As a bit of a graphic visualisation of how dangerous the game is at these settings, this is my lance after my latest mission (2.5 skulls; generally that's lights and mediums, perhaps a heavy if it's an assassination mission):
I just barely scraped through when the "old decrepit lance of experienced MechWarriors" turned out to be this:
Yep, that's right, four heavies at 75% armour (guess that's the "old and decrepit" bit...), and with some rather skilled MechWarriors (they had their level 8 skills - the K2 kept moving after firing, the Grasshopper moved in phase 3 with my mediums, and the Dragon used Breaching Shot on a number of occasions).
I knew I had exactly zero chance in a stand-up fight (apart from the tonnage disparity, all my MechWarriors have Evasive Movement, and none have Bulwark), so I tried to keep running/jumping as far away from them each turn as possible, while still having LoS to fire on at least one of them. I ran out of LRMs, AC/10 ammo, and AC/5 ammo; in fact the only ammo I had left in the end was a couple of salvos of SRMs in the Panther and Jenner. The Shadow Hawk ended up brawling with the Dragon (which was the last opfor 'Mech standing) - not something I would have done in normal circumstances, but the Hawk had only a medium laser left to fire and pretty good armour coverage, so brawling it was. While they were slugging it out, my other three 'Mechs were firing everything they had at the Dragon - which wasn't all that much since the Jenner had lost both arms, leaving it with a single SRM-4 launcher, and the Centurion had lost the left torso and arm and was out of AC/10 ammo, so it was down to its two medium lasers (it was also internal all over, like in the screenshot above - I was terrified the Dragon would spare it a ML, which would have been enough to core it: I think it was down to 9 internal structure in the CT...)
The only one that still had something to deal real damage with was the Panther - which was actually the only thing that let me walk away from this one with all my 'Mechs and MechWarriors. My mouse pointer was hovering over the Withdraw button more or less every turn for the last ten or twelve rounds, but I never clicked it. And I did win in the end, but it might well be argued it was a Pyrrhic victory; the repair costs were substantial, but that's not the worst of it - look at the repair
time:
40-50 days each for the Jenner and Centurion really hurts - this is the reason why I hope there will be a way of gaining experience for our Med team and Tech team in Career Mode. A challenge is fun, no doubt, and I do have the C-Bills to just idle in orbit for three months, but it's not the most enjoyable of game-play.
The mission outlined above though, that really was extremely enjoyable; tense, adrenaline-filled, with a real sense of doom when the sensor contacts start to reveal one heavy after another. Then dread and trepidation every time one of those behemoths fired - was this the shot that would send a 'MechWarrior to that big ol' salvage heap in the sky? Would this one take a hard-to-come-by 'Mech from me?
These are the kinds of missions that make me love the game - another poster made a thread yesterday about the game "cheating" him out of assault salvage by dropping the difficulty; well, sometimes the game ups the difficulty too, and the above might be the result.
The Periphery is a dangerous place, even for a small 'Mech company.
