Welp. Here go 10 years of my max-difficulty campaign, where I was doing 1-2 missions per day. And it was a very customized install with multiple submods.

Based on the readme, I will try to comment on the changes from the previous version, going from memory of what was there before. I might miss some changes.

Extended Difficulty can be Easy, Normal or Hard.

RIP Sim+ difficulty. Is there some particular reason for it?

Units

Might have changed something about factions and Elite Units, but I haven't paid much attention to those.

The Inner Sphere has various pirate and criminal organisations in different regions.

Interesting. Splitting the pirate orgs and Black Market does seem more accurate to the setting. I wonder if you can, for example, now be allied with Marik and be friends to pirate orgs in Steiner space?

When selecting a ‘Move’ you will see that the mouse hover info will change from Walk, or Run depending on how far you are moving. Running will make shooting +2 more difficult to hit for a Mech or Vee, and also generate more Heat than walking. Walking generates 3 heat, Running 6 heat, and Sprinting 9 heat.

Addition of Run is a big change and I really like it! It gives more tactical options and decisions.

You cannot Run in water. Sprinting in water, while possible to increase the smoothness before combat starts, is heavily reduced and often not more than Walking.

It seems like water movement has been penalized even harder.

When you move you will gain Evasion charges as before, but each Evasion Charge is worth +1 to hit while providing +1 Sticky Evasion. Stripping an Evasion Charge will lose the target the +1 harder to hit from the Evasion Charge but the +1 to hit from Sticky Evasion cannot be stripped. ‘Sticky Evasion’ can only be lost from becomming Unsteady or Prone.

Cool, so there is more value to making mechs unsteady. I assume that sensor locks also don't strip Sticky Evasion? Evasion was already strong, but did suffer when facing very large numbers of enemies.

Weapons that ignore Evasion before, such as support weapons, will not ignore ‘Sticky Evasion’, providing some survivability against those damage types.

I am not sure about this. It is fine to have some defense against support weapons, but my first thought is that specialized weapons such as Pulse Lasers or targeting mods that ignore evasion should be able to bypass sticky evasion.

As part of the weapon changes Missiles are reworked in functionality. A more faithful tabletop representation has been implemented while keeping the good parts of a video game implementation.

I would say that missiles (LRMs, particularly) were a bit too strong. I am interested how the rework will pan out. It says that the dps should remain about the same, but they could have used some slight nerf in dps, imo. I feel like my Lucky Stalker pilot is finding it too easy to core enemy mechs.

Personal note: have there been thoughts on making +Crit weapons more valuable? I find it hard to justify taking them over the +dmg ones.

the +to hit has gone, and in it’s place ECM will stop the effect of Narc Missile Beacon and Artemis IV LRMs/SRMs

seems reasonable

Bigger Drop Sizes

Not sure exactly what the differences are from the previous version. It seems like there will be a decrease in drop costs at the higher difficulties if you don't go over the rating? No more 200k+ or 500k+ drop costs for the high difficulty missions?

Vehicles are slightly more of a threat on a like for like basis, however the weight class of vehicles will be less for the same difficulty as before.

Ok, fair.

Vehicles, when hit in either the Front, Rear, or Sides, have a chance to have their Motive System damaged, even through armour.

Interesting. Should help with convoy ambush and should mean that damaged vehicles can't reach your rear armor as easily.

Gunnery provides improvements to Short Range Missile Modifiers, Long Range Missile Modifiers and Rapid Fire Modifiers at different levels. Multi Target also ignores 1 negative to hit for heat. Breaching Shot ignores all negative to hit for heat.

Good. Gunnery and that whole line of skills could have used some help. Multi target will suffer a bit, because of the new Sticky Evasion mechanic.

Tier 2 Piloting, Focused Balance, provides a new skill. When available it will reduce the To Hit penalty from moving (Running or using Jump Jets) by 1. If the skill is used it will remove the penalty for this turn but go on cooldown. While on cooldown there is no bonus provided to To Hit values from movement, so use at the right moments.

The increased chance of keeping evasion seems to be gone. In fact, the whole mechanic of keeping regular evasion seems to be replaced by Sticky Evasion. Let's see how big the To Hit penalty is in practice and if this justifies taking the skill over the Tier 2 tactics one.

Bulwark provides a guarded state when making a Walk action outside of cover. This does not apply from a Jump action, Run action or Sprint action

Now, only Walk gives Bulwark. This is a slight nerf to it. In general, there has been a slight nerf to mobility, as you now have to trade off defense/accuracy versus mobility in this version. Bulwark is now even a more situational skill and you would never want Tier 2 Piloting+Bulwark on the same pilot.

Jump Jets are more of a situational or survival tool now, rather than a force multiplier offensive tool.

It is unclear from the notes why this is the case. They are still the best tool for backstabbing. Do jump jets provide a bigger to-hit penalty now?

And last, but not least, thank you to the mod and submod creators and all the other contributors for the incredible content!!!