First of all I would recomend you to play the campaign at least once, to grab an idea of how the game mechanics work. Also, the story has relly fun missions (most time), and the final combat is quite a challenge.

The main differences are the following:

• Star Map: On Career mode you will have the full map at your disposal while in the Campaign you will be restricted to the unafiliated sectors and what you conquer of the Aurigan Directorate through the main story, you wont have the full star map avaible until you finish the story.
  
  
• Flashpoints: On Career mode they will be avaible from day one, while on Campaign you need to finish the main story first.
  
  
• Argo: On Career you will have it from day one, on Campaign you will unlock it within the first main missions.
  
  
• Ranking: There is none in the Campaign

Your objective here (as long as you want to achieve the highest score possible) is to set the difficulty multiplier at 1.0, my recomendation above is designed to maximize each point giving option, without making the game a pain in the a$$.

Ironman, Lethality and Unequiped Mechs are mandatory, so you can leave generous salvage and three mech parts required for new chassis, that way you can get at least one new mech per contract, fully equip it, and sell all the surplus. Advanced mechwarriors is nice but not really needed, its better to have rare salvage, as it will differenciate your mechs from oposing forces. And finally, having harder encounters means heavier mechs to salvage.


Another possible option is to set Combat difficulty to normal, advanced mechwarriors to normal and turning off rare salvage. I think that the Contract payment option is bugged and stays always on normal.

I leave here the cut points of each rank and the percentage of the total scoring you need to get to obtain them.

• Unknown = 0+
  
• Green = 80,000+
  
• Regular = 160,000+
  
• Veteran = 320,000+ --> 41.5%
  
• Elite = 480,000+ --> 62.3%
  
• Legendary = 640,000+ --> 83.1%
  
• Kerensky = 760,000+ --> 98.6%

NOTE: if you lower the difficulty at any point of your career, you wont be able to raise it up again, also there is no point in starting with a low difficulty and ramping it up as the difficulty modifier will always stay on its lowest point, start with 1.0 and dont change anything if you are aiming for big numbers.

Here are two very hard to complete scores. One one side there is Contracts, here you will get 50 points for every difficulty level (half skull) a completed contract has up to 70K points (on the bright side, you will fill this one along the MRB meter).

On the other side you will have C-Bills, here you will get 1 point for every 10K C-Bills you earn, this being from completed contracts, or sold item (every C-Bill spent wont make you lose points). I dont know what second hand crack smoke inhaled the developers when they designed this, as you need 800.000.000 C-Bills to complete this category.

My Advice here would be taking contracts to cover you expenses and whenever posible go mostly salvage. Why? because you have a lot of mech categories to complete and also every duplicated mech will sell for the price of one salvage part. You also can keep enough money to cover your expenses and use the rest on shops to buy and resell items (completely counter intuitive, but you are playing for points here). This is better done with salvaged mech chassis as they will sell for 33% of they total part value (DONT buy full mechs and resell them, you will only get 10% of what you spent)

Here I will give you a little explanation of each mission type and a few advices. As an advice, read Darius description of each contract, as they will have a few tips too.

• Ambush Convoy: The primary objetive is destroying four vehicles, as soon as you engage in combat they will start running away, focus on them and clear the rest after. If you can, bring a pilot with sensor lock and high initiative and a LRM boat too, some of the maps dont have direct fire at the vehicles all the time. Try to go for max or almost max salvage on this ones, in highes skulls they will always have rare drops.
  
  
• Assassinate: The best mission to hunt mechs, as the primary target will be one tier higher than the mission skull rating mechs.
  
  
• Attack and Defend: Tricky ones, you must at the same time defend a base and take other down (wich most likely will have turrets). To do this you will need to divide your lance. Sometimes the base you will defend will have turrets or your contractor will provide a lance of mechs to asist you. Enemy reinforcements will appear every three rounds until you destroy the enemy base.
  
  
• Battle: Most basic mission, Kill em all.
  
  
• Capture Base: Same as before, but the base might have turrets, pacify the area and then conquer the base. Be aware that getting near the base might trigger a second lnce, so kill the first one before aproaching the objetive.
  
  
• Defend Base: Tricky ones, you must defend a base against waves of enemies for 10 rounds. Bring sturdy mechs that are not too much ammo dependant and make enemy mechs focus fire on you, a multi-shot sniper or LRM boat is quite sueful.
  
  
• Destroy Base: This time its your turn to attack. First clean the primary lance, dont aproach too much to the base as you might trigger the turrets and sometimes a secondary lance. Bring LRMs, also the CTF-0X anti indirect fire will increase your survival rate.
  
  
• Escort: Not my favorite ones, but great for salvage. They go in this order: kill enemies, go to designated zone, vehicles apear triggering a second enemy lance, you kill those too and when the vehicles arrive to the extraction zone they might trigger a third enemy lance. Keep shooting the enemy mech to keep them away from the vehicles.
  
  
• Recovery: This ones can be done in the same fashion than the capture base missions, mop the area and then go to the designated zone/s. If you prefer to grab and run, use a fast mech to capture the area, as it will become the enemies main target.
  
  
• Target Acquisition: This ones are a pain in the a$$, you have eight rounds to place three beacons in different zones, at the same time you are fighting a primary lance and turrets or secondary lance. after that you will have to hold your ground for two rounds and then the evac zone will appear. Definitely the highest risk mission type.

For a total of 135.015 Points you will go mech hunting. You will get 70.015 Points for each unique chassis you complete (DLC content or not), 10K points for completing each weight class (check list below) and 25K extra points if you complete all four. If you dont have the Full Roster achievement, you will get it by having one of each chassis (not chassis variation) of each mech, as the requirement is all release date mechs.

You will need one of each mech chassis in your possesion (either in storage or in the mech bays) for the completed categories to give you the scores. This is not a catch and release, if you have a completed categorie and one of your mech is destroyed or sold, and you dont have a backup you will lose the score bonus until you replace it.


NOTE: Get a Marauder ASAP (the MAD-3R is better imo) this beauty doubles your chances to hit when using called shots, so you are looking at 33% headshots with a leveled pilot.

The politics of the Aurigan Reach will play a vital role in achieving a perfect score on this category. For a total of 130K points you will need to complete five factions reputation scores (either positive or negative rep) for 10K each. the tricky part is that you will get 40K for positive reputation (four completed factions) and 40K points for negative reputation, and there is when the table below becomes important.


The easiest way to achieve a perfect score is to become Honoured by the Federated Suns and the Magistrancy of Canopus since they are the only factions who share enemies, the other two recomended factions to become honoured imo are the Free Worlds League and the Lyran Commonwealth, while they dont like eachother, they have the Capellan Confederation as a common enemy. Be aware that if you ally with a faction you can no longer accept contracts against them, this will limit your contract options.

Remember that when you ally with a faction their enemies become your enemies, so you will never have above 0 reputation with them, so if you are thinking about making aliances the only options that wont afect your final score are Federated Suns* and the Magistrancy of Canopus.

*This is the faction that sells UAC in their faction store, wich is only avaible when you become alies (MAD-3R becomes a beast of a sniper with two of these babies)

NOTE: The Prototype Flashpoint will award you +40 positive reputation points with the faction you choose to sell the Raven, my recomendation is selling it to the Lyrians, as they are the hardest one to level up since they dont have any territorry on the Aurigan Reach.

NOTE 2: The Arano Restoration reputation doesnt count for scoring purpouses, so dont worry too much about them

The Mercenary Review Board is the organization that rates merc companies in a scale from 0 to 5 "stars". Your rating will allow you to hire more experienced mechwarriors and take more difficult contracts.

For each skull a completed contract has, you will increase your rating by one point, and if you withdrawh from a mission without even completing one objective you will get a "bad faith attempt" and your score will decrease along with the reputation with the hiring faction, so at leats try to complete one to get a "good faith atempt" and avoid penalties.

From your overal rating you will get 45 points per MRB point you have, up to a total of 45000, and for completing your MRB rating (getting five "stars") you will get 25000 points more, for the later you need to reach a score of 900 points with the MRB.

NOTE: the Heavy Metal Flashpoint campaign if played up to the end (final battle included) will give you 250 MRB reputation points, its a really high risk - high reward flashpoint.

This one is the easiest to achieve, its 60K almost gifted points, the only tricky part is knowing what to prioritize. the most important one are the engines, to decrease travel time, followed by Mech Bay 2 and the Training Modules.

The idea is quite simple, with Mech Bay 2 you will have enough active mechs to complete all contracts in each sector if a few of them need repairs, wich they will. The training modules will level up your mechwarriors up to 30K XP each when fully upgraded, wich translates in free XP and free points.

Be mindfull than fully upgrading the Argo takes 590 days and 19.705.000 C-Bills..

If you grinded for mechs, now you will grind for XP too, as for every 100XP your mechwarriors have in your barracks, you will get 2 points, up to a total of 55K points (2.750.000 XP). This small number seems a bit discouraging (and it is) but with a full roster of mechwarriors and the Trainig Modules, you will be able to reach a high score. On the bright side, each mechwarrior you hire will add its current XP to your score, so, the more leveled the better.

Fully upgraded Training modules will train mechwarriors up to 30K XP (600 points each) in roughly 600 days, and you dont have to spend those points to make them count for the point table, so their salaries wont increase. If you need to use one of them, you would be able to increase two stats up to 6 and two up to 7 points.

To max stats your mechwarrior will need 114K XP wich translates into 2280 points. Remember that a maxed mechwarrior still gains XP in combat, but try to leave those for backups and level other pilots. Dont overtrain pilots, you can always get AC20ed in the Cockpit (happened to me twice in my latest run)

You will need 24 maxed pilots and (a bit more) to achieve a perfect score in this category.

NOTE: Your Commander (the only inmortal mechwarrior you have) doesnt count for your scoring purpouses, so dont use him under any circumstance on missions, unless you need some cannon fodder.

For each new system you visit (or just flight through) you will get 500 points up to 85K points, plus 25K points when you visit them all. I read somewhere that you can overextend your flight paths in the star map aiming for sectors far beyond your intended one and changing course when you lock to the Jumpship, but I havent tested it myself.

This is the final version of the game, and I dont think Kerensky is achievable under this conditions, not only you have a 1.4% margin of error, but also you need to complete categories that seem currently imposible, like traveling to 170 systems in 1200 days AND getting 800.000.000 C-Bills.

I know its a bummer, but aim for Legendary rank and be a part of the 0.1%