I managed to get Mech Warrior 2 (my favourite game back in the days of the Cryix 686) 1/2 working on win 7 using D-Fend, athough I can't get sound to work...
Back to topic: looks sweet, going to give it a try now.
As for the pay for extra xp & credits, looks like a similar model used for World of Tanks (& I enjoyed that game a lot even if the match maker in that game is shit from time to time).