A thought struck me this morning. Could the falling defense values be a deliberate move on the part of wizkids to increase the carnage in games? I have seen people complaining about battles where only 3 infantry units die. This is more a problem in balanced combined arms games rather than focused tournament armies, but those are the games that they seem to be designing for if you look at the units taken as a whole.
I'm not trying to debate the merits of falling defense values, just trying to get in the heads of the designers.

My guess:

There's something in the works, rules wise, that's going to boost defense values.

Could be something like 'pilot cards' that boost defense values.

Could be new terrain.

Hopefully, it's part of some kind of move and shoot rule, where moving mechs are harder to hit, but have an attack penalty.

Probably a reach, but one can hope.

I really hope they don't make pilot cards that boost defence values.

I do like the Idea of pilots for non-unique mechs, BUT DO NOT INCREASE THE DEFENSE of mechs.

I believe that is what hurts MK2.0, when you take a uniques with 18-19 def and place a relic with +2 defence and dodge. you get something virtually impossible to hit. Its just not fun to play against it, and if a game is not fun to play people drop it.

At most let the pilot add evade...

Well it may be that you could not add a pilot to a unique mech since that mech already has a pilot. Then it wouldn't be so bad.

2.0 scares the carp out of me (yes, I know I said carp... I do not have a fish in me but I am sure you know what I mean). If it is even remotely close to MK 2.0 the game, for me, is doomed. The only thing from stopping me getting back into the game 100% right now is my dread for what they can, and probably will mess up, in 2.0. The game is the best it has been for a long time but I do not think that will last.

It would still be a pain in the ###. If you gave the Liao Targe a 'pilot card' that adds 2, or even one more defense, it will make people drop the game like a bad habit because 23-24 defense is entirely too much for a non-unique mech. Maybe if the pilot cards cost 50 points, it wouldn't be so bad, but I still hope WK does not incorperate them.

Yes, I think WK is going for carnage. The problem I see is that people will really drop 'Mechs from their armies because they are too easily killed and too many points lost, or they will simply turtle them to keep them from being killed right off the bat. Neither is a very fun prospect.

I understand the idea that the new JF 'Mechs will make up for their low defense by having better attack/damage values and no self damage from dfa attacks but that will hardly protect them from a charging BR Raider MKII from outside of their range. An 11 to 18 is only a 7 roll. Heck, even I could probably hit that one with some regularity.

Keep in mind that damage values for mechs are rising while the defenses are dropping. Yes, they want more carnage, but I see the mechs being the ones to dish out most of that carnage. We've already seen a mech with 7 damage pulse. That should say a lot.

Infantry is still overpowered (IMO) for its cost, and mechs are still underpowered for their cost. It only looks like that disparity is going to continue to worsen, as infantry get higher attacks and mechs (mysteriously) get lower defenses.

I highly doubt you'll ever be able to add pilots to just any old mech. They will probably introduce special mechs that have the ability to add pilots, just like they introduced units that have extra slots in their bases (MK) to hold the relics.

What alarms me the most, is the increasing frequency of capture and bypass. As defenses drop, capture rates go up. Nothing ruins your fun in a game as fast as a critical capture (either critical by rolling an impossible shot, or critical by capturing the keystone to your army) will.

Once we start seeing the stats for vehicles and infantry, we'll have a better picture of which direction they're pushing the game.

IMO enhancements are pretty unworkable for MW:DA (ha! I add a... ferro-fibrous card to my panther! extra defense!) so we will probably have some sort of rule change in the works. The charge fix was most certainly a suprise, so who knows what they have under their sleeves. Just thinking about what they'll pull out has me giddy as a schoolgirl :p

I think we are going to see a change in mech rules that will help to counterract the dropping defenses. WK is always alluding to us not knowing what is on the horizon and how mechs will dominate. The mechs we've seen so far for FP are cannon fodder, so something big must be coming.

Glad to see I'm not the only one wondering if a change in the works. While I have ideas on what could potentially be changed and how, there's some I simply can't think of a fair way to tweak. Charge and capture have already been mentioned, VTOLs' move and shoot and tank drop being the other ones. A simple tweak to VTOLs would be to simply increase the movement point cost of move and shoot. Just bumping it up to 14 would go a long way towards reigning in VTOLs. Perhaps an easy fix to mechs would be a defence value bonus when attack by a unit with a speed type other than "Mech". Not a great idea, but one none the less.

I was once whole-heartedly on board with the idea of some sort of "relics" type mechanic for mechwarrior, but now I'm not so sure. Each one would have to be too finely tuned to keep from royally messing things up and making unbeatable and truly broken combinations. As pointed out earlier, could you imagine something that added a defense value bonus to a Liao Targe or attack value and/or movement value to a BR Phoenix Hawk? Scary stuff indeed.

good point Hicks, but I think it was said earlier (and I agree with it) that doing this for CERTAIN units only, and not across the board would help to balance this out. as you point ou, anyu other wayu and there is TOO much room for abuse, it is sad because I am toying around with pilot cards, and if you do it with the INTENT to create good clean balanced units you can, also if you try to break anything, you pretty much can. so I hope something new is in the works that is different and I DO think we are getting a glimpse of it with the new "lower" defense mechs. this game is mature enough to need some major overhauling IMHO, so I say out with it, let's see what we got!

With 'Mech defenses down around 18 now, it doens't take much of a formation to capture on a 21. Then you're stuck trying to base and kill that capturing unit. Not always the easiest thing to accomplish if the opponant really wants to defend him.

Hopefully WK would add the return fire idea that's been discussed. I read probably half to two thirds of the thread, but it sounds like a very good fix.

Maybe but Trovic at least has a very narrow front arc so you could easily get 2 or more units out of it and he can't 'return fire' you. I know he has jumps to break and avoid the capture but if you grapple him and he doesn't roll that 5/6 then he's in potentially big trouble.