Edit: Nevermind folks, I didn't see the notice on the OP, just the thread being up on the new list this morning and thought it was a new thread. Blame it being before breakfast...
I have been experimenting with the idea of lances I would run for the BattleTech computer game (Harebrained Schemes, 2018) when I finally have a new Macintosh. For a medium lance, I might go with:
Griffin
Wolverine (Marik variant with large laser or PPC replacing AC/5)
Kintaro
Cicada-3P (sniper 'Mech that can run to new firing positions or disengage quickly from powerful 'Mechs)
I could be wrong about how evasion or missile spreads work in the HBS version of BattleTech, but if anyone has ever started out the game and it is anything like what the YouTube videos show for the beginning few hours of gameplay where you have to build up a medium lance, how difficult is it compared to the tabletop war-game BattleTech?
Also, is the Bull Shark a good 'Mech design?
HBS:BattleTech remains by current highest-logged-time game - 787 hours - (though I expect Rimworld to eclipse it on my current game). I cannot say I'm an expert, beczause I am ultimately a low-difficulty-happy-gamer who has no fear of save-scumming, but I would like to think that sheer hours on target lets me have some level of ability to comment.
One: Short of mods, unless you Ae Very Good At Games (I am definitely not), in the end, you will be pushed towards a Steiner Scout Lance or at least, as noted, Maruders,, simply because you will be fighting 4 to 12 (or more) odds on the higher skull missions. And the enemy AI will also tend to Steiner Scout Lances - progression is towards heavier mechs, ultimately. It is a facet of being limited to a single lance. You will want a medium lance on hand for some of the flashpoint or story missions by end game (since some of those are tonnage limited), but in general, your modal mission is either going to be slowly increasing in tonnage or you'll be stuck on doing mid-skull missions (and without mods, you'll end up doing the same thing over and over).
If you are Really Good At Games, you might be able to get away with it, but if you're one of the lesser mortals who only plays games at mid or lower difficulties, a lance of four four mediums against twelves assaults is going to get you splortched by end game.
Two: If you use some of the big mods (BTA 3062, RogueTech, BattleTech Extended) you can get up to eight mechs at once; while this means you have more enemies, you have more latitude. That said, all of the aforementioned mods by unfortunate necessity disable in-mission saving (because HBS' version of Unity has a catastrophic memory leak and the modders can only do so much). You can get the mod which lets you use more mechs seperate, but I have never tried that.
Three: I personally think the Bull Shark is fantastic. Mostly, in fairness, because It is Not IS 3025 Tech (that's as far as I'll say), and is thus very powerful. I also found it also very consistent with headshots. The artillery cannon is merely okay, and quite good at swatting Locusts. I'd ultimately prefer to strip that out for more armour, but frankly, on vanilla, the Bull Shark is still very strong. (The regular Bull Shark made on 3025 tech, not so much.)
Four: I very strongly recommend, if you use no other mods (which I'd say play story campaign first vanilla nd then mod afterwards), use the Edmon Alternative Reputation mod, because HBS made the staggeringly poor decision to make all the pirates not only a single monolithic entitiy, but to tie the black market prices to one of the most common OpFors - and least amount of mission providers - in the game. Ptherwide, you can vey much end up in the situation way you need to try and find very low skull pirate missions (the only ones you can take at low rep by vanilla) and tediously grind your reputation up, It's just a bad mechanic. The aforementioned mod stops you being locked out of higher-skull missions by reputation; at low reputation with a faction, prices are higher and rewards are lower, so there's still a good reason to try and keep them happy, it just means you can do so without the tedium of doing dozens of very low difficult missions solely for reputation.
(I am capable just barely of limited text editing, so I applied it even to other mods.)