The perfect Mech company should be set up so that it can break into 3 lances each with recon, battle and command elements, then reform as an independent company unit for battalion-scale ops. But this doesn't even happen IRL let alone Battletech, and perfection is boring - so I prefer to determine beforehand if the unit fights on a lance or company level.
Dude, list your Mechs either here or in the Noncanon Units sub, it'll be fun to fiddle with your Orbat O0
Heh, okay. A lot of Unseen in this list, btw. With a picture at the end of the entirety. But it has a fair few non-Dragon Battlemechs - but what does that matter for a unit that's seen a lot of action and battlefield prizes claimed, anyway? When I was divvying them up 'recently' (circa 2011) I was heavily focused on what had C3 and what didn't, regardless of canocity.
Archer, Atlas, Battlemaster, Banshee, Catapult, Centurion, Crusader, Cyclops, Dragon, Grasshopper, Griffon, Hunchback, Javelin, Jenner, Locust, Longbow, Marauder, Panther, Phoenix Hawk, Rifleman, Sagittaire, Shadowhawk, Thunderbolt, Trebuchet, Victor, Warhammer, Wasp, Whitworth, Wolverine.
For those of you counting at home, that's 29 'Mechs, and I have the contents of an Alpha Strike Battle Lance and Striker Lance sitting on my desk (some of which will be replacing older, inferior plastic sculpts). So I'd need 11 more 'mechs for a full 40 battalion. Obviously going to fill that out with very DCMS oriented 'Mechs (as of right now few of them are iconic Draconis models...) and I might take out a couple of the real oddballs,especially the Sagittaire, to repaint into my merc unit.
If you want to play with OpFor lists, though, the Banshee is converted to be a BNC-8S. Something about a hatchet-wielding, 95-ton, TSM/ECM-equipped C3 Slave just makes me say, "Damn the canon, THIS THING IS AWESOME."
I think that the C3M setup I'm going to use for the planned company is the NG-C3B Naginata (double master variant), ASD-CM, and BLR-M3. Though in actual games that may vary depending on what kind of points allowance I have...