Me and my friends are almost finishing the Denver Missions and accumulated a lot of contacts during the campaign (specially me, since I've been playing with the same character since Mission 1).

Now, after getting a lot of contacts during the campaign (most of them with Loyalty 1 or 2) I've notice that I've been using the missions contacts than the ones I started with (a fixer, a smugler and a street doc). After getting Lady Jade as a Loyalty 3 contatct (because of the missions involving her) I've been getting all my stuff through her instead of my first smugler, but I digress...

Getting to point: I know that the last mission of a campaign is not finished when the first one is introduced to public, but if an initial list of contacts that would be more present during a campaign could be presented there would be more chances to interact with them and have the chance of their loyalty increase/decrease. Just my two nuyen on the matter.

That might be a good take down for the upcoming mission is to have at least some of the campaign contacts, especially fixers and the like, known and available to be taken ahead of time. I'll have to take it up with Bull, were already looking at ways to work improving characters non mission specific contacts into missions.

Thanks Lurker, I know that some contacts just show up for a single mission, while others are recurrent. But even for those that show up once it is better to have a contact who is somewhat central to the campaign and have the chance to have their loyalties increased/decreased.

SRM contacts have left something to be desired for a long time. I remember working on the issue back in SRM01 days, but I can't remember the outcome. The problem is that the campaign has fallen in love with the contact sheets, and that limits their use a lot. It's taken away GM discretion, and now your psychotic elven troll-slayer can get a +1 loyalty from a contact just by working with them again. On the other hand, if you did something that isn't specifically written in the mod, and your face had a great oppertunity to pick up a L1 arms dealer-- no dice.

Instead, I think that any of the written contacts (SR4A, Companion, etc) should be allowed to be given out by a GM. A list of these contacts and primary purpose should be provided as a download (it would help the GM greatly). However, no stats would be provided, and it'd be up to the player to copy his new contact to his character sheet (for copyright/usage purposes).

I'd like to see a karma cost for contacts.
I can buy Lucky for 40 Karma but not a blogger.

2 karma per Connections and 2 for Loyalty 1 (and max loyalty 1) seems very fair to me for a tournie char.
Its not efficient but its not discouraging starting contacts to be bought with BP, either.