3. However there is a persistent annoying glitch. My character is male but the pilot voice is female, any way to change this.
That's not your mechwarrior, that's the mech's AI Assistant.
As for difficulty, advance through a couple of storyline missions. Suddenly, instead of fighting Scorpion tanks and Locusts all the time, you're going to be seeing Wolverines, Griffins and Manticores, etc. Meanwhile, you still have your starter mech lance. I actually had to withdraw from one mission when I got bushwhacked by a medium lance as I was engaged with a different medium lance. We got the first lance, but my mechs were all shot to hell and my mechwarriors were complaining about "extra ventilation".
Speaking of lengthy repairs, if you schedule a month-long refit but then need to fix something real quick, mouse over the repair schedule display in the top right. There should be a "reorder jobs" button or something like that that'll allow you to re-prioritize your repairs.
Hey, so how does multi-player work? Don't have the game yet, and a bunch of my old college friends and I are wondering.
Multi-player - you go into the lobby, and either find a rando game or one of the players hosts a password-locked game. Then, you do an (up to) 4 vs 4 mech fight to the death (or surrender).