Price versus performance and progression aren't the same subject, but performance/cost ratio is never linear regardless of the bot chosen.
What I'm saying is that players spending EP and NIC for hmechs 'assuming' they are the end-game progression bot are looking at Perp system incorrectly.
The same arguements have been developing since launch, which I repeat here again, that bot X is useless. What they have always meant by this statement is that a certain bot is not viable for roaming, for whatever reason. Since Roaming seems to be the only PVP that is occuring, if a bot is not good for roaming, then its worthless and broken.
Mechs and lights are less expensive to build and have less slots to fill, so there has been a lot more experimentation with them to find builds, simply because they are cheaper. With Hmechs you are losing a lot of time (resources) for each one you blow up in the learning curve to find powerful fits. The idea of expensive bots and modules fits the game, that is there are things that only corporations or groups of players working together can afford to do. Fielding and losing 100's of T4 hmechs in battles is something a solo player or small group of players simply can't afford to do; but something like that is what it takes to find builds that work. Theorycrafting only takes you so far.
The 'fitting' learning has been a progression. 6 months ago it was too expensive to field mechs, only the most powerful corps would even think about taking mechs out in roams or even to intrusions. These first corps learned alot about fitting them and the extensions they needed to make powerful bots. Now there is more wealth in the game, and access to T4 LWF's is reasonable, and mechs are fairly common in all types of PVP.
Lastly, is this ongoing revivale of the Solo-Hunter mythos.
Players have been trying to be lone-wolf pirate/hunters since beta, with a little success, but generally they are foiled by any group larger than 3. These players have spent a lot of time and NIC working on lights, assaults, mechs trying to get some uber-powerful fit they can go out solo with and pwn everything. Since none of those worked, the Hmech MUST be the solution, but its too expensive to lose 100 of them.
The game rules are simple.
Not a solo PVP game.
No bot based progression.
All these discussions are players trying to force a change in the game rules to fit thier desired play style. If this sounds like L2P it's not meant to be that harsh. Those are such general rules there's plenty of room in the game for different play styles. I'm not saying L2P, I'm saying set reasonable expectations.
The Lemon bot pre-nerf shows that there are potentially powerful solo-bot configurations out there, they just don't have to be Hmechs because they have the most slots.
If your in group PVP, having a solid mix of bots to support each other is BETTER than having all one type. This holds true for roaming and intrusions.
Price versus performance is really a moot arguement for roaming PVP because part of the equation is set to 'fun'. To assess the real value of performance there needs to be a quantifiable objective. The cost/performance ratio also changes depending on what your using it for. Which means you simply can't say 'in general hmechs provide less performance for cost". There's DPS/NIC, survivablity/NIC and support/NIC all of which have a different cost to performance ratio depending on how they are used. Take a symbiot support fitted and put it in a solo dps fight, the cost/performance is incredibly bad, now team it up with a DPS bot and it provides a huge boost for the cost.
The final cost is the 'margin' of victory. If it cost 100M NIC for 1 additional DPS, but you win with 1 HP left, then it was worth it; assuming your objective is worth risking 100M extra NIC per bot.
tl;dr - hmechs are worth using if achieveing your objective requires them, if not, don't use them.
