"Left Behind" or "Last Farewell"....

[Blue Gaiden]

.... the completion of which task has the better outcome in the long run?

[KreatureCreature]

I'm going to post this here since I came across your post whilst curious about this answer myself.

According to the following guide:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3237622937


There are 22 missions for Handshake, 3 of which are optional. By optional, I mean that you can choose to do Handshake's way of completing that mission, or you can do one of the other's ways.

The 1st one is Last Farewell/Left Behind, with the 2nd option being to side with Gunny.

Of the 3 optional missions they go as follows:
Handshake/Gunny.
Handshake/Lab Rat.
Handshake/Artisan.

Whilst Handshake has 22 missions total, 19 if you don't side with him, Gunny has only 11 (10 + 1 optional). Lab Rat has only 11 (10 + 1 optional). Artisan only has 7 (6 + 1 optional). Turncoat only has 3. As of writing this, based on whats listed in that guide, there are no missions currently for Banshee.

I have read of at least 1 mission being missing from this guide, so there may be more.


So, or TLDR for many, if you get 100 reputation points per person, per mission, you can potentially get 1900 for Handshake, moving you to level 2, without accepting his alternative mission endings. 2200 if you do. You only need 1255 to reach rank 2 with him. The others have lower requirements to rank up.

670 for Gunny.
710 for Lab Rat.
700 for Artisan.

As of right now, that means without buying 100 items from the Artisan, you need all 7 missions for her to increase Rep level with her. As for the other two, you should reach that with them even without taking those extra missions. Really though, given how many extra Handshake has, you're better off not taking his 'extras'. Otherwise you'll have a lot of extra $$$ to spend on the others to increase their reputation to equal standings.