Thank you - that puts my mind at rest that people who join my roster as prisoners aren't going to run away with any 'Mechs I assign them ;)
Playing the campaign through MekHQ is starting to feel comfortable now, although some parts have been a little frustrating. A couple of things seem a little arcane - I had a 'Mech where the shoulder took a critical hit, so I needed a replacement arm, but I couldn't replace the arm until I'd salvaged all of the other components out of that arm. Working out how to do that took a certain amount of creative swearing and right-clicking through various fields and options.
I've found that MekHQ is only tracking the battle results some of the time - I'm guessing that's the bug that was flagged up earlier. Some battles it tracks without problems, and it lets me select salvage, tracks damage on my 'Mechs and the like; others it doesn't, and I have to recreate it manually as I go through. I'm a little confused as to why it's not forgetting/remembering consistently - it makes me suspect that it's something I'm doing, but I'm not quite sure what.
I don't know if this is unusual, but I'm finding that most of the battles involve almost no long-range combat at all - even Bot units that are primarily LRM-boats are rushing to close with me, and between startups, maps and enemy movement, I'm hardly using the LRM racks on my own 'Mechs. My poor scout lance consists of a pair of Valkyries, a Locust and a Stinger, and the Valkyries spend most of their time jumping around trying to stay out of kicking range of 'Mechs 10-20 tons heavier while taking shots of opportunity with their medium pulse lasers. It's felt almost hilarious to be facing down four enemy 'Mechs (topping out with a Centurion and a Trebuchet) along with eight tanks of various kinds with just my four scout 'Mechs...
One thing I'm convinced of is that Bot-controlled House allies are like sheep, in that they spend their entire time looking for ways to die. I think I've lost slightly more than half of the ones that've deployed alongside my troops - although there was a FedCom officer piloting an UrbanMech who charged a Hunchback for some unknown reason, and actually survived.
I've picked up a couple of random bonuses from certain missions, and they've been very... random. One let me recruit a new member of staff, and another presented me with a brand-new 'Mech... a primitive WAM-B Firebee. I don't think there were exactly a lot of those made, so I've no idea where the Bot found one to give me, but I'm not sure the reformed prisoner I assigned to pilot it was completely thrilled with that turn of events... Can I get a higher than average sale price for selling it to Snorrd's Irregulars? Or maybe a museum? It seems a shame to let it get shot up...