I'm up to Mission 7 in the first chapter, and the back and forth between what I will automatically get access to through a story mission vs what I can unlock by leveling up mother base units is maddening.

For those of you who are much farther into the game, is there a point where introducing new major mother base stuff and gameplay mechanics slows down and stops feeling a little like tutorials?

Would you recommend powering through just story missions until that point before losing hours in side-ops and other open world shenanigans?

My routine is to do an episode, clear all side ops, do an episode, clear all side ops. The good thing about this method is that you'll be rolling in GMP and you won't have to go grinding for anything, ever. Some people have had issues with doing a bunch of story stuff up front because they find themselves under equipped with no real way to progress. People had the same problem in Peace Walker, from what I remember.

All of my play sessions have gone like this: play main mission or two. Brain is exhausted because of how carefully stealthy I am in this game. Go get a few side ops out of the way and fuck around a little. After I feel like I've done some good for motherbase, I chill out and listen to any newly acquired cassette tapes while I do something else - laundry, get ready for bed, whatever.

I started doing all of them around mission 14, but if that's not your thing, I think that you should at the very least do the ones where you have to extract a prisoner or enemy soldier. Those will help boost up your Mother Base staff, which will benefit your equipment.

@cmpltnoob: I agree with @oldirtybearon, especially because by doing this method, you'll learn the joys of extracting, you know, bears and ravens and stuff.

Definitely go through the Main Ops until you unlock the Mercenary or whatever part of Mother Base that lets you send your soldiers out on missions. You can only dispatch groups on 2 missions simultaneously and they take real world time (First few are pretty short but many are 20-30min each), you'll want those going in the background while you're doing other game things because the timer only runs while your game is on and not paused. Those Ops will give you access to a ton of GMP and materials as well.

Beyond that, I'd say do them in whatever order you like, you'll definitely know when you finish the main ops and can move on, so you're free to clean up the side ops at any point.

Get up to mission 13 then do the gun smith side ops. The gun customization makes it like a whole 'nother game.

If you are doing both story missions and side ops along the way is there any need to enter free roam at all or is that just for experimenting with new weapons and tech?

@dgtlty: The benefit of free roam is not spending so much GMP on getting picked up by helicoptors.

Do what you feel like, man... The open world is your oyster.

I haven't gone much further, and didn't wait to do a ton of side ops, but by the end of mission 14 you can potentially have all available buddies so that seems an ideal time to really branch off if you were mainlining.

This is METAL GEAR! Play what you feel is right!

Do what you want but I wouldn't sleep on building mother base though. Especially getting built up enough to get your fully upgraded fulton.