I really need to start messing with the NPC AI and see what I can do to make them anything but pushovers. I've tried the hardest snub missions I could find that only spawned snubs with strong guns strong shield strong armor etc and every single time I left the battle with full nanobots. You do them in groups and any potential difficulty immediately drops to zero; may aswell be shooting the radiant NPCs without any real equipment. Them regening and shield batting is just annoying.
I still remember that one time I managed to make NPCs in the vanilla campaign do an early turn every once in a while and pretend they knew what they were doing. That was fun.
Also I agree, they pay way too much money. They need to pay a substantial amount, but not so much that it completely breaks the economy (further). This is coming from someone who has a bank that is constantly under 20 million so it's saying something.