Low Tonnage High Difficulty Missions

UPDATE (2026-08-31): Check out themrdemonize's Low Tonnage High Difficulty Missions Redone!

Haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but themrdemonize has done some work to make a version of this that's less likely to conflict with other mods, including YAML.

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UPDATE (2026-08-25): Updated (more or less) for DLC8.

With the proviso that I've done very minimal testing so far. The game doesn't crash when you travel between systems, and at least a few of the mission types appear to be doing the right thing. If you hit a bug that isn't related to conflicts with other mods, do feel free to leave a comment.

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This mod aims to decouple drop limits from mission difficulty. In low tonnage, high difficulty missions, enemy units will have better equipment and more skilled pilots than enemies in low difficulty missions of the same tonnage, and there should likewise be slightly more/heavier enemy units overall. It should work for every mission type, and should likewise offer a better challenge than running back to low rep conflict zones. I won't claim it's a particularly sophisticated mod, but my hope is that it'll prove better than nothing, and I'll probably find time to make improvements and fix any lingering bugs down the line.

Since missions are generated when you jump to a new area of the map, this won't immediately apply to the cluster you're in when you load the mod. Jump far enough away that the mission icons disappear from the cluster on the star map, and then jump back. I've also weighted things so that the chosen mission tonnage is more likely to be towards the high end for the cluster than the low end, so it's possible you might end up with three, 400 ton missions in a system just by chance, but the lower tonnage ones should still pop up with reasonable frequency.

With Mod Options (https://www.nexusmods.com/mechwarrior5mercenaries/mods/537):

The tonnage bias slider controls how likely lower weight missions are to spawn. At 0. 1, you'll get mostly low weight missions, and at 10 you'll get mostly high weight missions. The difficulty slider, as you'd imagine, relates to difficulty. At 0, the amount and type of enemy units will be the same as a low difficulty mission of the same tonnage - they'll just have better pilots and higher tier weapons. At 1, the amount and type of enemy units will be the same as whatever you'd get in a max tonnage mission of the same difficulty - that is, you'll have a lower drop limit, but the enemy will not. Values in between take an average.

KNOWN ISSUES:

• []Doesn't apply to multi-mission contracts. There shouldn't be any particular technical limitation - I just need to spend some time figuring out how the sub-contracts of a multi-mission are generated.[/]