I know you're doing this on your off-time, and it's a labor of love, but in this particular instance, the labor should be dead on to the original story, at least in the first few missions. At least those were made with common sense in mind. I think I'll try to d/l and play the original Carver V campaign. And I was just getting ready to recommend this Campaign to my friends. Hollis Industries began production in 2633,2 originally designing it to be. Improvisation can be good, but too much improvisation, especially so early in the game, can be bad. My fav is MechCommander Omnitech mod, those happy 200 hours running lances. That's alright, the first mission here didn't match, completely, the first match from Mercs, either. The friendly pilot, by themselves, would shut down their 'Mech and remain hidden, everything powering up ONLY once our 'Mechs and vehicles arrive to rescue them and, perhaps, to recover the other 'Mech we lost, for salvage. I could see a few vehicles, perhaps even infantry, being placed in there, but then you have another friendly 'Mech in there, which goes against the story. First, there was only supposed to be one pilot to rescue, and then two pirates remaining. This is a ****-poor way, and unrealistic, to design missions. The second time I tried this, I was trying to get ahead of the Catapult, so I could step in and help my guys at Objective 3, and one of my guys got ganked, and I lost the mission, anyway.

However, if I stick too closely to the Catapult and don't move forward of it, one of the vehicles I have to escort gets ganked and I lose. First, I have to stick close to the Catapult for the proper triggers to take place. After I figured out how to get other friendly units moving, I failed the mission twice in a row, basically because I couldn't get there in time. Nevermind, the mission is just set up to be stupidly hard.

Mechcommander 2 omnitech drop point