MechWarrior: Lost?

Reminder, I'm using one button to take screenshots, meaning that the second you press a button it's gone so fast even a machine can't capture it.

Continuing my quest to find Griez, I head to Land's End. Here, there are no chances to take missions, but if I go to the bar and order a drink, I can meet with someone who knows where he is. Exit and reenter, and I threaten him unless he tells me where Griez is. The guy tells me to head to Delacruz. It's here that I find him, living like an Arabian sheik.

He isn't the guy I want though, oddly enough, and judging by how elaborate the game describes his underground base, fighting him is suicide without some guys on my side. However, he does offer to tell me what I want to know if I deliver some merchandise to Dustball. There, I'll be told what I need to know. However, Dustball is a planet in the northwest and I'd prefer to get another mission through before spending another 150k on travel.

Since there's no missions on this world, I head across the border back to Davion and do a security duty mission. This one goes well for me, because he decides to ignore me and head for what I'm defending, which exposes his backside to me. He never even gets off a shot, and I cripple his legs. That leaves me 250k richer.
 

I sure love being given choices with no way of knowing what the right one is.

Now that I've got a little cash, I head to Dustball, which turns out to have been ironically named. Home of the pleasure domes. I meet with the agent and after removing the goods, tries to kill me, at which point I get the chance to either run or fight. I fight, at which point I get a flowery description of Gideon kicking him and the lazer shot bouncing off some walls and hitting the goods I gave him. I get another chance to fight or run. If I fight again, the goods explode and kill me, so running is the safe option. As I hide, the guy says out loud that Griez wants me dead because I might know about a ship used for smuggling. He then tells me to look for it, the name of the ship being the Stone Arrow.

The barkeeper has plenty of information about it. It turns out it arrives here on Dustball from time to time, the captain calls himself Kangaroo Jack. Which at the time was probably just a weird name, but now outs the owner as a man who enjoys classic cinema of the 21st century. Unless there are millions and millions of kangaroos out in the stars, but since his actual name is Willard Puritan, that seems unlikely. His brother, Wendall, drives a Scorpion for Smithson's Chinese Bandits, who are currently pulling garrison on Mosiro. I'm either going to interrogate him or capture him, so off I go.

You can stick this much text on-screen, but you can't tell me what I'm looking for in the intro?

Heading to the mech bay, I find him working on what is apparently an old mech. After some conversation, he tells me that he and his brother don't get along, and that whatever I want to see him for is bad. He tells me to head to Delacambre, where he has a woman. As I leave, a dark figure attacks me and I get another choice of fighting and running. Fighting gets me killed, but if I run I can survive to live another day. Despite having a destination, the amount of travel is getting to me, so I head to the first planet I can which offers missions, in which case, is Betelgeuse in Liao.

Checking the news again, there's a criminal named Wayland Smith who is worth 50k, which is not a good deal considering how much effort that would likely be. McBrin has stolen the Vandenburg family vineyard by using the finance group he cooked up. And the Federated Suns have concluded some wargames in order to show they're not pushovers. My mission ends up being another garrison mission, in which I take out one scout who never even attacks me. Easy money. 

Delacambre is on the far east side of Davion space, costing me nearly 200k in travel fees. There is nothing here I can do. No girlfriend, no missions, no nothing. I reload my save after the last mission and do another one. Defense of field com unit. This one is a surprise in a sense, it's another mission where the enemy ignores. This time, rather than a light mech, it's a medium one, I believe. Never attacks me. Nearly takes out the unit, but I do it before he can take my mission fee. How much does this earn me in salvage, considering that I'm getting a single digit percentage? 79k of C-bills. I see how this should have gone. If I was smart and actually went after medium and heavy mechs instead of just fighting evenly, I could have enough money by now for another mech and be an actual team of mercenaries.

At first, I think I've put myself into a technically unwinnable situation, but fortunately, there is still hope. On Tiantan, a group of mercenaries known as the Gray Death Legion massacred helpless civilians. This is the juiciest target yet, I just need to head out to where they were and find out where they went. Which actually means heading to the only named place there I can reach, Tikonov. This too, is a dead end. Well, mercenary work should be fun.

I'm feeling overconfident, so it's time to try to take out a medium mech in a normal fight. It turns out, when your enemy actually fights back, you really can't just take out a medium mech in a light mech. It might be that the previous mechs I found were actually just light mechs, but the amount of missiles this particular model can pump out is too much for me to handle outside of luck. That said, I do manage to do a defense mission despite the enemy seemingly being in another medium mech.

I try another mission against a medium mech. Several times. The idea is to fight smarter, not harder. If I sneak up behind them, I can attack their less defended side. Sneaking doesn't really work since the enemy automatically starts moving whenever I get within a certain distance, and by the time I get close, they've turned around and are shooting at me. Right back where I started. That leaves the other option, shoot him in the legs. If you lose a leg, you fall over and lose, because you can't hit anything. I can't damage him enough in the legs before he takes me out in some way, so this just isn't happening.

So, it's off to deal with garrison duties where the enemy won't attack me head-on. These aren't going to be interesting anymore, simply because all one-on-one missions will end the same. I get token damage, he gets knocked down, I start raking in the C-bills. That leaves me to just monitor the news, since I have no leads on the chalice anymore.

In Galedon, Wolf's Dragoons contribute heavily to local mayhem, in-between slaughtering Kurita troops in battle, they kill civilians in a bar brawl. Sadly, by the time I've heard of them, they're already off somewhere, likely to work for Davion. Interestingly, Kurita and the Dragoons were supposed to be working together. I doubt they're the people I'm looking for, just a sepcial combat target.

I head back to Kurita space. No real reason or destination, just feel like improving relations with them. Interestingly, I try a defense mission, since it had a medium mech as the opponent...and no fight occurs. This, apparently, is enough to constitute breech of payment. Yeah, I think I'm going to stick to Liao space.

This, as it turns out, also puts me in a situation where I can defend against a medium mech. If I go behind him as he heads towards his objective, he does nothing to stop me as I follow behind him and pelt him with lasers. As long as you aren't in an enemy's line of sight, it seems like there's nothing he'll do to you.

My next mission tests this to the limit. I do another defense mission against a medium mech. Or rather, two of them. Their AI is the same as in previous defense missions, ignore me, go after their target. This turns the mission into a simple case of me gunning down two medium mechs. I don't succeed in time before one reaches the factory I'm defending...but it seems like I took him out before he does any serious damage to the factory. This nets me a cool 500k. A few more missions like this and I might just get myself an ally.

I do another mission. Turns out that just about everyone says you failed a defense mission if nobody ever shows up to fight you. Apparently some people haven't heard the phrase, no news is good news. Speaking of news, two important royals of Davion and Steiner wed, and "The Fox" has declared war on House Liao. Who I guess is a member of House Davion. This is unfortunate for me, seeing as those are the two groups I'm on good terms with, and Davion is currently kicking Liao's butt. The question is, do I stick with the war or flee for safer passages?

So I do another defense mission for Liao, and surprisingly, nothing happened and they still paid me. Guess war does that to someone. Off-screen, the planet I'm on, Tikonov, is supposed to be in Davion hands, even though nothing changes on the map screen and in the missions I get. This is more or less how it goes as the war continues. I get missions from Liao, plenty of cash for doing so, and Davion is constantly kicking their butt off-screen.

The five year mark passes and McBrin finds the chalice on an undisclosed bandit world. He gets the Dukeship (Dukedom?) and I have lost. The game continues, however, and I guess I can continue as long as I want to? It seems after a while, there's just no story and there's seemingly no way for me to actually lose short of going back to Ander's Moon.

Now that I have enough to buy another decent mech, I can hire myself another guy to pilot my old Jenner. Because I got myself a Shadow Hawk and I'm going to use the increased firepower to change approximately nothing about my usual strategy. I do hire a fairly good quality guy for the princely sum of 1000 a month. That's 12k a year. For reference, every mission I've done has paid out at least 140k. Even considering I'm repairing and rearming the mechs myself, that's cheap. It would have been even cheaper if I got a rank amateur for 400. 

Friendlies operate on a simple command screen. Each mech gets a command at the start of the mission, corresponding to whatever the objective is. If it's to defend something, they defend it, if it's to attack, they attack it. Meaning that in an attack mission, you can start thinking about strategy, but in a defense mission, it's safe to leave them to their own devices. Especially since the game doesn't pause for any of this. Hope the hostile wasn't right on top of you!

Any real command I can give here is effectively pointless. By the time I give it out, the enemy is already within range, and he goes blindly after him. This is an interesting aspect, but does bias the use of these missions to solo acts. Because having an ally turns a defense mission from a safe and easy way to get capital into an incredibly risky venture. See, now the enemy knows that he's outnumbered, he'll continue his blind attack at the object I'm defending. If he thinks he's about to die, he activates his jump jets, flies over us and then lands inside the building. This means if I try to hit him, I accidentally attack the building and he does nothing, content to let me do his job for him.

Jump jets, are installed on most mechs and are a complex bit of gameplay which changes movement considerable. I can't figure it out and just end up smashing my mech's legs. This was even with the Jenner, a light mech. Not even going to try it on the Shadow Hawk. I feel like in a game like this its tactical utility is limited to points where I was probably going to lose even if I knew what I was doing.

At this point, that's about it. I can do missions across the galaxy to my heart's content. You know, except if I try to get missions from someone I've ticked off too much. They'll let me stay there, but giving me a mission is too much, apparently. At this point I feel quite strongly that there isn't much point to hanging around. It's nice that it's an option, since otherwise this would be a giant galaxy of stuff to do while you're slavishly limited to the plot, but I need to solve the actual plot.

This Session: 2 hours

Total Time: 3 hours