Okay, after reading through the feedback and spending last night thinking about this, I've come to some conclusions:
As I see it, the main issue is with the Locusts, Dashers, and Savannah Masters of the world, rather than fatter units, even if they have the same high TMM. That is to say, people aren't worried so much about Grand Dragons (bigger guys with some armour and structure to them) as they are annoying light units, which are hard to hit and even when you do finally hit them you probably overkilled it, wasting firepower that you paid dearly for in PV. Larger units with such def mods are still hard to hit, but are a more significant chunk of your force PV-wise, and so you can't really swarm a guy in the same way while invalidating the firepower he paid for.
The problem is that, unless I crank the defense factor modifier through the roof, it's not going to matter much to units with 1 or 2 points of armour and 1 structure (as many have raised). But if I do crank the modifier, the point hike is going to make even slightly tougher units with the same TMM impossibly expensive. I'm already hitting the point of wondering how, with the revision numbers above, one can justify 20 PV for a unit only capable of dealing 0.5 damage and only at short range (like the Achileus WoB), or 31 points for something that, even if almost impossible to hit, only does 1 damage at medium range (the Cavalry Infiltrator). And yet people are still saying the overall multipliers I'm using are too low mathematically, and then I look at something like the Locust IIC and I tend to agree in that case, because that thing is a terror and is still coming out undercosted even after the cost increase. Something is being missed in the point system.
So here's what I'm proposing:
Jump Mod change: still in, same as earlier
Defense Factor Multiplier: If the unit's defense mod is 3 or higher, switch from a defense factor of 1.1 to 1.25. That's the easy part. It's pretty much what we did earlier in this thread, but drops any later progression to *1.5. Simpler is better, and we'll make it up below.
The main change: I've added a new adder at the end of the PV step, called the Annoying Bastard adder (may be renamed if officially adopted). The problem is not armour/structure on cheapo swarm units, as they don't have any. It's not speed either, as speed is largely meaningless without firepower. It's not firepower, as there lots of units with lots of guns that aren't broken. And lastly, it's not just being hard to hit, because if you're hard to hit but can't hurt anyone then who cares? The problem is firepower
combined with being hard to hit. The Locust IIC is a prime suspect: a pile of guns on something very difficult to tag. Even worse is the Dasher Prime: just enough points spent on armour to function, and everything else into speed and respectable guns.
How the adder works: if a unit's defense modifier (
not including stealth) is higher than 1, then multiply its medium range damage x (that defense modifier - 1) (again,
not including stealth). If a unit only has short-range damage, it doesn't pay this adder even if it has a high enough defense mod.
So, let's cost out a Dasher Prime. It has a total defense of 4, so it uses the *1.25 defense factor multiplier. This adds a whopping 6 points, instead of the 4 we would have added if we used the current system's *1.1. That's better, but obviously not enough: the fact that it only has 1 armour and 1 structure makes it incredibly hard to deal with just using our defense multipliers.
However, as the Dasher has a defense mod higher than 1 and so is rather annoying, we take its medium range damage (3) and multiply it by its defense modifier - 1 (3). This adds 9 points more, placing it at 28 PV. On the MUL right now it's a mere 17 points.
So far I'm happy with this:
1) It raises the cost of heavy yet hard-to-hit units to better reflect their defence, but doesn't price them out of reach (compare a Cataphract -4L and an Atlas -D; I feel they're about equal, and the new pricing reflects this. See also Grand Dragon -7K, Loki Prime, or other Size 3 units with a defense mod of +3 or higher).
2) It raises the cost of the disposable speedy units that people have had problems with (under this a Savannah Master is 15 points, and a Locust -1V is 18).
3) And the more firepower a speedy unit has, the more it pays. The Locust IIC, a terror, goes from 28 points (MUL) and 32 points (first revision) to 42 points.
4) At the same time, it doesn't price units out of reach if they lack firepower, even if they are hard to hit. The Void is no longer 26 points (first revision) but a more usable 20. The Achileus (WoB) is not 20 but 13. All such units still overall see increases, but I don't believe the increases are so great as to make these units unusable.
New spreadsheet linked below. As always, feedback is not just welcomed but desperately wanted. Look at some of these units and run them up against others to compare. Try to find edge cases where this might break down. Just please be detailed as you can. Cheers.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/357573/Battletech/Alpha%20Strike%20PV%20-%20Output.xlsx