CLASSIC BATTLETECH CATALYST game labs

You have to have equipment to create infrastructure. It takes scientists, engineers and workers to build factories, spaceports, docks, etc. They couldn't have just run off with a bunch of food and Battlemechs that lacked spare parts and became a military giant. Obviously a large contingent of capable personnel from the Star League came with them, or else their advances in technology wouldn't have come about.

In the case of many invading clans, almost all of them were used (or at least showed up in the Inner Sphere). And again, if the royal mechs are inferior, why are even lesser mechs showing up on the battlefield? The only way the present tables make sense is if the royal mechs are rare or non-existant in clan arsenals.

(of course, the content of clan second line clusters has always been problematic and subject to revision. Once upon a time, clan garrison troops were issued halfassed upgrades of the same gear their inner sphere opponents were using.  )

As much as I would like to see the 'Early' Clan Toumans to be chock full of Royals, the numbers just don't support the fact. The Clans, according to Warriors of Kerensky and the Field Manuals were formed by combining the understrength 146th and 149th Battlemech Divisions into a single Division with which to defend themselves. Neither of these are Royal Divisions so, barring 'defections' from other units, how many Mechs out of a possible max of 972 would be Royal? How many of these survived Operation Klondike? How many may have actually survived the meat grinder of the Exodus Civil War for the Clans to fight in Operation Klondike? As Col Bosch points out: Not many.

But this raises another interesting point: How would the 'Early' Clans refitted their forces after Klondike? I'm currently in the process of creating a MekWars Server set in this Era, and this question has really made me think. Sure, there might not be many 'Original' Royals left at this time, what would stop the Clans from refitting ALL of their forces to Royal specifications. As MadCap pointed out, most Royal Mechs are simply 'minor' upgrades. And more to the point: you have fully trained and more than likely Veteran/Elite techs at your disposal. Even 'major' refits should not be out of the realm of possibility. Sure, your resources may be limited, but when you have a tech base with all of the technical expertise of the Star League behind you....miracles can happen. If you only had a pool of 45 or so Mechs to use, wouldn't you make sure that they were as 'optimized' as they could be? If IS techs can swap out standard structure for Mechs in the 3049-50 Era as a field refit kit, why couldn't the Clans maximize their units to the fullest?

This is why I can't wait for the (hopefully) eventual release of Historical: Operation Liberation and Historical: Operation Klondike. As I have said in many other forum posts: I think that the community is all but clamoring for this information. Exploring the 'Classic' aspects of the game is a great way to not only sell products to new player, but its a great way to ensure that the 'Long Time Players' have access to new material about their favorite Era's.

I for one would like to see these kinds of questions answered in a canon source....but until then I will just have fun creating this Era in a MekWars setting.

I think that the dates given in TechManual are for the mature forms of the weapons and equipment; as such, I'd expect the early-period Clans to be using a similar tech platform to the Inner Sphere of 3067. Minus, of course, stuff like R-A/Cs, LGRs, HGRs, and so on.

Even the Light Engine (perhaps the Dragoons' effort was less an innovation than a resurrection of ancient technology?) wouldn't be too far afield, I think.

As far as the PPCs go, I dunno about the H-PPC and L-PPC. The Snub was an experimental weapon at the time, but I could buy into Capacitors becoming a standard piece of equipment before technological refinements lightened their mass and incorporated them into the Clan ER PPC we all know and love today.

X-Pulse Lasers would probably also work as an interim abandoned when the standard Clan-Tech weapons were perfected.

Ok, so assuming the clans did have access to Royal versions, and they did surrvive till the invasion, would it be safe to say that they would be used in garrison clusters? Take for instance Clan Wolfs Trinary Fifth Garrison ( listed on pg. 107 of the original clan wolf source book ) that has the mech listed as being a Battle master, Black Knight, King Crab, Sentinel, and Lancelot. Can I assume that these would be the Royal versions, even if they are in the hands of mere freebirths and salomha worriors?

Only if it is Canon...in which case, I am sure we will see it in a sourcebook soon 

Those lists have the variant designations in them, and were printed long before the Royal variants were created. Personally, I would replace them with the appropriate IICs or create a (Royal-based) Clan upgrade for them; YMMV. ComStar has been wrong before or provided false information for their own reasons, so there's even a handy explanation for it.


Maybe, but then we also know that the Clans were using designs that had  Endo Steel (and weren't Royal, not having even been created back then) during their infancy. It also doesn't explain why, in the 300-odd years after the Founding, they weren't reworked to include Endo Steel.

Might've been just as easy (maybe easier) to design an all-new 'Mech rather than reverse-engineer an old design to accommodate endo steel.

My two cents of speculation:

1) Seeing as how most of what the inner sphere would have seen would be front-line units, unless they were going deeper into clan territory, I wouldn't really expect most inner-sphere units save those partaking in operation Bulldog to have fought many second-liners.

2) Although the clans do employ old star-league designs, from what I've gathered (Old battletech "C" variants), they would have likely replaced some of the old tech with clan standard tech over the 200-odd years.

Then again, I've not really focused much on the goings on of the clans since Mechwarrior 2, so I speculate that I may be spurting some inaccuracies.

The TPTB are very quiet ... think they are carefully and interested watching this thread.

yeah, I think squirrels works better 

I'm wondering if we may see the royal designs once the War of Reaving is fleshed out more.  From the little we do know, it sounds like the fighting gets pretty desperate during it.  Caches will likely start getting cleared out to replace lost units and I could definitely see these designs making an appearance in at least some second-line clusters.