To The Wyrm Ouroboros, I apreciate you trying to break it all down on what the actual cost is for a corp to make mercanarys but I think the math is off no offence. Anywho here it is in a nutshell sorry its long.
1. Read a high security briefing report. Its the age of the Internet you can find one. After that then you can figure out risk assessment for allowing people in a restricted area's. You can compromise millions/billions worth of research and risk personal's lives. On top of that lose key personal scientist engineers,ect ect that can set back research months if not years and waste more company money and time.
2 i understand you wanted to compare a special force team training and cost then chuck cyber wear on them to fit into shadowrun. Here is the problem with that. America has a huge over spending in the military budget because almost everything is out source. What iam trying to say is they buy from defense contractors they don't put scores of boots to build weapon/ammo/tech/uniforms they pay company's in defense contracts to build that for them. So the cost goes up in gear and training. If it was all done in house it be penny's to a dollar. Same cents/math it costs Nike less then a quarter to make a pair of shoes. Pull up zee German's war machine in world war 2 they mass produced and cut cost because majority of the bulk was in house. (i just got done watching snatch "zee Germans" is a line he keeps telling Tommy no offence to German people)
3.It doesn't cost anywhere near that much in the real world to build mercenary's. I am talking military training/ Para military not just trigger men. Don't believe me look it up. I'll even send you links from cartel mercenary's to cost of what other countries spend on mercenary's to blackwater. Not just their pay grade which is roughly ballpark figure 700 a day pay.
It be cheaper with the tech and cyber parts for a corp. Again they would get it cheap from subsidized company's. Even training would be cheaper in the future. Not just with skill wares they would cut on cost by running 100's of hours combat training and technical skills in VR. Just like the Air Force does with thier pilots in simulations.
Only shadowrun VR would be very sophisticated ground troop training aswell.
(sorry not posting it you want it ill sent it.last time i linked real world comparing to shadowrun,even done in tongue and cheek humor, i had a person go off about the illuminati. Was a mess of conspiracy theory's. They even linked the show conspiracy theory's. So again if you want it ill link it to you)
4. So lets break down the math on the pay grade since i already explained how training and tech would be cheaper. The pay grade that's a huge merry go round with the money the corp pays a salary offers discounts to buy the corps stuff or from a subsidiary of the umbrella megacorp. So money changes hands and goes right back to where it came from hence the merry go round effect. The real trick is, the umbrella mega corp and including subsidized company's under the umbrella can now claim loss at some point get tax write offs and turn loss into profit.
A simple real life example if you work for ford, and buy a ford. Sure they cut a few grand off the top in discounts but the money just changed hands back to the company and they turned a profit even with giving you a discount.
5. The whole point of having a deniable asset is to not have a trail leading back to who hired the run/hit. If that person gets picked up, killed or caught they have no idea who ordered it. The runners/hitters are just there for the money. That runs contradictory to releasing captured runners if they get caught at X corp then released to run against Y corp and get caught at Y corp. Y is going to learn about X which may or may not lead a hearing in corporate court over the matter.
6. If they were caught to begin with how would the head of security know they have 5 in stats? Of course the GM knows but the head of security as NPC, all he's got to go on is the assessment from feeds and gear and what ever creditable data he got out of them during the interrogation. Also do you make your players spend that kind of cash to get a 5 in a couple of stats?
7. Seriously just read the canon, not only in novels but other older source books. Corps are well known to kill personal that betray the corp let alone gun down shadowruners on runs. Sometimes even try to gun 'em down after they get what they want and dont want to pay for it. Sometimes they try to kill runners to tie up a loose ends
