From my perspective at this point, there's no slam dunk, easy choice. I can do WATERFALL, SAFECRACKER or wait until August. My priority at this point is getting my lance on missions. I only played one through my first contract. Completely understandable as to why, but after the annual birthdays, my PC is sitting at 2 XP earned and my most experienced pilot has earned 6.
With Paul, Logan and Dan there are several of us in similar boats. What kinds of contracts are likely to give us more missions per time? Not sure that it happens as I know Rob rolls on a per week basis for it. Just thought I'd ask.
Steve probably falls into the same category. He only got in a solo mission. The only gaurantee is 1 mission per contract (to the extent possible given mission counts, attendance, etc.).
The established lances have some advantage in more fully customized/optimized machines and deeper benches of techs and parts. Reaper Lance actually was one of the leaders before their hiatus due to catching a lot of salvage on a solo mission. My solo mission netted a Grasshopper and Clint that basically paid for the XL engines that went into the salvaged Crusader and Firestarter from the last mission (I won't be taking much salvage for myself this contract unless things go really wonky, I only took the two mechs since my lance has standardized on them.).
None of these contracts are of types to generate a lot of solo missions, so that will limit the further differentiation of lances a bit if we take one of these contracts. Size of battles is another issue. We can only play roughly 5 PC lances at a time due to table space and opfor player requirements. This will usually be three AtB selected lances plus two reinforcement lances, maybe 4/2 now with 11 PCs plus possible new players, if everyone can make it. Then the lances best suited for reinforcement get called on more.
Going forward, I will try to spread the love more, but things like repairs and reinforcement times are challenges. One of the things Rob and I talked about but couldn't really solve was if we can somehow run some A and B tables some months to get more PC battles in. The challenge is scheduling enough people to play two tables.