The only real difference I see is MechCommander was real time instead of turn based. I dearly love the MechCommander games, I don’t remember how they did “critically” but they were excellent quality. They are well worth a play through even today. (I believe MS released them as freeware).

I wish the physical rewards were avaliable as add-ons instead of having to jump up to the full tier. (House Kurita as well, Honor the Dragon)

It was, and if you had a great game master it was ok. You knew that outnumbering the clans 12-5 was usually what you had to do to win, but it was difficult to bring that kind of firepower to a fight. The Battle Values concept sort of dealt with that, but it was an imperfect system.