Evasion rework idea to make it more useful in the late game without breaking the early game.

[TeaL3af]

The Meat

• Evasion should not be reduced by shooting at mechs. I feel like the reason this exists at the moment is to prevent Light vs Light fights taking forever, and hopefully with the following changes it won't be needed any more.
  
• Currently each pip gives -10% to-hit (+2 shot modifier) for everybody, I propose it provides a different penalty based on the weight class of the shooter, to simulate the slower torso / arm movement of bigger mechs: Assault -15% per pip, Heavy: -10% per pip, Medium and Light: -5% per pip.
  • Extreme example: Gunnery 2 Assault vs Light with 4 evasion pips = 75 (base) + 5 (gunnery) - 60 (evasion) - 10 (size) = 10
  • Realistic late game example: Gunnery 8 Assault vs Light with 4 evasion pips = 75 (base) + 20 (gunnery) - 60 (evasion) - 10 (size) = 25
  • Realistic late game example: Gunnery 8 Assault vs Assault with 4 evasion pips = 75 (base) + 20 (gunnery) - 60 (evasion) + 5 (size) = 40
    
  • Realistic early game example: Gunnery 4 Light vs Light with 4 evasion pips = 75 (base) + 10 (gunnery) - 20 (evasion) - 10 (size) = 55
• Make more (but not all) of the weapons multi-shot (like missles). This would make mechanics that affect the to-hit chance more consistent and less luck based. For example the AC 5 already visually fires a burst of shots, it could deal 5 x 9 damage instead of 1 x 45 damage.

Background
So I think a big issue with the game's balancing right now is that the Evasion mechanic becomes a lot less useful late game, mechs get slower and less evasive whilst MechWarriors get more accurate. The focus shifts to absorbing damage rather than avoiding it and this makes running lighter mechs a lot less viable as they can't survive the fire power being thrown around. It also means the Bulwark ability becomes disproportionately strong as the only reliable source of damage reduction.

Just straight up buffing evasion isn't a very good idea though, as the early game is quite nicely balanced around the current evasion mechanics. I've played mods that removed the "shooting a mech reduces evasion" mechanic without any other changes and it made early game light-mech fights incredibly frustrating. I think by buffing evasion overall, but making light and medium mechs less affected by it a nice balance can be struck.

 

[vparez]

Good idea! Indeed the speed (evasion) should make it more difficult to track a target based on the ability of the shooting mech to traverse the body and move the arms.

I would add one more idea here I was thinking about: the accuracy shouldn't depend only on the evasive pips of the targeted mech, rather it should depend on the relative difference between evasion of the shooting and evasion of the targeted mech.

What do I mean and why?

If you are in a light mech what would be the easiest way to shoot another running full speed light mech? You would run beside or behind him, making the relative movement between the two as small as possible. Like planes in a dogfight.

So in addition to the effect of your own traverse and aiming speed, if you can manage to move to acquire the same number of evasion pips before you shoot, and you stay in good range of the target doing it, you could theoretically remove all of the negative accuracy bonus from target's evasion.

Of course, this would have to work only for direct fire weapons.

 

[Donvale]

How about remove evasion stripping and change breaching shot to tactical shot and have it strip evasion as well.