BATTLETECH Career Mode – for Total Noobs

Overview

This guide is for mech warriors ready to take the plunge into Career Mode. This is not a comprehensive battle tactics, mech build, or mech warrior skills guide, there are plenty of those already. This guide is based on the core Battletech game, not the expansions or any mods.A major component of your success in Career Mode is time management. You have a limited number of days to establish your legacy, and you cannot afford to waste time waiting for your mech warriors to heal, or repairing damaged mechs, when you should be out there completing missions. These suggestions will help you focus on the necessities of improving your Mech Warrior career scoreboard.While I don’t agree with every suggestion in the linked guide below, it does provide an in-depth look at all the ways to accrue points in Career Mode. It includes a thorough dissection of all the various categories for increasing your career scoreboard. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, then take a look!https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2193968918Mech warriors, prepare for efficient time management!

Guide Terminology

Throughout this guide I refer to the very early game, early game, and mid-late game. For these purposes, the very early game refers to when you’re completing .5 to 1 difficulty rating contracts. The early game refers to when you’re completing 1.5 to 2 difficulty rating contracts. And the mid-late game refers to when you’re completing 2.5 and higher difficulty rating contracts.

Ok, let’s move on.

Difficulty Settings

Don’t Be a Snowflake!

The first thing you do when starting Career Mode is determine the difficulty settings. This section doesn’t go into detail for all the difficulty settings but it does highlight a few which I feel are important.

The only changes I like to make are to check the boxes for Mech Destruction and Lethality. This increases your score multiplier to 1.00 – if you care about that sort of thing. It also increases the stakes of every mission, which I think is important for Career Mode.

You can change the required amount of salvage to build a new mech, but the default of 3 feels about right to me. You can also change if mechs you create from salvage come already equipped – as if it just magically happens when your techs bolt together torsos and limbs. However, imho this breaks immersion and makes the game a bit cheesy.

Don’t let my crustiness determine how you play Career Mode. Play the game the way you enjoy and experiment with the various difficulty settings to find what feels right for you. However, be aware that lowering the difficulty means you won’t earn as many points for your Career Mode legacy.

Who Are You?

Create Your Mech Warrior

The second step in Career Mode is choosing the Character Origins, Background Stats, and Portrait for your new mech warrior. This impacts the disappointingly infrequent RPG elements of Career Mode, but it also determines your starting skills and location in the star system.

Your portrait is totally up to you, but you’re not stuck with it. You can change your portrait any time during Career Mode. Personally, I enjoy spending a bit of time customizing my portrait, name, and call sign, because I feel more attached and invested in my mech warrior.

Once I’m in game I also customize the names, call signs, and especially the voices, of the rest of my mech warriors. The call sign and character name randomizer are actually pretty good, and I usually settle on names for each mech warrior in less than a minute.

Mech Warrior Recruitment

Get Your Crew Together

At the start of Career Mode, I suggest recruiting a few extra mech warriors so you have 7 or 8 total pilots. A random head shot from a missile can injure your mech warrior and require a few weeks of recovery time. In the early game this is a huge setback unless you have extra mech warriors. You cannot afford to sit around not completing contracts because you’re waiting for a mech warrior to heal. I also suggest rotating your mech warriors so they all gain a similar amount of experience, rather than leveling up only four core mech warriors and occasionally substituting in a scrub pilot in a pinch. In the mid and late game after you build more Pod upgrades you’ll want to recruit several more mech warriors. Not necessarily because you need more mech warriors to complete contracts, but so you can earn more points for your career legacy.

Starting Mechs

Refit ASAP!

At the start of Career Mode you are randomly assigned five mechs. These mechs aren’t optimally outfitted, and I suggest two risk vs reward methods for resolving this issue.

Engineering Ship Upgrades

First Things First

Prioritizing your Ship Upgrades is a crucial part of your success in Career Mode. You should always have a ship upgrade in progress, so be sure to have enough C-Bills on hand to pay for them. The high-end upgrades cost more than 2 million C-Bills each! When your current ship upgrade is almost complete, check your finances to see if you need an immediate C-Bill boost to purchase the next ship upgrade – they’re expensive!

There are three categories of ship upgrades: Systems & Support, Combat & Deployment, and Personnel & Medical. Ship Upgrades are listed here in order of importance.

Recreation
The Recreation upgrades increase your mech warriors’ Morale and unlock narrative options for certain RPG events. Morale determines how often your mech warriors may perform special actions durnig combat, like Precision Shot and Vigilance. With max Morale, your mech warriors get Precision Shot or Vigilance actions nearly every turn, which often makes or breaks your missions. Once your morale on board the Argo is at max, you can begin upgrading other features of your ship.

Repair and Refit
If you’re careful with your mechs, you won’t need to repair them often in the very early and early game. Minor internal armor repairs might only require a couple of days to repair, while replacing entire limbs or torso sections may take a week or more and cost a hefty amount of C-Bills. In the mid and late game your mechs will take more damage and need repairs more often, so wait a bit before investing too much in Repair & Refit upgrades. The extra mech bays are the last Repair & Refit upgrades you need. Most extra mechs should be put into storage or sold.

Med Bays
Your mech warriors will get hurt from time to time during missions, mostly from lucky head shots while getting peppered with missiles. Unfortunately, your mech warriors heal at a much slower rate compared to the time it takes to repair your mechs. Fortunately, if you’re careful, your mech warriors won’t get hurt too often, and if you have enough backup mech warrior recruits the occasional injury shouldn’t prevent you from completing contracts. In the early game an injured mech warrior might be sidelined for three to four weeks, but that’s when your extra recruits step in to pilot a mech. In the mid and late game you can’t afford for your mech warriors to be sidelined for such a lengthy duration when they should be gaining xp from completing missions.

Pods
Upgrade to your Gamma Pod for additional upgrade options for Recreation and Med Bays, and to max out the number of mech warriors you can recruit. I suggest upgrading to Med Bay 3 immediately after completing the Gamma Pod.

Power System, Structure, and Drive System
Wait to upgrade these only when necessary as a prerequisite for Repair and Refit, Recreation, Med Bays, and Pods upgrades.

Training Modules
IMHO, the training modules are a trap in the early game, using precious resources and time you need for more pressing upgrades. Your mech warriors will gain plenty of experience by completing missions. A common misconception regarding the Training Modules is that they provide 20K to 30K experience for your mech warriors – they DON’T! Training Modules only provide experience for mech warriors with LESS THAN 20K to 30K total experience. Your more experienced mech warriors won’t benefit at all from Training Modules. Save these upgrades for when you begin recruiting lots of new mech warriors with low skill levels.

Negotiating Contracts

Salvage vs C-Bills vs Reputation

Very Early Game – .5 to 1 Difficulty Rating Missions
In the very early game you want to negotiate for more C-Bills than Salvage. You need those C-Bills immediately for Ship Upgrades, and most missions pay more than the value of salvage you might acquire. For .5 difficulty missions I suggest increasing the C-Bill payment to one step below max, and lowering the salvage option to one step above minimum. After your mech warriors gain their first major skill and you have a little bit of a financial cushion, you’ll want to negotiate 1 difficulty rating missions with a 50/50 split of C-Bills and Salvage. Those pesky Locust, Commando, and Spider mechs you’re consistently obliterating are worth 170K to 200K+ C-Bills when you sell them, and will help boost you’re finances in the very early game. Always select those mech scraps as your salvage choice after successful missions.

Early Game – 1.5 to 2 Difficulty Rating Missions
After your lance is upgraded to a heftier composition of all medium mechs, you’re ready for 1.5 difficulty rating missions. The 1.5 difficulty rating missions are your early game bread and butter for salvage. At this point you should negotiate for slightly more salvage than C-Bills because you’ll acquire parts from destroying 35 ton or heavier mechs in combat. The resale value on such mechs is often more than the C-Bills you earn as a reward for completing most missions in the early game.

Travel to the nearest star systems with a 1.5 difficulty rating and continue amassing salvage and C-Bills from selling the mechs you salvage. Sometimes you’ll encounter medium mechs or a 65 ton heavy mech on 1.5 difficulty rating missions. IMHO you should aim Precision Shots at the legs of these mechs in the early game so you can acquire more of their parts to salvage and assemble your own medium and heavy mechs. Keep on the lookout for weapon salvage with the + or even ++ bonuses. Such weapons, although very rare in the early game, are always worth taking instead of mech salvage in the early game.

Mid to Late Game – 2.5 and Higher Difficulty Rating Missions
After surviving the early game and carefully managing your finances, negotiating mid to late game contracts is really just a matter of your immediate needs. If you splurge a bunch of C-Bills to purchase heavy mech parts or upgraded weapons/systems, you might need to negotiate your next few contracts for more C-Bills than salvage. Paying generous monthly salaries also significantly increases costs, especially after you’ve recruited several new mech warriors and you have several highly experienced mech warriors.

Navigating the Stars

Plan Your Path to Victory

After completing all the available contracts in a star system – or at least the contracts you want to complete – you’ll need to travel to new star systems so you can complete more contracts. When starting your career, spend some time browsing the Star Navigation map. Set the filter options for the difficulty rating you want, and see how many nearby star systems are of that difficulty rating. Click on a star system to see its environmental and economic conditions. Plan ahead and decide which star systems you want to travel to, and try to travel to star systems that don’t have multiple jumps in between them. You can waste a lot of precious time traveling to a star system with two or three jumps to get there, so make sure it’s worth it before you commit! You receive points for travelling the stars, but you need to plan your star travel wisely, especially in the early game. Travelling the stars requires a significant amount of time, and you don’t have time to waste.

Refit Your Mechs
The best time to refit several mechs, especially new mechs, with a lot of weapons and equipment, is right before you leave your current star system and are preparing to travel to a new star system. This usually provides enough time for your Mech Techs to get the bulk of the work completed, or all of the work completed, while travelling the stars. Use the down time of space travel efficiently by waiting to undergo substantial mech refits until you’re travelling to a new star system. This is especially important if you need to refit your mechs to better perform in the potentially harsh environmental and gravity conditions of the star system you’re travelling to.

Understand the Terrain and Environment
Pay close attention to the terrain and environmental conditions of a star system before travelling to it. Terrain and environmental conditions have a huge impact on the success of your missions, especially if your mechs or mech warriors aren’t prepared for them.

For example, if your mechs are primarily equipped with lasers and jump jets, avoid the Lunar and Martian star systems, or refit your mechs with non-energy weapons or extra heat sinks before traveling to that star system. Also avoid Lunar and Martian locations if your mech warriors often depend on forest terrain for protection. Lunar, Martian and Desert environments are also a prime opportunity to equip multiple flamers so you cook enemy mech warriors as they are unable to reduce their heat effectively. As another example, star systems with lots of mountainous terrain are great for jump jets and long range missile attacks on targets with a Sensor Lock. Tundra environments allow mechs with poor heat management to use their weapons and jump jets more often.

Either avoid travelling to star systems with unfavorable terrain and environmental conditions for your mechs and mech warriors, or refit your mechs to take advantage of those conditions before making a time consuming hyperspace jump.

Factions
Pay attention to the highlighted factions operating in that star system. Don’t go to a star system with a bunch of factions who hate you, especially in the mid and late game, because their high difficulty rating contracts will be locked! When you’re trying to increase your reputation with specific factions, be sure those factions have contracts in the star systems you plan to visit.

Special Contracts
In Career Mode several star systems have special “story contracts” which includes travelling to a new star system. DO NOT blindly accept these contracts until you’ve researched the conditions and difficulty rating of that system through your Star Navigation interface. Even if such contracts have a substantially higher C-Bill reward, you may end up at a location with contracts that are too difficult or too easy for your mech warriors. Or you might end up at a location with unfavorable environmental and/or economic conditions. Worse yet, you might travel to a location with locked contracts by factions who hate you and are unwilling to hire you.

Stop & Shop
While traveling the stars you have the option of halting your planned route to visit a star system along your path. The travel animation changes from the “space warp” to the ship exiting hyperspace at a new star system and the ‘play’ or ‘pause’ button option appears near the bottom center of the screen. If you pause the game, you also have the option to view the store at that star system, and even travel to that star system along your route rather than the original destination you selected at the beginning of your hyperspace jump. I ALWAYS pause the game along each star system during my space travels and view the store at that system. If there’s a mech part or upgraded weapons and equipment I REALLY need (like that third and final piece for my first Marauder), I travel to that star system for some good old fashioned shopping. Sometimes there are even contracts I can complete before continuing my journey. If you only visit the stores at the final destination of your hyperspace jumps, you’re missing out on a lot of potentially useful purchases for your mechs. Be aware that a ‘Stop & Shop’ takes extra time from your original travel route, so make sure your shopping sprees result in significant improvements for your mechs!

Mission Management

This is How You Do It

There are several types of missions in Battletech, and it’s important to understand the typical circ*mstances of those missions. This section does not go into extreme detail or tactics for each mission type, but does offer general pointers which should prove helpful.

Convoy Escort
Convoy Escort contracts are usually the most time consuming missions. I personally loathe them, but most star systems include at least one of them in the available contracts. Convoy Escort missions have three stages.

Stage one is destroying a blocking force of enemy mechs/vehicles. Sometimes this is like fighting an entire “Battle” mission.

Stage two is moving one of your mechs in the Convoy Escort activation zone. It’s important to stagger the placement of your other mechs BEFORE triggering the convoy. You should have a lead mech placed substantially ahead of the convoy route (you should see a road or path the convoy will take), another mech about 4 or 5 movement dots behind the lead mech, and so on, with your last mech standing in the convoy activation zone. It may take several boring turns for the convoy to approach the dropship pickup zone. There’s ALWAYS a straggler at the rear of the convoy, and you need to make sure you have a mech near each convoy vehicle or they won’t move during their turn.

Stage three is when the convoy enters the dropship pickup zone. When the lead convoy vehicle enters the dropship pickup zone, an attacking force of enemy mechs suddenly spawns, sometimes very close to the convoy! By this time the convoy is usually grouped into three vehicles which enter the pickup zone, and a straggler which needs another turn or two to make it to the pickup zone. You need to keep one mech in or near the pickup zone, and another mech with the convoy straggler. Your other two mechs need to focus fire the enemy mechs before they obliterate the convoy vehicles.

It’s all rather tedious to be honest.

Convoy Ambush
The Convoy Ambush mission is tricky. It’s tempting to take a shortcut to the convoy escape zone and wait for the convoy to approach. However, it’s not uncommon for enemy reinforcements to suddenly spawn near the escape zone as the convoy approaches. Now you have enemy mechs in front and behind your mechs. Yikes!

The best option I’ve tested is to move your mechs to about the half-way point between the escape zone and the convoy starting location. Those vehicles usually pack a punch and need to be destroyed ASAP regardless of the mechs guarding them. Any mech you plan on getting into close range of the convoy needs a hefty amount of armor and either small lasers or machine guns. I also advise outfitting this mech with max back armor before the mission because vehicles have a 360 degree turret and will often slip behind your melee mech before launching an attack.

Melee attacks, even with medium weight class mechs, are usually enough to destroy a vehicle. However, your melee attacks will occasionally fail no matter how skilled your mech warriors are, so it’s important to have small lasers or machine guns mounted to help with damage.

Battle & Assassinate
These are the most common missions and usually require the shortest amount of time. If you hear a message from Darius that says “This looks like a prime spot for an ambush, commander.” then you should expect an ambush from multiple fronts. DO NOT charge your lance into the center of the map unless you want to confront an overwhelming opposing force. I typically hold the starting position of my lance with three mechs, and send out my speediest mech to locate the ambush reinforcements. While your speedy mech leads the enemy back to your starting location, position your mechs in defense or ambush spots so you can quickly destroy the enemy.

Base Defense
Base Defense contracts are also tricky. Even at very low difficulty ratings, you can expect attacks from multiple fronts during these missions. It’s critical that your mechs, especially your slowest mechs, not stray too far from the base at the start of the mission. After engaging the first wave of attackers, additional waves spawn and attack from various directions. You need mechs with enough speed to quickly move from one engagement to the next.

Base Attack
These contracts always have 3 to 5 turrets defending the base, and at least one or two waves of mech defenders/reinforcements. The turrets are the tricky part. Either Sensor Lock them and attack from beyond their range, or move in and immediately destroy them. Be sure to stay out of visual range of the other turrets or they will pick your mechs apart. They can also sensor lock your mechs and attack with LRMs or autocannons. Enemy spotter mechs also help the turrets launch LRMs or autocannons, so be careful!

Recovery
These contracts require your lance to retrieve a certain thing or person from a specific location on the map. Otherwise, these are basically the same as “Battle” missions.

Command the Noobs
These contracts only allow you to use a single mech to command a rag-tag group of noob mech warriors with janky mechs. These contracts are especially risky at higher difficulty ratings when your craptastic lance is engaging several medium and heavy mechs. Bring a mech with powerful medium/short range burst damage, and a mech warrior with high piloting or gunnery skills so your noob mechs can hang back and provide support from a safe distance. The noobs you’re commanding usually can’t hit the broad side of a barn.

Faction Special Requirements
After attaining a high reputation with a faction you might be offered a contract with unusual weight requirements for your lance. For example, you might be required to have two heavy/assault mechs, and two medium/light mechs. Other stipulations besides weight are not uncommon either.

Know When to Eject or Withdraw
If you’re close to completing a mission, but one of your mechs is dangerously close to destruction, you should eject that pilot and then finish the mission. If you’re caught in a bad situation which appears unwinnable, just withdraw rather than suffer mass casualties and damage. Rebuilding an entire lance is incredibly time consuming and you really don’t want to lose all those +++ weapons and special equipment mods.

You Don’t Always Need to Get to the Evac Zone
If you want to duke it out with all the enemy vehicles and mechs for the contract bonus payments, then you don’t need to worry about the evac zone at all. After destroying the last enemy mech/vehicle, your dropship will pick you up without requiring your lance to get to the evac zone.

Conclusion

Battletech is a tactical combat game. However, Career Mode is a time management challenge. It doesn’t matter how great you are at destroying enemy mechs if you’re inefficient with your limited time in Career Mode. You have to make every day count for something. Days wasted waiting around doing nothing means your Career Scoreboard is losing the max points you can attain, and thereby diminishing your legacy. You have to effectively manage ship upgrades, mech refits and repairs, mech warrior experience, space travel, contract negotiations, and faction reputations to attain the highest ranks of Career Mode.

Career Mode requires patience for non-combat issues like mech refits and waiting for your mech warriors to heal. It’s also important not to punch above your weight class by attempting contracts which are more difficult than you can safely complete. Risk aversion in combat will save you from losing mechs, mech warriors, and failing to complete contracts. Your 1200 days in Career Mode should mostly be used for space travel, rather than upgrading mechs or waiting for mech warriors to heal while sitting like a couch potato in a star system. Completing contracts doesn’t take any time off the clock so you should try to complete every contract in each star system you visit – except for perhaps some the ‘story contracts’.

One little detail about your Career Mode Scoreboard: while it’s theoretically possible to attain the absolute highest rank in Career Mode, for all intents and purposes it’s an impossible task. Consider it as a goal to strive for, but realize you’re not going to actually get it. Just do the best you can and revel in your journey through Battletech Career Mode.

Good luck, commander.

BATTLETECH Career Mode – for Total Noobs – Steam Solo (2024)