Basically every time I played JA2 since the first time I play more or less the same way: I hire mostly the same good mercenaries, proggress to better ones, I go after the mines first so I have a healthy income, I do a bunch of IMPs, and I cheesy my way out of Drassen counter-attack (save scum) or even disable it. I have one great team doing mostly everything combat related until I can recruit another also great one. This time I want to change things a bit not only in mods and options.ini, but also how I approach and roleplay the game. To top that, it's the first time I will be playing with Drop All and equipping the militia myself to make things more different. I dropped the sell value by 50% because I'm afraid of having way to much money.

I want to feel more like I'm training a rebellion and soldiers as an advisor, not only fighting the war myself. To do this, I am hiring mostly inexperienced and cheaper mercs and a few great ones. The idea is to use the experienced mercs to train the younger ones, so Teatching trait and high wisdom (for students) became very valuable. As one can imagine, most of my mercs comes from MERC now, while I use a few AIM ones to train them or do the heavy lifting in the fights.
To make it viable I will play much slower than I used to, really taking as much time I want. I wont be taking Drassen early on, for example. My idea is to make San Mona my first base of operations. Deidranna don't send her army there (right?), wich saves my the trouble and money of defending it by not training militias and a safe place for my small military academy. My main source of income will be box fights and loot since I will have no mine, and Tony will be my main source of stuff outside loot itself, not Booby Rays. I plan to have much more mercs than I used to because I want many students and teatchers spending days training while another team go out doing guerrilla warfare for loot.

- I never really trained much in JA2 ever, either Practice or Student. How viable it really is? Some mercs I want to train have low wisdom (~50) or 1/2 and 1/4 learning penalty on them... how viable is to train them?
- Does Kingpin sector will go hostile if I steal his loot or will only send his assassins? Can I still do box fights after killing him?
- Does the teacher efficiency apart Teacher trait ONLY depends of his number on the relevant skill or does his personality, level and leadership also play a hole?
- How much income I can expect from Drop All? How much of the total cost you guys usually use without breaking the game economy? (I'm using 50% right now)
- I'm not sure how to deal with cities counter-attacks (AV has on all of them), I don't want to cheese it. I know the topics that discuss it, but I had another idea:
↳ If I let Deidranna recapture the city, can I slowly lure those troops out of the city by forcing her to relocate by attacking somewhere else and trying to lure some of them out of the city?
↳ Do the counter-attack happens only the first time I capture the city or will it happen again if I let her recapture it?

I will use no IMP. It would be too easy to create the perfect teacher or student or brawler or whatever, plus I want to experience mercs I never used before.

AIM:
Raider: not only one of the only two Squadleaders, but also a decent soldier and Teacher. He will teach whatever needed early on, but I want him for his Squadleader trait and decent stats to command the team that will by fighting Deidranna forces for loot to fund the "academy".

Ice: Teacher and high AGI, high DEX and high MRK. Worth his weight in gold!

Grizzly: HtH and Bodybuilding, he will be the one doing the box fights. I know 'It' could do the same for much cheaper, but It attributes and low wisdom make he useless for anything else and occasionally I want my fighter to actually fight outside the box (pun intended). I could have hired Numb, a MERC, but Grizzly background "daredevil" is so much better than Numb "punk" and I'm not sure how much Martial Arts is better than HtH+Bodybuilding. I may bring Numb anyway later own as a student or to save costs.

MERC:
Leon: the only other Squadleader alongside Raider and also a teacher... but old as war itself. High level and MRK, but awful AGI and DEX makes his combat usefulness crap. Despite being a teatcher I bring him as a student because I want him to lead my second team (and snitch on them) so I want to train his AGI and maybe DEX to decent levels but he progress at 1/4 rate, so not sure if worth it.

Sam: another old f*ck like Leon, but teacher and high MRK. He is my MRK teacher and that's all. I wasn't expecting much of his usefulness in combat but he is kinda a decent sharpshooter, better than Leon at least, and can hold his own on defense when he don't need to move much.

Wahan: one of my students. Inexpensive and with 82 wisdom he is one of the few MERCs with a working brain inside his head and I want to make a Sulik out of him! (Fallout 2... anyone?)

Elroy: a student, but a crappy one. With only 50 Wisdom I will suffer to train him but he is the only Spy in both AIM and MERC and I want my f*cking James Bond, Elroy, get your sh*t together!

Ears: another student. Not great wisdom with only 72 but I find his trait combinations of Radio Operator, Scouting and Snitch very appealing.

Gaston: best sniper in the game and is a MERC charging $700 daily less than Reaper, AIM equivalent. Sorry, Deidranna, but I will bring someone actually capable of killing your troops.

Cougar: a MERC that is decent in combat!? Get to da choppa!

Flo, Gumpy and Speck all have the personality trait and good wisdom, but their traits and background are not that needed. Well, Flo at least is a radio operator.
I think Elio is a good candidate, not great wisdom but he only really lacks in MRK to be decent. Numb could also be made better.
Turtle seen fun at first, but his background as a fatso cripples him. May train him anyway at least to interrogate at my prison and be able to defend it.
I wish I could also make Tex better, alongside Turtle they are the only Gunslingers, but Turtle is fat and Tex is dumb...
From AIM any high wisdom is good, like MD, but most of them already are quite capable/expensive so no point in training them.