I see a major flaw in the model here: once someone knows you've got it, and roughly where? they'er going to come for it. this is an environment where major nations stage raids for water and fight wars over warehouses of factory spares.
If you have more than one yard, your better investment is to dismantle and monkey-model/copy every piece you have the physical ability to do, then reassemble it, because the moment someone knows you've got a yard, you're going to have every pirate., bandit, and most nations within a five jump radius coming for you. (not to mention Comstar coming, because they're all about destroying knowledge and sending mankind back to the paleolithic.) The major problem here, is that even with that, the Lothians are restricted to no-space-industries by the rules of the setup-they're not really able to maintain the yard they have, and machines that don't get maintenance die.
How? with production equipment, you get tolerance drift, the more you use it, the faster it drifts. eventually everything comes out 'out of tolerance' and/or the machine breaks. This isn't a big deal for ground-bound machinery, because that stuff isn't that precise to start with, and a 'mech has huge tolerances just on the basis of how much flex it's expected to endure, plus fusion engines aren't moving parts, so they wear out slower.
but production machinery? uh-uh. if it has moving parts, those parts aren't self-maintaining like a biological organism (and biologicals also wear out! it's called aging.)
Without the ability to maintain the yard, the yard breaks down and is of no use to anyone in a couple generations. If you CAN maintain it, you can replicate it, which violates the rules as presented. There's a reason Hesperus II was only turning out a dozen or so 'mechs a year until the Helm Core-they had to go VERY easy on the equipment to keep it from failing at a bad time until they could build/get parts to repair or replace the machines.
Maintenance of the yard alone requires nullgee industries that aren't allowed-the specifics state infrastructure is gone, and no factory can exist without it, or maintenance point, for any length of time.
The basic flaw in the rules, is that they are required to ignore the rule of natural consequences and of entropy. A magic sword can stay magic for the duration of plot, but a drill press requires bearings and lubrication. a milling machine requires precision instruments to calibrate it, a CNC requires all of those plus additional maintenance tools and methods. The more precise you get, the more active infrastructure you need just to be able to USE it.
