I'm a new player, and I play these games slowly. Being brand new, I flew around and did some missions, been trying to find a mech I like that isn't the bloody centurion (why is THIS the mech that agrees the most with me??) and build up a steady bank account. Anyway, then the Kestrel Lancers dlc suddenly popped up in my transmissions, and I don't want to join right now, because if I do, I won't be able to repair my mechs, and I'm currently out in the middle of bumfucknowhere after killing some pirates for a free mech. A very expensive heavy mech. And I'd like to join the kestrels, but at my own bloody time, and NOT in the current state I am in, so yeah. Any help?

It's time restricted. You got to accept it or it passes.

Yeah, figured out as much. I finally got over the disappointment and booted the game back up. Decided to pass on kestrel lancers and found some good job opportunities instead. But now I'm suffering the world's strangest memory usage problem. The game suddenly started consuming vast amounts of memory to the point where it stutters, it never did that before. There was a driver update before I decided to go back (nvidia), and I did install some qol mods, but that shouldn't have this kind of effect on the game. It's so strange.

Quite a few people are reporting performance issues mainly with newer hardware. Did you ensure RTX is off?