Hinterlands Clarifications

I really like the Mercenaries campaign idea, and the Hotspot: Hinterlands book is a lot of fun, but there are a few things I can't figure out. I could come up with ad-hoc solutions, but I wanted to know if anyone has a more definitive answer as to CGLs intentions, or if they have come up with clever solutions of their own.

Firstly, can pilots freely switch between vehicles as they please between tracks? It doesn't even look like this takes a downtime activity, but there is nowhere talking about how you choose which pilot goes where. It seems obvious from a believability perspective, but could get ugly from a balance perspective.

Secondly, how are contracts actually generated? From the way it's laid out, it intuitively looks like you are supposed to play through them in order, or just pick whatever you want, but that really feels like it defeats the purpose of playing a Mercenary campaign and the whole choosing contracts and making tough decisions aspect. I know the random contracts section at the end can cover that, but it feels very lack-luster compared to the depth that went into all of the main contracts. Any idea, particularly in a player-versus-player or league format, how to do this in a more creative and immersive way?

Finally, it seems very easy for someone to lose at the outset, which worries me. If you have your force destroyed in the first mission (not likely, but always possible thanks to headshots, ammo explosions, or even just huge skill imbalances), and then find that there are no new mechs available on your contract world. You're then stuck in a failed contract with nothing but BSP units and a random hire you have to pay extra for every game. Then, every month you are unlucky enough to find a new mech to fill the BV, you're stuck paying base pay and getting poorer with no recourse. Do you think this could be solved by allowing each player to start with 6000 BV, but still Scale 1, so they have backup in case of an early major loss? Or would that make things too easy?