N18 Hive Scum, Bounty hunters (Thought Experiment)

[JawRippa]

Since current mechanics for hive scum and bounty hunters are less than ideal, I was wondering how would you go about fixing them?
What do you think should be the purpose of Scummers, bounty hunters and other "temporary" additions to your gang? What should be the pros and cons?

My suggestions:
You can include any of the Hired guns after generating scenario, setting up terrain and determining starting crew. In other words, they are never 'wasted'. You use the full fighter's cost to determine changed gang's rating, should you let them join your crew for the current scenario, not their hiring cost. Most importantly, hired guns can be added to your crew regardless of crew selection methods and allows exceeding scenario limitations for the crew.
However, if the gang has used hired huns in their previous battle and hires them again, then they cannot receive reputation for the current scenario - the word gets out that they are not fighting their own battles!

Hive Scum
The way I see it, scummers should be a cheap fodder that you plug holes with if your gang is undermanned at the moment for whatever reason.
For 10 credits you get a body with average stats, but 8+ LD, CL, WIL and INT (Their real cost is 30 credits). They come with their own gear, up to 30 additional credits. So, for 10 credits you get ~60 credit fighter value (note that for rating you use the full fighter's cost).
There is a catch though:

• You can hire 1 scummer per 3 gang fighters in the crew , up to 5.
• If scummer has a flesh wound or is seriously injured, they have to test cool or flee at the end of the round even if the gang is not bottling.
• To make them less good for breaking activation economy, they can only activate after all other non-scum fighters are not longer ready.

Bounty Hunter
Bounty hunters should be more of a rich gang tool. The way I see them, they should be used to cover gang's weaknesses: quick and agile melee fighter for Van Saars or long ranged support for Corpse Grinders.

You can inlcude 1 bounty hunter into your gang. They can select up to two skills and generate 1 random skill from any skill tables. You pay 1/5th of their full cost to hire them. Should a bounty hunter take out at least one enemy leader or champion (or most expensive fighter the enemy has if there are none of the above), your gang receives 1 reputation.

 

[LeperColony]

I feel Necromunda would benefit from a Blood Bowl style inducements system, so you could hire these guys to bridge rating gaps.

 

[JawRippa]

Updated the OP with my suggestions. Have I made hired guns desirable for hire in the slightest?

 

[Psyan]

This looks great. How long do you suggest that Scum and Bounty Hunters stick around? Just for the current battle or longer?

 

[JawRippa]

This looks great. How long do you suggest that Scum and Bounty Hunters stick around? Just for the current battle or longer?

Just for 1 battle. My problem with GW approach for BH is that they are very unpredictable in how long they are going to stay.
I'd rather have it being a constant thing and balance prices/effects on 1 salary = 1 battle

 

[JawRippa]

Another take on 'Why bring a temporary fighter in the first place if I can hire a ganger/champion permamently?':

Hired guns join the crews after choosing scenario, forming crews and 'equalizing' their costs with tactic cards - which means that their cost is unnaccounted for the starting crew. Starting with the gang with the highest rating, gangs announce whether or not they are using hired guns during the battle. Hired gun cannot be used if your opponent's rating is less than 400 compared to yours - nobody is going to take your gang seriously if you can't deal with a much weaker opponent without external help!

What all of the above means is that hired guns bring an 'unfair' advantage to one of the gangs for one battle, since they are unnaccounted for in terms of tactic cards. So an underdog would get help with tactic cards (and other boons such as extra fighters as suggested by White Dwarf article) and then get a hired gun on top of that.
To make it harder a for richer gang to bully a more poor gang, the weaker gang is the last to decide if they should bring the hired gun, so they could just wait it out.