Strategy for beating those 5-8 rep missions, and of course making money while doing so.

Think like a merc. Your job is to do what's easy for you, not piss off anyone important, and make enough to save up some real hardware.

This video is for the non-modded version of the game, with the LOTKL and HOTIS DLC.

You can start this strategy once you reach Reputation level 3-5. I did it at rep level 3.

Feel free to skip to the end (or to the bottom of this video description) for short a writeup of how to do it; advice includes what missions to take and not to take, who to work for, and goals from each mission. The majority of this video is proof of concept to show you that it can be done, rather than only offering advice.

The first real challenge in the game comes at the reputation level 5-8 regions in the game. These correspond to a difficulty level of about 20-60 out of 100. During this time, mercenaries often find themselves in a cycle of barely beating difficult missions (or outright failing them) and then spending too much on repairs/refits, so they don't actually make a profit.
The difficulty ramps up for two main reasons:

1) The game starts throwing heavy mechs and assault mechs at you. It's a lot harder than fighting mostly tanks, VTOLS, and turrets, with a few light or medium mechs.

2) You will often be leaving your home region, and fighting for factions with lower negotiation points. This means it's much harder to get money and salvage.

Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
4:40 - Mission 1 start
15:35 - Mission 1 end
18:30 - Mission 2 start
21:40 - Mission 2 end
23:05 - Mission 3 start
27:47 - Mission 3 end
28:48 - Mission 4 start
32:51 - Mission 4 end
33:38 - Over 8 Million C-bills, time to go into the central Inner Sphere to get an assault mech.
36:41 - Acquire first assault mech of the run
36:42 - Outro/write up

Strategy write up

Summary:
Your goal here is to use your starting lance to do easy, fast missions to save up money. Once you have 7+ million, head into the central Inner Sphere (towards Terra), and get an assault mech. Then bring it back to crush those 5-8 rep difficulty mission.

Missions types to choose:
Raid, Objective Raid, Warzone, Battlefield, High-risk/bonus pay missions (if you think you can beat them).

You want to be making about 1 million per mission (C-bills and salvage points combined). Not worth your time to work for less.

Cantina missions are great- if you get lucky. You might find a mech to turn in for cantina awards early game, you might not for ages. Cantina missions are still worth taking though, just don't spend too much time searching for hard to find items.

Mission types to Avoid:
Demo, scorched earth, beachhead, garrison, and defense. They take too long and are much more difficult early game.

Negotiation and factions:
- Get money early on, rather than salvage. Salvage is only worth it when your rep increases and you can start collecting good mechs with it. Early game, you can't sell salvaged mechs for very much money either due to having lower rep, so money is just better.
- Choose a faction early on. If you don't work for that faction only, at least try not to work against, you always want more negotiation points.
- Save money by only taking one fast mech on raid missions.

- Remember, early game, each mech has a specific purpose. Late game, when you get hero mechs and have assault mechs bristling with weapons, you can go for battlefield domination every mission.

Mech shopping:
-Save up at least 7 million C-bills before jumping to a system that sells assault mechs.
-You can only field 4 mechs maximum, so feel free to sell 1 or 2 to get that 80+ ton mech.
-Once you've got your assault, head back, don't try to do 60 or 70+ difficulty missions with one assault and mediums/lights.
-Hire pilots if their skill max is 10 or more than your current pilots. Fire who you don't need.


Mech customization:
-Get as much armor as possible on your assault. Early game it will draw a lot of fire because it will have more firepower than anything else on the battlefield.
-Don't feel bad about dropping a weapon or two for more armor/cooling. The assault will vastly overpower everything on the battlefield even missing some firepower.
-Group weapons from 1-6 according to their range. Longest range weapons in group 1, weapons with the next longest range in group 2, and so on.


Side notes:
-I did a level 54 mission with the stalker after, but it took about 15 minutes, so I didn't include it to keep this video short. Pay was 3.5 million with repair expenses of 7 hundred thousand.
- Sorry this video is so long! I think the proof of concept is important though.
-This is primarily for the career mode, campaign mode follows a different difficulty curve, and it guides you much more closely. My next video will be beating the same difficulty on the campaign, and with mods.

Thanks for watching.

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