Mechs available in 3150

[Summoner]

“Apple misplaced the blueprint to the IPhone and was forced to build them one at a time in artisanal workshop, which increased the Iphone’s value to hipsters everywhere.”

“Yo, sorry Vlad never once in our 30 year occupation of the Inner Sphere did we upload the plans to the Timber Wolf and the production line to Sharepoint, we did get you the ladies of House Steiner swimsuit calendar though.”

[nckestrel]

Or they have the blueprints/schematics and that's not the issue.
Where is the timber wolf by hand reference by the way?  I was trying to write up a timeline of the timber wolf but couldn't remember where that reference was.

[Deadborder]

joking aside . . . yeah, they should have just taken a single Timberwolf apart & study to get the specs as well as cast forms for any machining.  I mean we may have ended up with something like Mad Dog I vs II where there were cosmetic differences but . . .

That's probably how they ended up with the Mad Cat sheltered workshop, by dissasembling examples and studying their components. That sort of reverse-casting rarely works out well even on simple things (eg Toys, where it's commonly used), let alone complicated machinery.

The removal of the Kerensky Giftake from the homeworlds was a plan that was thrown together at the time as the situation required, and not exactly a fair comparison. That they made it out with just that much required the Wolves to essentially sacrifice an entire Galaxy to do such. The weren't exactly in a position to also grab technical data that they might not have even had on hand at the time.

The reference to the hand-built Mad Cats is in Objectives: Clans, p28. It suggests that the Wolves never had the blueprints for the design in the Inner Sphere to begin with. This, in turn, was the result of a policy of deliberately neglecting the OZ that Vlad enforced (And is explained in more detail in Wars of Reaving). So if you want to blame anyone, blame him.

Vlad was a great warrior, but a terrible leader

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Which is only to be expected in a society where your one-on-one combat prowess is used to figure out your growth potential.

[nckestrel]

The reference to the hand-built Mad Cats is in Objectives: Clans, p28. It suggests that the Wolves never had the blueprints for the design in the Inner Sphere to begin with. This, in turn, was the result of a policy of deliberately neglecting the OZ that Vlad enforced (And is explained in more detail in Wars of Reaving). So if you want to blame anyone, blame him.

Vlad was a great warrior, but a terrible leader

Ok, I was thinking it was late Jihad, but wanted to make sure.  TR 3085 mentions the Timber Wolf in production by Clan Wolf. ("nearly lost"). Though that TR3085 wording could be interpreted different ways, I was told that meant actual production, not building a couple by hand. The status of hand built Timber Wolves was temporary until Wolf built the new factory line in the IS.

[Colt Ward]

Not disagreeing Deadborder, I do not want to blow this up . . . but the plans were in the IS with the Warden Wolves- which may explain the battles over the years after the Jihad between the two groups- but on a design built for modularity and that they had between 3080ish and 3130ish . . . 50 years?

Honestly, their heavies are in good shape pre-move except they are standard Battlemechs rather than Omnis- Tundra Wolves and Blood Reapers- I think their lights and mediums are in horrible shape with what they have not being Wolf-esque.  Where they used to be Adders, Ice Ferrets, Pouncers and Phantoms they have . . . Sun Cobras and Lobos, again not Omnis.  While the Lobo is not bad, its a fat Adder or non-jumping Pouncer, where is their cavalry?

[Deadborder]

Not disagreeing Deadborder, I do not want to blow this up . . . but the plans were in the IS with the Warden Wolves- which may explain the battles over the years after the Jihad between the two groups- but on a design built for modularity and that they had between 3080ish and 3130ish . . . 50 years?

Honestly, their heavies are in good shape pre-move except they are standard Battlemechs rather than Omnis- Tundra Wolves and Blood Reapers- I think their lights and mediums are in horrible shape with what they have not being Wolf-esque.  Where they used to be Adders, Ice Ferrets, Pouncers and Phantoms they have . . . Sun Cobras and Lobos, again not Omnis.  While the Lobo is not bad, its a fat Adder or non-jumping Pouncer, where is their cavalry?

Again, Blame Vlad. The Wolves made a series of terrible decisions between 3060 and 3070 and it all came back to bite them in the bum.

Just because the Exiles had the specs for the Mad Cat doesn't mean that they are willing (or able) to share them with the Wolves. There's a lot of reasons for the two to not get along. And even then, given the state of the Wolf industrial base post-Jihad, there's no saying that the Wolves would be able to actually mass-produce an OmniMech. It's one thing to have the specs, it's another to actually have the capacity. Their first post-Jihad Omni was the Tommy II and even that had "problems" with its production.

While the Wolves aren't producing any of their traditional cavalry 'Mechs post-Jihad, it's not like they're short in supply by any means. The Fenris was said to be so common in Wolf frontline units that there was "one in every Trinary and almost one in every Star". And while yes, the numbers are obviously effectively finite, we've seen how long a design can hang on without being in production.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

One thing I find interesting: according to the MUL, at least, the Wolves don't appear to be trading with the Sharks/Foxes nearly as much as the other IS Clans.

[snewsom2997]

Battlemechs are outrageously sturdy, and can be repaired from almost any state of damage, as long as you have the parts, during the 3rd SW you didn't have the parts, The Wolves on the other hand have the parts, just not the Machine Tools, or final assembly plant. I have to imaging that any clan targeting/tracking and communications equipment is just as Omni as Weapons. Even the inner sphere was able to repair its Clan Tech salvage within a couple years of the invasion. If you have EndoSteel Plants, and FerroFibrous plants, and a 375 XL Engine Plant and the Myomer and actuator plants, you have the pieces to make a Timberwolf. May have to form the Armor or Structure into a different shape, but that doesn't seem that difficult.

[Summoner]

Battlemechs are outrageously sturdy, and can be repaired from almost any state of damage, as long as you have the parts, during the 3rd SW you didn't have the parts, The Wolves on the other hand have the parts, just not the Machine Tools, or final assembly plant. I have to imaging that any clan targeting/tracking and communications equipment is just as Omni as Weapons. Even the inner sphere was able to repair its Clan Tech salvage within a couple years of the invasion. If you have EndoSteel Plants, and FerroFibrous plants, and a 375 XL Engine Plant and the Myomer and actuator plants, you have the pieces to make a Timberwolf. May have to form the Armor or Structure into a different shape, but that doesn't seem that difficult.

This.

I just looked at the passage in Objectives. It’s a pretty weak sauce explanation. Basically they don’t have the assembly line.  Since the Timber Wolf parts other than the CT are basically on other Omnis like the Hellbringer, the Summoner and the Mad Dog we must just be talking about the CT.  This mech is an old design basically a second gen Omni and at this point not sure what proprietary knowledge wouldn’t have migrated from the HW.

Sorry, this a really tough one to suspend belief on, considering I work in Industrial engineering.  Vlad was pretty resourceful after the Refusal War with the Harvest Trials and all hard to believe that they just forgot about logistics and production capacity. If they were missing something to produce the most important mech in Touman then he would just Trial for what he needed.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Vlad didn't anticipate the Wars of Reaving.  As mentioned earlier in the thread, he'd deliberately kept the Wolves' manufacturing in the Homeworlds, so when they were suddenly cut off during the Jihad his clan was abruptly in serious trouble.

[glitterboy2098]

Vlad didn't anticipate the Wars of Reaving.  As mentioned earlier in the thread, he'd deliberately kept the Wolves' manufacturing in the Homeworlds, so when they were suddenly cut off during the Jihad his clan was abruptly in serious trouble.

considering they were starting from scratch using neglected (and probably not in all that good of shape to begin with) low tech IS factories, that they had any sort of production at all by the 3100's is amazing.

[Precentor Scorpio]

Would it make more sense to take an inferior mech linebacker to carry elements into battle then a timberwolf that could only fire 60% of its weapons if it is going to carry elementals. I would say no, but if the wolves were going to emphasize more combined arms then maybe for cheap fiction purposes it would make sense

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

The Linebacker is faster than the Mad Cat.  That right there gives it an advantage as an Elemental hauler.

[Jellico]

I believe the state of Timber Wolf construction comes back to a throw away comment in one of the period books.

Basically TPTB had to maintain construction despite a genuine attempt to end it.