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Money & economy

Arulco's economy still revolves around the five working mines, just as in vanilla JA2 — but 1.13 changes almost everything around them. Militia now cost money every night, loot can be sold in bulk straight from the sector inventory, prisoners can be ransomed, a second currency called intel exists alongside the dollar, and nearly every price in the game is exposed in Ja2_Options.INI or an XML file. This page covers where money comes from, where it goes, and which knobs change the game's financial difficulty.

All defaults quoted below come from the current GitHub-era data files (Data-1.13\Ja2_Options.INI, TableData\DifficultySettings.xml and friends). Older SVN builds may differ.

Starting cash

Your bank balance on day 1 depends on the difficulty you pick on the new game screen. The values live in TableData\DifficultySettings.xml as <StartingCash>:

Difficulty Starting cash
Novice $45,000
Experienced $35,000
Expert $30,000
Insane $15,000

The file accepts any value up to about 2 billion — even negative ones, if you want to start a campaign in debt. See recommended settings for how to edit it safely.

Income

Mines: your main paycheck

Six mines exist; five produce. Base rates below are from Data-1.13\Scripts\initmines.lua (mine setup was externalized to Lua): each mine has a base production per period, and income is processed four times a day, so the base daily rate is four times that number.

Mine Sector Ore Base income per day
San Mona D4 Gold $0 — abandoned, never produces
Chitzena B2 Silver $2,000
Drassen D13 Silver $4,000
Alma I14 Silver $6,000
Cambria H8 Silver $6,000
Grumm H3 Gold $8,000

Those are only the guaranteed minimums. At the start of each campaign the game hands out a number of random production increases — 25 on Novice and Experienced, 20 on Expert, 15 on Insane — each worth 20% of one mine's base rate, to randomly chosen producing mines. In the words of the script: "The total production is always the same and depends on the game difficulty, but some mines will produce more in one game than another, while others produce less." So in one campaign Drassen may be a treasure and in the next it's Chitzena that got lucky.

Owning the mine sector is not enough to see any of that money:

  • You must talk to the head miner. Production for you is zero until your spokesperson has spoken to the mine's foreman (the game halts income until fSpokeToHeadMiner is set, per Strategic Mines.cpp).
  • Income scales with town loyalty. The workforce that shows up equals the town's loyalty percentage: 60% loyalty means 60% of the mine's maximum rate.
  • And with how much of the town you hold. The rate is further multiplied by the fraction of the town's sectors under your control. Full income needs 100% loyalty and the whole town.
  • Sick towns dig less. With the disease system active, illness among the population reduces the effective workforce.
  • Optional: workers. With MINE_REQUIRES_WORKERS = TRUE (default FALSE, [Financial Settings]) income also depends on employed workers; newly liberated towns start at a 25% worker rate and you pay WORKER_TRAINING_COST ($30) per worker trained.

Payouts land in your balance four times a day, at 09:00, 12:00, 15:00 and 18:00 (first event at 9:00, then every three hours). Certain facilities and — if you play with the off-by-default Arulco Rebel Command layer (REBEL_COMMAND_ENABLED) — its mining policy can add a percentage bonus on top.

Two more things worth knowing: mine income is one of the main drivers of campaign progress (GAME_PROGRESS_MAX_POINTS_FROM_MINE_INCOME = 50 in [Strategic Progress Settings] — half the default progress weighting), so getting rich literally makes the enemy tougher and the shops better. And in current builds mines the Queen holds fund her war effort, so leaving Grumm in enemy hands has a price even if you don't need the cash.

The head miners

Per the Jagged Alliance wiki, the head miners work for the Queen only under duress and happily hand their profits to you once you liberate their town. Five of them exist — Fred Morris, Calvin Barkmore, Carl Tercel, Oswald Johnston and Matt Duncan. Matt Duncan always runs the Alma mine; Fred Morris is always the first head miner you meet elsewhere (he gets the dialogue that explains how loyalty and income work), and the rest are distributed randomly (initmines.lua reproduces exactly this logic).

Treat these men well:

Never attack a head miner

If a head miner is attacked, his mine permanently stops producing and the town's loyalty takes a hit (PlayerAttackedHeadMiner in Strategic Mines.cpp). There is no way to restart it.

The head miner is also your early-warning system: he speaks up when his mine starts running dry, and in Sci-Fi mode he reports when things attack his miners underground — the Crepitus can infest the Drassen, Alma, Cambria or Grumm mine and shut it down until you clear it out. See the Crepitus section of the side quests page (spoilers).

One mine runs out of ore

By default one mine will deplete during the campaign. Which one is controlled by WHICH_MINE_SHUTS_DOWN in [Strategic Event Settings] of Ja2_Options.INI:

; -1 = Game chooses a mine randomly.
; 0 = No mine will shut down!
; 2 = Drassen
; 3 = Alma
; 4 = Cambria
; 5 = Chitzena
; 6 = Grumm
WHICH_MINE_SHUTS_DOWN = -1

With the default -1 the game picks randomly, but never Alma (for quest reasons) and never the already-dead San Mona mine. The doomed mine gets a fixed ore supply: 20 days of full-rate production if it's Drassen, 10 days for any other mine. Only your mining consumes the ore — in current builds the Queen doesn't deplete a mine before you've profited from it — and since low loyalty slows extraction, the mine usually lasts longer in practice. When less than a quarter of the supply remains, production tapers off and the head miner warns you; the finance log marks the day it dies. Set WHICH_MINE_SHUTS_DOWN = 0 if you'd rather not deal with this event at all.

Finally, MINE_INCOME_PERCENTAGE in [Financial Settings] rescales everything above: 100 is vanilla income, it can go as low as 1 (a brutal campaign where loot is your economy) and absurdly high if you just want the money problem gone.

Selling loot

Battles bury you in captured rifles. 1.13 gives you a wholesale outlet:

  • Sector inventory selling. With SELL_ITEMS_WITH_ALT_LMB = TRUE (default, in [Financial Settings]), Alt + left-click on any item in the sector inventory screen sells it on the spot. SELL_ITEMS_PRICE_MODIFIER = 10 is a divisor: 10 means you get 10% of item value, 4 would mean 25%. Two special values exist: 0 makes the rate improve as campaign progress rises, -1 makes it worse as progress rises. Pair this with the DROP_ALL setting if you want enemies to drop everything they carry — see recommended settings.
  • Tony. The arms dealer in San Mona buys and sells weapons. Per TableData\NPCInventory\Merchants.xml he pays 75% of an item's value, charges 125% when selling, and his wallet refills to $15,000 a day — the biggest buyer in Arulco. He is only in his shop 80% of the time (CHANCE_TONY_AVAILABLE = 80 in [Shopkeeper Inventory Settings]), and getting to him means dealing with San Mona — see the early game walkthrough.
  • Franz Hinkle. The electronics dealer in Balime pays full value (buy modifier 1.0) but only carries $5,000 a day, so he's for your most valuable pieces, not your crates of worn AKs. See the late game walkthrough for Balime's shops.
  • Other dealers (Keith, Jake, Micky and company) buy at their own rates and wallet sizes, all defined per merchant in Merchants.xml — see Bobby Ray & item progression for how shopkeeper inventories work and XML files for editing them.

Selling to a dealer at 75–100% beats the sector-inventory rate of 10% by far, but dealers' cash is limited and hauling loot across the map costs time. Most players use Tony for guns worth the trip and bulk-sell the rest from the sector inventory where it fell.

Prisoners: ransom and more

The 1.13 prisoner system turns captured enemy soldiers into income. Each interrogated prisoner has a 25% chance (PRISONER_RANSOM_CHANCE) that someone pays for his release, a 25% chance to hand you intel (PRISONER_INTEL_CHANCE), and a 25% chance to defect into your militia (PRISONER_DEFECT_CHANCE) — saving you a training fee. Captured enemy generals never defect but command substantial ransoms. The full pipeline — capturing, prisons, interrogation points — is on the prisoners page.

Intel: the parallel currency

Since r8522 (February 2018) the game tracks a second resource next to money: intel (RESOURCE_INTEL = TRUE in [Intel Settings]). You earn it by interrogating prisoners, leaving disguised mercs to spy in enemy towns, photographing NPCs and locations for the R.I.S. website, reading classified documents and hacking computers in enemy bases, and recruiting certain NPCs. You spend it on the R.I.S. website (enemy positions, troop counts and movement, special information) or at a black-market trader in San Mona who sells high-tech gear only for intel. Money cannot buy these things — intel is its own economy. Details on earning and spending it are on the covert operations page.

Quest money and windfalls

A few one-off money-makers, kept vague here because this page avoids spoilers:

  • San Mona boxing. Win bare-knuckle bouts at the Extreme Boxing ring and collect double your $1,000–$5,000 bet, up to three fights per night — a genuine early-game income if you brought a brawler. Details in the early game walkthrough.
  • Kingpin's money. There is a very large stash of cash in San Mona with very large strings attached. What, where, and what happens if you take it: side quests.
  • The Chalice. A certain museum piece is worth $20,000 to one buyer — or a massive loyalty boost (which means mine income) if returned to its owners. See side quests.
  • Nuggets. Per the Jagged Alliance wiki, loose silver and gold nuggets can be found on the ground inside mine sectors and turned into cash.
  • The finance log also knows a one-time "Received donation from rich guy in Balime" event; it is not further documented here — ask on the Bear's Pit forum if you want to hunt it down.

Expenses

Merc salaries, contracts and insurance

Salaries are by far your biggest recurring cost, and 1.13 makes them grow: every time a merc gains an experience level, his salary rises by MERC_LEVEL_UP_SALARY_INCREASE_PERCENTAGE (default 25%, [Financial Settings]; the INI notes a hardcoded cap of $30,000 per day or $500,000 per one/two weeks, and the MERC_LEVEL_UP_MAXIMUM_SALARY_INCREASE_* keys can cap the raw raise). That cheap rookie you leveled into a killing machine will bill you like one at the next contract extension — A.I.M. contracts still come in the vanilla one-day, one-week and two-week flavors, each with its own rate.

The laptop's Malleus, Incus & Stapes Insurance Brokers ("M.I.S. Insurance") sells life insurance on A.I.M. contracts: you pay a premium per insured merc, and if the merc dies you receive a claim payout in the finance log. When extending an insured merc's contract the game asks whether to pay the premium for the extra days — and blocks the extension if you can afford the contract but not the premium.

M.E.R.C. mercs are billed differently: charges accumulate day by day on your account at the website (merc × days × rate), and you authorize payment there — the site keeps track of unsettled bills.

The strategic screen's projected daily expenses window can include contract costs; INCLUDE_CONTRACTS_IN_PROJECTED_EXPENSES_WINDOW in [Strategic Interface Settings] (default 1) controls whether it counts no contracts, only daily-pay mercs, or everyone.

The IMP fee

Creating an IMP merc costs IMP_PROFILE_COST = $3,000 ([Recruitment Settings]). With DYNAMIC_IMP_PROFILE_COST = TRUE the price multiplies by the number of IMPs you have already generated — $6,000 for the second, $9,000 for the third. It is FALSE by default.

Militia

Unlike vanilla, militia hit your wallet twice. Training costs MILITIA_BASE_TRAINING_COST = $750 per session, promotions cost the base price times MILITIA_COST_MULTIPLIER_REGULAR (1) or MILITIA_COST_MULTIPLIER_ELITE (2). Then every midnight you pay upkeep: $10 / $20 / $30 per green / regular / elite militiaman (DAILY_MILITIA_UPKEEP_TOWN_*). If you can't pay, militia desert. A country-wide garrison of elites is a real line item in your budget — do the math before you blanket-train every town.

Bobby Ray's

Once unlocked, Bobby Ray's online store will happily consume every dollar the mines produce: item prices plus shipping that depends on speed, destination and package weight — and in Drassen, Pablo may help himself to your shipment unless you tune the INI. Ordering, shipping fees and theft protection are covered on the Bobby Ray page.

Facilities and services

Many facility assignments bill by the hour, per TableData\Map\FacilityTypes.xml:

Facility use Cost
Resting or gathering rumors at a bar $15 per hour
Resting at the beach resort $15 per hour
Eating at the Army Barracks Cantina in Alma $10 per hour (see Food & water)
Ammo production lines at the Grumm munitions factory $50–$150 per hour per line

Skyrider's helicopter also charges per sector: HELICOPTER_BASE_COST_PER_GREEN_TILE = $100 through safe sectors, HELICOPTER_BASE_COST_PER_RED_TILE = $1,000 through sectors covered by an enemy SAM site ([Financial Settings]).

The money knobs at a glance

The settings people actually change, all verified against the current Ja2_Options.INI (see the options tour):

Setting Section Default Effect
MINE_INCOME_PERCENTAGE [Financial Settings] 100 Scales all mine income, 1–65535%.
WHICH_MINE_SHUTS_DOWN [Strategic Event Settings] -1 Which mine depletes; 0 = none.
SELL_ITEMS_WITH_ALT_LMB [Financial Settings] TRUE Sell from sector inventory.
SELL_ITEMS_PRICE_MODIFIER [Financial Settings] 10 Sale price divisor (10 = 10% of value).
MERC_LEVEL_UP_SALARY_INCREASE_PERCENTAGE [Financial Settings] 25 Salary raise per merc level-up.
MILITIA_BASE_TRAINING_COST [Financial Settings] 750 Cost per militia training session.
DAILY_MILITIA_UPKEEP_TOWN_* [Financial Settings] 10/20/30 Nightly pay per militiaman by tier.
IMP_PROFILE_COST [Recruitment Settings] 3000 Fee per IMP merc.
MINE_REQUIRES_WORKERS [Financial Settings] FALSE Adds a workers layer to mine income.
<StartingCash> DifficultySettings.xml 15000–45000 Day-1 bank balance per difficulty.

Budgeting through the campaign

Early game (before and during Drassen). Your starting cash has to cover an IMP ($3,000), your first A.I.M. contracts and the first militia sessions, so hire cheap — see starter tips for who. Take Drassen quickly, talk to the head miner, and remember income starts small: a fresh town has low loyalty, so the mine pays only a fraction of its $4,000+ base until loyalty climbs. The Drassen counterattack is a financial event too — hundreds of dropped guns to sell with Alt + left-click — and don't drain your account to zero the night militia upkeep is due.

Mid game. Cambria, Alma and Grumm roughly quadruple your mine income if you push loyalty up — completing town quests is economic policy in this game (see side quests). Budget for salary creep at every contract renewal, and plan for the day one of your mines announces it is running dry: when the head miner starts complaining, it is time to already hold the next town. Prisoner interrogation, boxing nights and selling surplus hardware to Tony smooth out the dips.

Late game. Money usually stops being the constraint — progress-driven prices and top-tier Bobby Ray toys are what your mine surplus is for, and intel, not cash, buys the reconnaissance that matters before Meduna. If the economy stopped challenging you long ago, that's what MINE_INCOME_PERCENTAGE = 25 and Insane's $15,000 start are for.

Sources