Mercenary Mech Market

[Drewbacca]

About how long after introduction would one expect it to take to see a mech go on sale among mercenary units?

[snewsom2997]

During the SW House Soldiers pretty much had to go AWOL with one, or their great great great gandad did, and that is how they ended up on the market. Mercenary mechs were family heirlooms, even regular Army mechs were family heirlooms during the 3rd and 4th SW.

After 3040 production increases enough for Mercs to get access to new factory fresh mechs assuming they had the C-Bills.

Wolf Dragoons are a strange exception, they appear to have brought so many stockpiles, Hoplites, Fleas, Shoguns, as well as engaged manufacturers for to even make their own specific versions of mechs, in the case of the Marauder II.

Outfits from the Star League like the Eridani Light Horse, basically were using the same mechs they used when Kerensky left, after much jury rigging, downgrading of weapons, and equipment, and full on replacement of body parts.

Some Mechs were specifically geared towards the mercenary Market during the Clan Invasion and after.

[AlphaMirage]

While there is probably no definitive time there are likely trends though
Combine holds back because they don't like Mercs and don't want their vaunted designs to come into the hands of "lesser" warriors.
Lyran and League you give us money we give you mech, for every two you buy you get a case of Timbiqui Dark thrown in at no additional charge
Confederation and Suns were more variable but Liao likes cash so you can probably come to an arrangement (with a very expensive service plan). 

In all of my home games i typically give a mech five years figuring that the first three are likely exclusively for House Units (unless it someone like Bander or VEST) with the fourth being House and well connected Nobles then I give Merc players a have a chance to get one (at a high premium because it just hit the market)

[Colt Ward]

Yeah, its going to depend on era, producer and standing . . . I think 5 years is solid, but look at the FM Merc (R) RAT, some of those A-rated units have some cutting edge stuff.  But some of them are also nearly House units anyway.

[General308]

It really just depends.   When you go look at the fluff some units it happened really fast.  Some not so much.  Just no hard and fast rule of thumb exist for this situation.

[ThePW]

About how long after introduction would one expect it to take to see a mech go on sale among mercenary units?

That's totally up to you. I sometimes use random tables from Heavy Metal's RAT when I'm looking for available assets on the market (based on size/weight and faction). Don't some of the Mercenary Field Manuals have information on this?

[Tai Dai Cultist]

About how long after introduction would one expect it to take to see a mech go on sale among mercenary units?

I find it unlikely that private and merc parties are forbidden to chip in to help complete funding for mech production runs.

In other words: they're available outside House Armies pretty much immediately.

[TwinkieMonkieIIC]

Along these lines, I was wondering about the "E" variant Thunderbolts.  Supposedly they are an Eridani Light Horse variant but they appear in the MUL for mercs as well as several houses way after the ELH goes belly up.  If they arn't just upgrades, where are these produced?

[Terrace]

I figure most mercenary 'Mechs are either purchased directly from the previous owner, or from independent salvage yards, with a small number being purchased directly from the manufacturer by rich or well-connected units.

If they're family heirlooms, then it's because a family member was granted ownership of the 'Mech, and this generation's representative chose to go merc.

As an aside, I figure salvage yards don't carry all that many fully-functional 'Mechs, simply because they normally get sold too fast for the salvage operation to build up a stockpile.

[Frabby]

To show up on the merc market, the 'Mech would either have to be salvaged, or be sold directly from the factory.

Salvage is theoretically possible from within weeks after first deployment.

For a new design, unless its design is top secret I reckon the order books will be filled for years in advance, and there will be mercs among the bidders.

Regarding specific mercenary variants such as the aforementioned Thunderbolt-E (Eridani Light Horse), I reckon most of the time these are not produced so much as they are created via refit kits or similar field modification. There's a ruling... somewhere... (haven't been able to unearth it on a quick search) to the effect that a refit kit exists for every 'Mech variant. Many variants exist only as refits.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

To show up on the merc market, the 'Mech would either have to be salvaged, or be sold directly from the factory.

While I agree both of those contribute significantly to the merc market.. "direct from factory" would really only be benefiting the elites of the merc trade: Those who could afford to throw venture capital "now" for a mech to "later" be produced and delivered.

The resale/2nd hand market is where I'd think from which most mercs and petty nobles would get their mechs.  Liquidation/Repossession sales of mechs seized from mercs who've gone bankrupt are probably notable drivers of the merc market in of themselves.

[Colt Ward]

If I was a factory I would reserve a few mechs for sale out of each run that were not spoken for and sell them at a good mark up.

Then again, the question is sort of moot past 'whatever works for your game' since we know FASAnomics is a HUGE mess and war material production is not really rational as we view it today.

[massey]

I think the concept of the "House military" needs to be expanded a bit.

There's a feudal system in place throughout most of the Inner Sphere.  What you think of as a House military isn't necessarily the same thing as a modern state military.  In the US, all the tanks and all the fighter planes belong to the US government.  They can distribute them however they want (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, National Guard), but basically they own it all.  In the Inner Sphere, that's not necessarily the case.

A Fed Suns mech regiment could be the personal property of Hanse Davion.  Or it might belong to the government of New Avalon (which is also the property of Hanse Davion). A different regiment might belong to Hanse's third cousin, Grand Duke Doug Davion.  All these are considered "House units".  They can belong to the Successor Lord himself, or to nobles, or to certain planets, or even to certain interstellar organizations.  There might be an ancient mutual defense pact between the members of a state that used to exist 500 years ago, and the Fed Suns still recognizes it and they still maintain some sort of armed forces.  Imagine if each US state maintained their own military, and then Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona had a mutual defense agreement where they maintained an additional level of military.

In other words, there's probably a lot of complexity as far as how the various House militaries are organized that we as players don't see.  All these forces are technically subject to the orders of Hanse Davion, but they've also got loyalties elsewhere.  We hear mention of units with questionable loyalty, but the game doesn't really go into why.  The answer would be that somebody else is actually the one who signs their paychecks.

So when a manufacturer is selling to a "House unit", they aren't always selling direct to the equivalent of the federal government.  It's not like Lockheed selling the F-22 to the USA and nobody else.  Inner Sphere companies sell to their Successor State, but they're also selling to nobles, individual planets, state-owned corporations, intra-state defense pacts, etc.  And now realize that many "mercenary units" are probably like the Kell Hounds, where it's some important noble's cousin's third son who isn't going to inherit squat, but needs a path to glory.

Say that I'm Baron von Backwater, ruler of Backwater V.  I maintain a company of mechs as my personal guard (loyal to me, and only me).  They protect my holdings on the planet.  And then I've got the local Backwater V planetary defense force, which is another company of mechs and a regiment of light vehicles.  And then I've got a third company of mechs that are my contribution to House Regiment #217.  I don't even see them on my planet, they're off doing whatever General Numbnuts (the House Lord's idiot cousin) wants to do.  But I fund them, and as a result the House Lord recognizes my claim to my world.  Well I've got three sons.  My oldest son is smart and competent, and I plan on leaving control of my world to him.  My second son is a complete idiot (probably inbreeding), and I'm pretty sure he's just going to embarrass the family.  He'll be a drain on our resources until somebody shoves him out an airlock or he gets shot by a jealous husband.  But my third son is competent and ambitious, and I've got to find something for him to do with his life.  If I leave him to his own devices, he'll start a civil war on my planet over his inheritance.  So what do I do with him?

Well, I could stick him in the House military, send him off to an academy and buy him an officer's commission.  But the problem with that is, if he's good, he's going to come back in 20 years as a Colonel or something and he'll want his planet.  A better option is that I help him start a mercenary unit.  I give him a lance of mechs and a dropship, connect him with another unit that is looking to expand, and I let him seek his fortune.  He might get rich, he might get killed.  But he'll definitely get sent far away from here.

Anyway, the point of that (long) diatribe is that some mercenary units have every bit of the same access and buying power that a "House" unit does.  The latest and greatest designs might show up in a merc unit immediately, if they have the right connections.  And a lot of them do have those connections.  For those units, I would expect zero delay between introduction of a new mech and when they can start fielding it.

[Terrace]

Going into another source, I figure a lot of 'Mechs that end up on the market for mercenaries to buy were salvaged by one of the Great House units that captured them from one of their foes to temporarily patch holes in their TO&E, dumping them once they're resupplied with stuff they'd rather use. This would be especially common after recovered tech becomes more available and 'Mech production is boosted through factories being fixed up.

[Easy]

cleanup

[massey]

I think the problem with assuming that everyone would seek standardized battalions is that in the depths of the Succession Wars, the battalion was frequently the highest level of organization that a planet might be able to field.  And then you've still got to fulfill certain roles on the battlefield.  An entire battalion of Griffins makes sense, except you still need scouts and brawlers and heavies...  So this leads to taking one or two specialist designs, over and over again, even though it doesn't make logistical sense.

While you might be able to move weapons around in Mechwarrior Online, and in the normal game with the mech construction rules, I always believed that these sorts of changes weren't actually easy in the game universe.  Moving a PPC from the arm to the torso is as simple as using an eraser in the board game, but in the story it may require a complete redesign of the mech, and may not even be possible.

Battlemechs are products of their time, and were manufactured with certain assumptions at the time they were made, which may not hold true in later eras.  The Succession Wars are then a time period in which armies have to "make do" with the equipment they have available.

[Easy]

cleanup

[massey]

It is very much about scale, and also about what path you've taken to get to that Lance composition.

This might also reflect some of the top-down and bottom-up differences you get when:

You might be going from five people around a coffee table doing Role Playing Game around the map sheet, where, in practice, your doing everything you can to talk the GM into allowing your customizations and hot-rod garage mods, which is much, much easier to try and justify on a one-off, mad-scientist-tech-who-spends-all-off-board-time-in-a-straight-jacket; to tournament-level, this-sir-is-your-unit-straight-out-of-the-campaign-book-and-here-is-your-salute type stuff (that is just as much a part of the game and is instrumental to getting the grand narratives worked out in a fun way).

The four players on a planet, who have spent many hours on characters and stories and working out the plausibility arguments, probably deserve a break when it comes to whether or not you could *possibly* move that Large Laser into the torso by modifying the mount. The grognard showing up at the table at the convention will probably not get to stake out his company of hand-built customs and expect the referee to okey-doke it, unless this stuff has all already been proffered, examined and approved before hand. I won't try to assert that too strongly as I haven't been to any tournament-level games at that level, but I expect it might be so, that in certain kinds of venues, stock variants are all they can practically allow.

The 'new' slot-type systems from the video games seems to be a practical, but occasionally inconvenient compromise insofar as your still kind of stuck with only-what-we-could-mass-produce limitations. Given the number of simultaneous players that these systems support, it's not that much of a burden, even if it means I won't be seeing some of my own very-favorite garage mods.

In the merc markets, I think the prevalence of custom stuff like that might be even greater, as the Mechs are much more likely to be second-hand and subjected to a generation or more of customization.

I don't have a problem with someone having a customized version of a mech, particularly merc units.  If anyone should have them, it's a mercenary unit.  I think I was reading your previous comment as saying that the Houses would have entire regiments of custom, optimized mechs.  And that's what I was disagreeing with.

[MarauderD]

About how long after introduction would one expect it to take to see a mech go on sale among mercenary units?

Well, take the nice Mercenary RAT tables from FM 3145.  Print out a photocopy, and then use masterunitlist.info to figure out the mechs intro date.  Then subtract that date from 3145, and establish a time to "merc life" average.

If I had access to a printer, I'd help you out!  These days I'm apparently living the digital life, even here at work.  :(