We all know that contract values scale with Renown, but by how much? I couldn't find a guide on this topic, so I decided to figure it out myself.

I found the formula in scripts\contracts\contract.nut. It's complicated, which is probably why no one has written a guide about it before:

this.Math.minf(2.5999999, this.Math.maxf(1.35, this.Math.pow(this.Math.maxf(0, 0.003 * this.World.Assets.getBusinessReputation()), 0.39)));

This number gets multiplied against the contract's value. There are other multipliers (economic settings, difficulty of the job, etc), but we aren't looking at those today.

The function's growth rate decays exponentially, and has hard floor/ceilings at 1.35 and 2.6, respectively. Here is a graph:

[img]https://i.imgur.com/autk4Cc.jpg[/img]

It's not a very pronounced curve, and you can approximate it as a line with a slope of 0.0004

Some takeaways:

-The first ~720 points of Renown do nothing. In that region, you're being supported by the hard floor of 1.35.

-Anything after ~3870 Renown does nothing. You've run into the hard cap of 2.6.

-In the middle region, each point of Renown is worth roughly +0.0004, or about a 0.3% increase from the starting values of the contracts.

-Going from zero Renown to 3870 roughly doubles the value of contracts (it's actually more like +94.5%).

I've spot checked this empirically using the debug mode from Vilain Joueur and JCSato's Tweaks and Fixes mod to quickly alter my Renown. No obvious deviations from theory.

https://www.nexusmods.com/battlebrothers/mods/69

I found nothing that suggests that contract difficulty scales with Renown in any way. It only increases the payout.

In practice, contract values go up by more than this, because contract value also scales with difficulty, which in turn scales with player strength. Renown is not factored into player strength, but it would be very odd indeed to be at 3870 Renown and still only have three first level brothers.

The effective cap is kind of low. I get close to that value by the first crisis. The Ministrel seems like an especially bad use of a retinue slot, unless you are using him to quickly filter through tavern rumors. His +15% bonus to Renown means that you'll hit the cap of 3870 after earning 3365 "basic" Renown, which isn't much of a savings. It will actually be less than that, because you don't start the game with him, and he isn't even hireable until you've visited every town on the map. By the time you've done that, you probably have around 1000 Renown anyway. I doubt you will ever break even on the Ministrel, and he should only be hired if you're going for a high score or if you like the rumor ability.