So i feel its been a sufficiently long time that bounty challenges are no longer super spoilery. To that end which one do you do? do ignore them? share your stories and thoughts.
My 2 dolloros, initial impression first then details per encounter.
The challenges so far do not seem anywhere near equal in difficulty or rewards, though i've only played 2 in a live campaign, so i could be missing something. The token rewards are wildly different. Namely the gnome encounter for the bank only yields tokens if you manage to take the gnome alive, which is really difficult. On the other end, the slitzkrieg encounter is 1800 tokens for winning period. The rectculan vats is imo the hardest of the 3 to get total victory on, and comes somewhere in the middle for tokens. so 0 tokens to 1800, depending on choice and ability to succeed.
The slitzkreig is by far the easiest encounter, so long as you can kill the tank turret, everything else is standard humanist fare. Map is pretty open so you can have some bad luck with the map RNG and spawn with the turret having a clear line of fire to your craft exits. Also don't expect to come out of the battle with much score, open terrain, terror mission environment, means most of the civvies are gonna die pretty quick. Also not much in the way of special/additional loot, just whatever the humanist troops are carting around. This is a maybe, if jack bounties aren't popping up. 1800 tokens goes along way, but its still only a fraction of the total of good prizes for jack, let alone everything.
Gnome hideout is pretty easy but for the gnome herself, that's the real problem. Techno sewers tile-set is pretty squarely in the players favor between hatches and limited pathways. The gnome however needs to be taken alive which is quite a difficult task with early to mid game gear. She is armored along the lines of a guild master, no shield, but the resistances are quite high, particularly against almost all non lethal types, and most anti armor types. However it gets worse, underneath the shell she's very frail at a mere 40 hp. Anything that can overcome her shell in a single hit risks outright killing her. Immune or dead, with very little middle ground. The best option I've found is to hose her down with repeated chem or minigun fire, then follow up with stun rods, and hope she doesn't bleed out on you. That said, it takes alot of hits to strip down her armor, and she is pretty deadly in return. Her gun appears to be akin to a mammoth chain shotgun, and she has a nasty melee hit. Due to the risk inherent to the attempt and the terrible rewards if the gnome doesn't make it, this is a solid pass for me.
Reticulan vats, this one is pretty hard even if you planned for it, 12 peasants without gear in bondage outfits, vs a bunch of mixed reticulans with stun weapons and some hostile smooth captives, and a single elder. Hard limit of 64 turns, but you can cut and run early with whatever/whomever you can carry assuming you can find the exit in the maze. You will know generally where to search but the pathing can be pretty hard to discern. You are morale stable with decent bravery, but that about the only advantage you start with. You need really good voodoo stats on your peasants or you risk the single elder seriously messing with your ability to win. Your outfits are net -10 defense, but at least your morale stabilizes reasonably high. That said, no ranking unit to buffer the psi panic hits. If you can manage to near max out a batch of psi strong peasants in time, its defiantly worth the effort. 1200ish token(conversion of smooth captives), an elder, and a ton of medical related loot. Mixed feelings here, the loot for total victory is great, but having the quality of peasants to pull it off, that's a whole different problem. Bulking up melee stats for peasants early on is quite hard, and there's the bravery/voodoo defense issue as well.
Final option take your 500 score and leave it alone. This is probably the choice 8 times out of 10, there's always gonna be more tokens if you patient, and the token yield, when you can get it done, isn't more then one middle/high tier prize in most cases, which is hardly gonna catapult you over some great hurdle, or dramatically alter you play by itself, by time you can reasonably expect to win them.
Looking forward to seeing other peoples opinions.
