I play Shadowrun Dragonfall Directors Cut.

The Items I gave my party-members are marked as loaned, why? Are they lost after a run? Or is the only difference to their standard equipage, that they can be changed by player?

I would like to buy my party-members some better weapons / decks / drones / foci...

They're marked as loaned because, well, they are loaned to them by you. Basically, loaned means you equipped your teammates with weapons from your inventory. Are they lost after a run? If i remember correctly, no, but there was a bug back then which made them dissapear; I guess it's fixed by now.

As for buying new/better weapons for your party, keep in mind that your party members gain experience from the runs and they also upgrade their weapons on their own so, even though you are definitely able to give them whatever weapons you want, they better stay with their upgraded ones. If you *must* give a weapon to a certain party member because you may find it useful during a run, feel free to do it in a secondary weapon slot rather than ditching their default (and upgraded) weapon.

I think you should draw a line whether you should use your money to upgrade yourself (weapons, health supplies etc), and upgrading your teammates. And, as i said above, since teammates will take care of themselves anyway, so should you so keep them money for yourself. ;)

How interesting! You probably saved me from some faults and frustration. I must admit that I'm unsure about the party-management in this game - I miss the "standard" one.

Thanks for your help!

You're welcome! And don't miss out on playing Hong Kong too; it's great. ;)

I played both Dragonfall and Dead Man Switch (SR Returns) with the same Dragonfall engine (see here how to do this:
www.gog.com/forum/shadowrun_series/dead_mans_switch_in_dragonfall_standalone).

In DMS all loaned weapons return to your stash after the run like they should (unless the character carrying them is killed).

In Dragonfall however, they tended to disappear. So I guess the bug wasn't completely fixed...

Be careful. I gave up buying kit for my squad. Disposables are fine, but weapons and spells tend to waste limited cash: remember to check the other team members' stats before you but them something, because minimum requirements are only displayed for the PC in the merchant dialogue, and there are few extra slots for discretionary items for the others (health-packs, accuracy- speed- and damage boosts, etc. are fine, but make sure that the spellcaster can use the —expensive— advanced spell, or the marksman can shoot the superior weapon).

I tried buying clothing as well, but gave up (there is not enough money to upgrade all the equipment for the PC at every level).

The most annoying aspect is that you won't know for sure if you have been clever or misguided until the next mission, when you can deploy the character and the pre-mission inventory screen allows you to equip the character with the weapon/item/spell you just bought!

IMO it's not worth it to spend money on stuff for your team, since what they come with is more than good enough usually. I do often give them some of the free things that I'd grabbed from previous runs though (e.g. the Steyr for Eiger, or possibly spells for the Shaman (if/when he has the ability to use them)).

That said, depending on what skills you have, you could quite well be drowning in money by the end.

I've had stuff disappear on me before too, but not for a while - thought patches fixed this a while ago...

Giving your party members your excess consumables such as first aid kits and grenades can be useful.

Also, you can't buy two of any item, so if you want to give Glory some throwing knives, you'll not have them for yourself, for example.

I tend to give old equipment to team members (if they can use it), like,say, lower level spells to Dietrich (once he has the stats to use them), rather than selling them.