For Riggers with expensive drones or vehicles, a Decker who's deck gets shot, or a Sammy who's cyberarm takes a called shot, this can be a big expense to fix, possibly more than their take on a successful mission.
For example My T-Bird Pilot's ride is $400,000. That means if he takes a single box of damage, it's $40,000 to fix. It makes the Gearhead bonus expensive to use for example (1 box of damage to the vehicle for each minute past it's initial bonus period.) Getting shot even once, taking multiple boxes of damage, would cost more to fix than multiple high-threat runs would pay, and that's just for parts.
So here's a theory (maybe more of a house rule) on making it cheaper using favors from contacts: Getting your stuff fixed is a favor, and the level of that favor depends on how expensive the repairs would normally be. According to the chart on page 389, A rating 6 favor covers a lone of gear valued at up to $500,000, while a rating 4 favor covers $50,000, and 2 covers $5,000. I think these values might also be reasonable for repair prices. A contact is willing to do a favor for you up to their loyalty rating without needing to be negotiated with.
QUOTE (page 389)
The gamemaster will look on the Favor Rating Table to see how big a personal favor you might be asking for. Favor Ratings range from 1 to 6; the bigger the number, the more you’re asking their contact to take on. Contacts will normally agree to personal assistance with a Favor Rating equal to or less than their Loyalty Rating. If the Favor Rating exceeds the contact’s Loyalty Rating, you’ll need to convince the contact with a Negotiation + Charisma [Social] Opposed Test.
QUOTE (later on page 389)
Connection Rating x 1,000¥ for goods or services rendered; they’ll probably lop off up to their Loyalty x ten percent if you’ve been nice to them. This doesn’t have to be a straight-up monetary donation—you could take them out for a nice dinner, or buy them a new commlink, put in some work at their favorite charity, get their apartment painted, or something else they’d like—but very few people are allergic to cash.
I like the "goods or services" line as it lends some credence to be applicable to repairs.So let's take my T-Bird Rigger as an example. He has a connection 1 / loyalty 5 T-bird mechanic contact named Moose. A personal rating 5 (Serious, between $50,000 and $500,000 in value) favor would costs me $500 and I don't even have to negotiate to get him to do it because the favor is equal to or less than his loyalty. I guess Moose, the t-bird mechanic at the cascade ork smuggler field has plenty of old junked t-birds he can scrap for parts, so it's cheaper for him to fix things then it is for me to buy the parts and fix it myself. Also, good scotch is hard to get in the mountains, and Moose and I go way back (at loyalty 5 he's basically my best friend.) "Hey Moose! I'm back from Seattle and I bought you this bottle of high-end 20 year old Scotch with my pay from that run. Oh by the way the Valravn got kinda shot up on the run. You want take a look a that for me later?"
The rules on contacts don't support this idea explicitly, as page 389 also says "A contact will still charge what the market will bear for services rendered, but he’ll also do it all under the table" for using a contact for normally legal activities and "Personal assistance is a little harder to define. It covers many kinds of aid that aren’t paid for with cash. Whether or not a contact is willing to render personal assistance is up to player and gamemaster judgment. Occasionally there might be a need for more formal guidance." Which means this entire concept of cheaper repairs through contacts is all up to GM judgement. $500 for Hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs seems odd, but so does $40,000 per box of damage.
I interpret that to mean that a basic rating 1/1 mechanic will fix your ride for market price, but without an official paperwork or records, in much the same way a street doc will patch your gunshot wounds without reporting them, but your paying for each night in his clinic using the Hospitalized Lifestyle rates. But, with GM permission, you can try to get repairs done as a favor instead of as a strait up transaction. That uses the favor rules instead. Your 1/1 mechanic contact is unlikely to do that for you without some serious negotiation, but your best friend the 1/5 mechanic has no problem with it.
Oddly enough the mechanics in the book don't apply a modifier on the negotiation roll to get a favor out of someone depending on the difference between the favor and your loyalty. I'd give the contact a bonus on their opposed roll equal to that difference, so trying to get a Rating 6 favor out of a Loyalty 1 contact gives the contact a +5. That does mean a Face with a lot of low level contacts is the king of getting cheap repairs, but also that any given character archetype should have a contact or two with decent loyalty for getting things fixed without going bankrupt.