What is the Grand Strategic goal?

[Butterside down]

Playing vanilla campaign single player. Doing great bee bopping into conflict zones, winning battles getting richer. Peaked reputation with Davion, now I'm doing light objective battles for the Farmers.
BUT what is my overall goal?
Do I clear out all conflict zones one by one to get my reputation peaked. Do the Objective battles end, once you do them for all factions. Are the Objective Battles the campaign?

[Bovril Brigadier]

Grind Cash
Grab Mechs
Gut Capellans

[Hairy Coo]

Originally posted by Strayed:

Grind Cash
Grab Mechs
Gut Capellans

Last one is the real goal of any self respecting MechWarrior.

If your company is pretty much unbeatable and riding Steiner Scout lances, perhaps start a new game.

[pRaX]

Since you're playing campaign, I'd say it's finishing the campaign missions.

[Kay]

Earn enough C-Bills so when they finally add a Union Dropship DLC, we can buy a newer, bigger ship.

[unskilled-]

Originally posted by SatreJR:

Playing vanilla campaign single player. Doing great bee bopping into conflict zones, winning battles getting richer. Peaked reputation with Davion, now I'm doing light objective battles for the Farmers.
BUT what is my overall goal?
Do I clear out all conflict zones one by one to get my reputation peaked. Do the Objective battles end, once you do them for all factions. Are the Objective Battles the campaign?

Get enough money to retire to Kooken's Pleasure pit. :)

[Butterside down]

Originally posted by pRaX:

Since you're playing campaign, I'd say it's finishing the campaign missions.

So the objective battles are the campaign then. I sort of lost continuity of that jumping from faction to faction. I was worried they might be random generated forever because they don't follow any overarching strategy like clearing a conflict zone.

[Kay]

Originally posted by SatreJR:

Originally posted by pRaX:

Since you're playing campaign, I'd say it's finishing the campaign missions.

So the objective battles are the campaign then. I sort of lost continuity of that jumping from faction to faction. I was worried they might be random generated forever because they don't follow any overarching strategy like clearing a conflict zone.

The campaign is a light connected story that works as a vehicle to guide you in a clockwise tour of the Inner Sphere with increasing difficulty, starting in Davion space, and working you around to Kurita at the end.

The rest is just finding the fun in stompy mech fights.

[dna]

Originally posted by Kay:

Earn enough C-Bills so when they finally add a Union Dropship DLC, we can buy a newer, bigger ship. :kurita:

Dude, you are talking about PGI here...

Originally posted by HAVEN AnkisethMondarinNamo:

Get enough money to retire to Kooken's Pleasure pit. :)

*Looks at 45 Million C-Bills*
*shrugs*
*buys 2 Hero Mechs for the doubleheatsinks and a Boars Head*
*looks at bank account*
"Alright, who does need need some warcrimes commited?"

Originally posted by SatreJR:

BUT what is my overall goal?

Frankly, it is to get cool stompy mechs to get into some cool stompy mech action.
If you have the DLCs, those are nice, lorecompatible bites of "sometimes not even that bad variants of standard missions"

edit: Oh, I forgot. There is a main missionline. Some merc outfit with the innocent name "Black Inferno" killed your Dad. Or something like that? Its not like PGI could tell a story if all their lifes depended on it, so I would suggest to leftclick a lot. And have a lot of fun with "Distress Call" :)

[Kay]

Originally posted by dna:

"Alright, who does need need some warcrimes commited?"

Well I do have these annoying neighbors...

Honestly, if anyone needs a goal in the game, here's one I'm surprised wasn't an achievement.

Collect the whole mech catalog.
I've been going at it for a long while on my main save, and still can't find two heroes, and about seven core models.

[Wayz]

Strategy and mW5? Form what I read its getting the almighty 100% in mech database , all variants in the cold storage museum and 100% achievements and then break what little sense of economy further so they don't have to pay for it all.

[Sentient_Toaster]

There isn't any "clearing" of conflict zones. Who controls what system can shift over time, but how it does so is scripted based on the lore.

Main game campaign is a revenge story.

"Kestrel Lancers" DLC lets you work for Feds Suns vs. Capellans, but the war will end up with the same results regardless of whether you participate or not.

"Rise of Rasalhague", haven't picked that up yet but similar I believe just different place/time.

Don't know if it's even possible to mod in something like having a more dynamic system of control where you can actually affect things by repeatedly siding with one employer, but haven't heard of anybody doing it. In any event, Blondie / Manco / The Man With No Name would probably point out that it's more profitable to be in the middle, working both sides. ;)

[unskilled-]

Originally posted by Sentient_Toaster:

There isn't any "clearing" of conflict zones. Who controls what system can shift over time, but how it does so is scripted based on the lore.

Main game campaign is a revenge story.

"Kestrel Lancers" DLC lets you work for Feds Suns vs. Capellans, but the war will end up with the same results regardless of whether you participate or not.

"Rise of Rasalhague", haven't picked that up yet but similar I believe just different place/time.

Don't know if it's even possible to mod in something like having a more dynamic system of control where you can actually affect things by repeatedly siding with one employer, but haven't heard of anybody doing it. In any event, Blondie / Manco / The Man With No Name would probably point out that it's more profitable to be in the middle, working both sides. ;)

I would settle for something like at the end of MW4:M -- the ending where you side with katrina steiner and then leave her hanging after things go tits up. Where you take control of your own base just in time for the word of blake.

It would be part money sink (gotta pimp your base out amirite?), part defensive mission (you take control of an AI buddy you leave behind if your not there), and also help weld some things together like mech storage that keeps your weapons and upgrades for the mechs you keep at homebase, additional dropships, etc. Maybe some soft inner game lore like getting updates (messages) from christian mansdottir about the state of rashalague or mission or w/e if you take over a base in rashalaguegoga territory.

There would be a dozen or so worlds you can pick (you can only pick one for now), either related to story but after a certain point (like 14 or 15 rep along with some very very hard missions), each with their own unique layout with 2 to 3 per biome -- or not (lets say 250 rep which is beyond +5 faction rep), maybe a merc 15 rep mission from the guy who gave you the mission to get to rep 4 so cantina's come available?

Could also be a sneaky way to introduce clanners if you decide to take a base in the perhipery for someone like the oberion confederation.

[Kay]

Originally posted by HAVEN AnkisethMondarinNamo:

I would settle for something like at the end of MW4:M -- the ending where you side with katrina steiner and then leave her hanging after things go tits up. Where you take control of your own base just in time for the word of blake.

No! No Jihad! Gods, I hated the damn Jihad. Worst universe reboot ever. Let's go kill off all the major merc units, all the popular characters, drastically change the game from shooty bang bang to punchy trash fight (dark ages), then spend the next two decades trying to convince people to come back to us because the Republic of the Sphere is kinda like how it was before the Jihad.

[Mints]

Originally posted by SatreJR:

Playing vanilla campaign single player. Doing great bee bopping into conflict zones, winning battles getting richer. Peaked reputation with Davion, now I'm doing light objective battles for the Farmers.
BUT what is my overall goal?
Do I clear out all conflict zones one by one to get my reputation peaked. Do the Objective battles end, once you do them for all factions. Are the Objective Battles the campaign?

As a merc? Get rich or die trying. Since you can't die that leaves only one option. I guess if you were a member of the Great Houses you might consider some kind of territorial victory map painting a victory but honestly it's not quite as glamorous as it sounds. House nobles have a lot of responsibilities outside of 'mech battles, like managing their fiefdoms and playing political games.

From the player's perspective it might seem like there's 'mechs everywhere, but a merc's perspective is skewed that way. Great Houses have passed their 'mechs down for generations and each one is a precious commodity. We live and breath mech battles, but we also have months of downtime between missions and make truckloads of money in about a day. That entirely passable mission that pays like 300,000 C-Bills? Yeah that's like the equivalent of $4,062,000 in real world money in 2023. So that'd make a MAD-3R worth about $89,839,592.50

[Neme]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XUu3_pLPUE