Mission Difficulty Variance

Update 14-2-2023: Added a alternative file that only changes the mission difficulty variance without altering any tonnage limits.

One thing that annoys me about MW5 is that progression through the game results in progression through tonnage, with little reason to keep around lighter mechs. The new Infiltration missions added with DLC4 help in this regard, but i feel more variety in mission difficulty (thus tonnage limits) would make the game more fun for me. So the past month i have been experimenting with the mission difficulty and tonnage limits encountered in the various warzones.

What this mod changes

Lowered Minimum Mission Difficulty

By default, nearly every warzone has a rather limited variance in mission difficulty, or in some cases no variance at all. With this mod, the maximum potential mission difficulty found in a warzone will remain the same as in vanilla, but the minimum potential difficulty has been slashed down to about 25-40% of the maximum difficulty for that warzone. This is enough to encounter more various tonnage limits so it would be more efficient to have well-equipped mechs of various weight classes ready for combat.

Redistributed Tonnage Limits

By default, the tonnage limits linked to mission difficulties start fairly high and ramp up rather quickly. Combined with having customized hero mechs and elite pilots this would make doing regular low-medium difficulty missions a bit of a boring grind. So i changed the tonnage limits across the board to be a little tougher for the player. On average you can drop about 10% less tonnage on a mission.

Expected Impact

Here's what i found from my initial playthrough with these changes:

• []The rewards for doing low difficulty mission still scales with your reputation/renown, making them worth doing.

  []Flying around only doing the high difficulty missions results in missing out on a lot of missions that could make decent money.

  []Finding new light/medium mechs and upgrading them with good tech is still relevant throughout the game's progression.

  []Higher difficulty missions are more rare, but also more exciting when you find one.

  []The monotomy of using the same lance of mechs 10 times in a row is broken.

  []YAML's economy changes and varied mech upkeep meshes well with varied mission difficulties.

  []Less talented pilots who are "just good enough" for lower difficulty missions are a lot cheaper and cost effective to keep in your roster.

  []In my humble opinion it adds more "life" to the galaxy as mech tonnage should not purely be sorted by warzone.

Mission difficulty changes onl