I miss Bass, Tails I miss him a lot.

I’m not sure if you have the comic or have just scene some screenshots so I’m bringing some context here: When Wily brings it up, Bass refuses because 1) Wily had mentioned the gear was made a long time ago and didn’t view it as a true “upgrade” and 2) He views Wily’s plan as just one of his “usual schemes” and is sure he’ll just lose anyway.

While I still think the more in-character explanation would be: “Bass is a little shit head and Wily would not reward him a double gear for it,” I can’t say it’s completely out of character, and it does offer an interesting form of character growth for Bass from MM7 to MM11

Bass has seen Wily go through countless schemes, and is likely aware of how much more schemes that happened before him, so the reason he said no is due to distrust of Dr. Wily’s plan ACTUALLY succeeding.

I mean hell, he already went through that kind of plot beat-for-beat in Mega Man 8 with Evil Energy, and that failed, so after the attempted plots after that, I can imagine him being disillusioned by this concept, and being sure it wouldn’t actually work.