5x 90 rating (so 270-450 rating added to the crew), but in this case it can be paralleled by the 'underdog' opponent by hiring the exact same number of Hive scums if they wanted (though I'd argue they are more likely to hire a big time named Bounty hunter or brutes for the same cred value rather than measily generic Hive scums).
That is for the probably cheapest guild party.
Lets try and calculate a rating for the Slaver entourage, starting just by adding up their equipment:
Chain lord (Leader) comes with Light Carapace (80), Bio booster (35), Stim stash (30), and either a Chain glaive (60) or Chainaxe+Shock whip (30+25) so 215-210 credits just in equipment.
The Shackleman (supposed champion) comes with Shock stave (25), Harpoon launcher (110), Flak armor (10) and a Cult icon (40), for a total of 185 creds of equipment.
Finally the 2x Pitfighters (Bodyguards) each come with a Chain glaive (60), Flak (10) and Stim stash (30) so 2x 100 creds of equipment.
All together this entourage brings in 600-595 credits in equipment.
The fighter's stat lines are a bit more challenging: The leader has stats roughly in line with a Goliath champion (or more likely the goliath-like Venator hunt champion profile) so lets say 85 creds. The Bodyguards seem comparable to Goliath Juves with an extra attack (and a skill) so let say around 50-60 points each. Finally the Shackleman is weird: he has pretty bad combat stats (except his 2 wounds) and average mental stats, especially when you remember this BS 5+ guy is carrying a Harpoon launcher (without suspensors mind you) sp I would evaluate him in line with the bodyguards at 50 points. that gives us a rough estimate of 250-ish rating for the naked fighters + 600 rating for their equipment: that is 850 extra rating without any adjusting modifiers (and my estimate of the naked fighter's values was fairly conservative).
Now how do we adjust the rating? Yes they bring 600 credits of equipment, but I'd argue it is sub-optimally allocated and in some cases very superfluous/wasted (looking at the shackleman in particular). In most cases the Pit fighter's skill won't come into play unless they get an extra activation from the Chain lord and similarly the shackleman will never be able to fire his expensive gun without extra activations from the leader, meaning that if you can pin down the Chain lord you completely nerf any combat utility/combo potential of the entourage for the round and they become just an overly equipped bunch of meat bags... And to be clear, I believe the slaver guild is one of the most potent Guild entourages in terms of fighters.
