As you might have noticed already, I am not intimidated by complex games. In fact, I rather prefer games that need me to get into before knowing all the nuances, instead of being pick up and play.
Last week, I discovered such a gem of "hard to get into"-games, and I have to admit, I still fail miserably at it. But it's just too awesome to rage-quit it. Also, it has some mechanics that prevent that, but that point will be covered later. Now, drumroll please, the game I discovered: Titans of Steel - Warring Suns by Vicious Bytes, published by Matrixgames back in 03, but nowadays freely available.
And why is it awesome? Battlemechs, or rather Titan Attack Techs, or Titan-ATs in short. If that doesn't suffice to convince you, you will probably not like it. Still, I'll elaborate a tad more: much like the original Battletech board game, it's a very complex hex-strategy game where you control squads up to 8 jocks who pilot said Titan-ATs. Just as the source of inspiration, it features multiple hit zones with internal damage, independent torso movements and heat and ammo management. If that wouldn't be complex enough, all your pilots have a multitide of skills that can be improved upon, much like in an rpg. Also, it isn't as strictly turn based as Battletech, but uses a system similar to the Brigade series, where each action takes time and once it's done, you can give new orders.
Additionally, you have to worry about the financial wellbeing of your squad, which is rather difficult in itself.
Another perk of it, and that's where the "no rage-quitting" comes back, is that your squad is persistent. If you quit during a mission, your squad will not be able to do anything except of continuing that mission, or retrieve you squad for the quadruple of you upkeep costs you pay per mission. Which, with a cheap beginner squad, amounts to the price pf a whole new recon mech. That retrival doesn't only cost dear money, it also nullifies any XP gained during the mission, so it's quite a hefty price to pay. Also, it's the only way to "revive" fallen jocks or completely obliterated Titans, so woe to you if you just lost your best man but can't afford to retrieve the team. Thus you think twice before accepting a mission.
The 1.2.2 Beta Patch somewhat takes away from that by allowing loans (at horrendous rates) or cloning of dead soldiers (at the price of decreased constitution of the jock, additionally to a hefty sum), but it's still a tough blow to lose.
This persistent squad system is also what scares me away from multiplayer battles, as I don't want my four cautiously leveled "greens" (the second of 10 ranks) to be obliterated by "heroes" (the tenth rank) who play since 03. Also, I do think that it's quite hard to get a partner to play unless you get a friend of yours to play it with you. If anyone of you wants to scrim sometime against either my Greens or against an all new squad, just drop me a message and I'll see what I can do.
But for now, I'm stuck with single player, which sadly is somewhat of an afterthought. At first it looks like it's only up to 4 squads 2on2ing on random generated maps, but after some searchng, you can find several campaigns with rudimentary stories, and difficulty ratings. But don't get fooled by them, because my green team struggles even on "rookie" (the first rank) missions. So you better spend some time in random matches with the rules set to outmach your enemy greatly until you'rt jocks and mechs are improved enough to go on. You can also switch campaigns between missions, so for example you play the first two missions of campaign 1, then head over to the first mission of campaign 2, which might let you capture a mech that makes mission 3 on campaign 1 easier.
The start is also quite hard because it's nigh impossible to judge which of those more than 150 Titans to chose from are any good at the start, so you might end up with Titans not suited for the tasks at hand.
Still, if you like Battlemech, that game is the one for you if you need a quick fix for your needs, and once you start winning, it's certainly very rewarding. Just make sure you install the 1.2.2 Beta Patch.
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