At any stage of the game it just seems like the comlinks used by NPC are downright pathetic. But in the common TR2 they're just rediculous unless I've misread something. They seem to love having a corp exec using a rating two comlink, which probably costs less than his last meal.

Any rational for that?

Beyond missions how do you feel about how potent comlinks should be, especially on targets with cash.

It's pretty straightforward:

If the commlink is important to the adventure, we'll stat it out. If it's not important to the adventure, then we don't want the hacker/technomancer to be wasting any more time than is necessary.