I have an idea for expanding piloting skills a bit. It's inspired from the PC game. A little more to track but it could make things interesting:
Base MechWarrior stats:
IS
Gunnery: 4
Piloting: 5
Guts: 5
Tactics: 4
Clan
Gunnery: 3
Piloting: 4
Guts: 5
Tactics: 5
Here's how it works.
Gunnery
Used for ranged attacks. No changes, except for indirect fire and called shots (see tactics)
Piloting
Used for all piloting rolls and physical attacks. No changes.
Guts
Used for consciousness checks and willpower for shutdown overrides. The charts would look like this:
Hits taken: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Target Number: -2, +0, +2, +5, +6, dead
If you have a guts rating of 5, your chart would be the normal chart (3, 5, 7, 10, 11, dead). As the number lowers, it is harder to knock out the pilot, but they still take damage normally.
Shutdown overrides: 4+, 6+, 8+, 10+
Target Number: -1, +1, +3, +5
Like consciousness, a guts rating of 5 means you have the normal chart. The lower the rating, the better the pilot can avoid a shutdown. Again, they still suffer damage normally from heat.
Tactics
This ability assists with called shots and designating targets (indirect fire).
For indirect fire, use the tactics skill as the base to hit.
For called shots, same thing. Base to hit is the tactics skill.