I just fought my first ever big battle! It was really cool, but I learned a few things. But first, the praise:
MM and MekHQ are finally letting me do something I've wanted to do since 1986 -- running a campaign over a period of time where I can grow my force. The fact that I can do this under quarantine conditions at my leisure on my computer is just wonderful.
The Princess AI has come a long way since it was first introduced, and the program is so much more stable than it used to be when trying to run multiple sides of an engagement that it's really refreshing to see play, despite the gripes I list below.
Now for the downsides:
1) my laptop computer still struggles when trying to run multiple bots with lots of units -- that's entirely on me.
2) large mass, large amounts of units, and multiple changes in elevation really bog the game down, just due to the game mechanics;
3) the night time rules make this even worse. I'd read about the woes on here before starting the mission, and I re-read the rules in Tac Ops, so I knew what I was getting into. It's interesting for small unit engagements, but after 20+ rounds of pillow fighting, and more than 6 hours in real time broken up over two days, I'd had enough. I won't be using night time rules for large engagements any more, but I wanted to see what it was like before I made that decision, or at least until I get some better gunnery skills!
For what it's worth, I also wouldn't use those night time mechanics in a tabletop game for more than about a lance of forces, unless I had a huge amount of time; it's cool that they are in the game, but they're too much of a time multiplier.
Once again, thanks to the developers fo MM and MekHQ!