Depends who you're fighting, i suppose. The two mechanics proposed work together.

High -¦ players could up their WP payout in pubs by running lower meta gear. We could calibrate payouts such that if a player of any meta was to run standard gear they'd be guaranteed full WP payouts.

The primary motivating factor is the NPE in DUST. The draconian solution is to separate players but that's a bad suggestion because it isolates players and denies them the opportunity to learn from better players.

So the question is how do we keep highly experienced protogeared squads and militia/std noobs in the same matches?

High -¦ Players are rightfully reacting to reduced WP payouts, so let's put a floor on the system: WP payouts based on delta -¦ can't go below 40 WP for kills and 20 WP for assists.

Does that sound more reasonable?

That's a good point, and this proposal is not about nerfing vets, it's about two related goals:

1) giving low mu players an incentive program that is based on what they accomplish on the battlefield

2) creating game mechanics that encourage peeps to look for harder fights.

The mu ratio multiplier is meant to encourage both points, the minimum WP payout is meant to protect vets, and the gear meta multiplier is meant to reward players who are looking for hard mode.

Good questions, let's see:

In your first example, depending on your mu, you'd get a pretty good WP payout for killing any of those guys. They'd most likely be running proto also, so the payout would be neutral there.

The guy who spawns in with the SR would get the mu ratio multiplier(the likelihood of this giving him Bonus WP depends on the proportion of enemy players with a lower mu than you in that match), but he would get a buff to WP based on the gear meta differential(but that would average out over time because the next guy who spawns in while you're in bad shape might be packing higher meta than you, depends what average meta you run tbh).

You've presented a valid case, but a special one. If we imagine all possible case and integrate over all of them, i think we all come to the same intuitive conclusion: all-proto all-the-time high mu players might do a little bit worse, maybe 10% less WP over a match. Low mu or low meta players will do much better, and low mu low meta players who are winning engagements and getting big bonuses won't be low mu for long ;)

The Logi example is much tougher for this proposed system to deal with and as stated this system is unfair to Logis re combat WP payouts. We can look at what we do now: support/triage WP are to a large extent calibrated around what slayers can make in a match. We could do the same again: Calibrate logi support WP to compensate for the hit they take under this mechanic. So while the proposed mechanic is unfair to them, we could make it up with triage/support WP buffs(maybe specific to Logis, dunno right now).