How you play your early game can greatly impact how things progress later. For myself, I was interested in reasonably fast progression through the early stages to unlock certain "features" in the game. Keep in mind, I didn't do a ton of side missions prior to Alloway so your results may vary if you do. My lance going into the Alloway mission: (click thumbnails for full view) Blackjack - Me: focus on Piloting & Tactics I wanted to keep my main character safe so he could avoid injury and get as much XP as possible in the early game. With that in mind I went for a very heat efficient build with maximized mobility. While the dual AC/5s is not an overwhelming amount of damage, they can be fired every turn with little fear of heat. Combining that with liberal use of jump jets, I get a very consistent damage dealer over time. Two tons of ammo is enough to keep the ACs from running dry. Armor's not great, but I can jump every turn with little worry of overheating and combined with the AC's good range, I usually don't take much damage. Shadow Hawk - Behemoth: focus on Gunnery & Guts. Behemoth is my anchor and so I needed her mech to better suite that role and maximize her use of Bulwark. I dropped the LRM/5 and SRM/2. Added a second SRM/4 for better damage and added a lot more armor. She's relatively heat efficient and good at holding the line with Bulwark activated. I decided to leave on the standard 3 Jumpjets in case I needed her to get to high ground or disengage more quickly, but you could certainly drop the Jumpjets for more armor if you prefer. Vindicator - Glitch: focus on Gunnery and Tactics Glitch is apparently everyone's "best girl" (or waifu?) and so in keeping with this tradition I gave her a build that is least likely to get her into trouble. The Vindicator is a little slow for a 45 tonner, but the jump jets and all long range weaponry allow Glitch to keep most enemies at arms length. By dropping her secondary weapons (which I rarely ever used), I managed to add more heat sinks. After Alloway, I changed the PPC to an upgraded large laser and upgraded the LRM/10 to a LRM/15 for more indirect fire capability, but both builds worked fairly well in their role. Firestarter - Dekker (or Medusa) - no skill focus yet (left open for different tactics later) Dekker's starting Spider is a death trap and so when the opportunity to field a Firestarter presented itself, I ran with it and never looked back. This mech has been a key player in my early success. I usually keep it in reserve or have Dekker flank the enemy to confuse them and draw fire. But once I see a mech I want to capture, I send in Dekker and focus fire on it with his flamers plus any missiles I have available to call in. The end result is usually a dead enemy pilot and a (mostly) pristine captured mech. Rinse repeat as needed. Once his flamers run dry, I have him switch to melee. I buffed his armor significantly to allow him to mix it up with the enemy at close range, but I left one medium laser on him so he can still poke targets to drop their evasion when needed. Would anyone else like to show off their lance going into Alloway?
My waifu had red hair and super country sounding. Then I put her in the shadow hawk.... And she was the first of six to die in that damned thing.. Saint however is still going strong 4 missions later.
It's the first storyline mission on a moon where you raid a pirate base to recover "something important".
I did Alloway in the starting mechs, with their starting builds and didn't lose any of them. Nearly lost the blackjack though, with both arms, left torso and left leg being blown off and no armor anywhere to speak of. But it still made it back to base.
I never felt that the starting mechs were an issue, sure Decker's spider was mauled up a few times but never downwed, unlike all the mechs that it took out. I lost count before I retired it out. Out side of slowly upgrading the weapons to + & ++ when available I still rock the shadow hawk and one or two vindicator in my med/heavy Lance. Play them to their strengths and focus fire using the spider to draw individuals into your kill zone and profit.
I believe I went in with Shadowhawk, Blackjack, Vindicator and Spider. It wasn't terribly difficult, it got a little nasty at the end but as I've mentioned before, a boot to the head goes an awful long way regardless of the size of the mech.
Went starting build as well - though I'd been derping around before that for several RL hours leveling my MechWarriors, which helped quite a bit. The last fight, almost brought a couple of Mechs to the brink.. and I had several months of repairs/recovery to go through afterward, though as I rotated the point mech to split the damage.
