In a tech raid against the Clans in the early 3050s . . .

[Colt Ward]

Early 3050s (pre-3055 but after Tukayyid) you are hired by a mech/weapon manufacturer to get samples of Clan technology for them to reverse engineer.  They want to be able to improve their knowledge base to produce more advanced weapons than the standard/3025 models they are currently producing at their factories.  The contract, of course, pays more the better sources of information you can provide along with a variety of samples- depth & breath of Clans' tech- which will be overseen by the company's liaison which has oversight.

The mission plan calls for bypassing the Clan frontlines, trying to get the raiders into the 'rear' of the Occupation Zones where garrison units are stationed and supplies could be getting shuttled forward from wherever the Clans are from.  You might even be able to find a repair facility where the Clans are rebuilding/refitting their mechs away from the frontlines.  The merc raiders and their supports have very little specific intelligence about what can be expected on each world, using some information gleaned from Twycross and Teniente along with other House raids for projections.  They have a advisor paid for by the company that has experienced combat against the Clans.

Also to consider . . . whatever the mercs end up recovering, they are going to have on the same dropships/jumpship until they get back around the Clan/House frontlines.  The mercs will go their own way while the company's jumpship & dropship will continue back to their HQ.  So . . . a few weeks . . . maybe months . . . being able to look at what they won from the Clans.

I am asking this b/c I was a bit surprised by the answers in this- https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=84792.0 poll.

[BrianDavion]

Fully Loaded dropships.


you said "the best" not "the most realistic" the absolute BEST thing would be to find a clan Overlord C, loaded with a full cluster of mechs, hardwear etc... and steal it.

[Ruger]

Fully Loaded dropships.


you said "the best" not "the most realistic" the absolute BEST thing would be to find a clan Overlord C, loaded with a full cluster of mechs, hardwear etc... and steal it.

Including crew and passengers.

Ruger

[idea weenie]

Sneak people in to see if there are any senior Technicians or Scientist caste that want to leave, and try to get them on board the Dropship.  If they can bring technical files with them that explain the weapons and other tech advancements that is a bonus.

Imagine if you got even part of the Clan equivalent of the Helm Memory Core, the Graus Core, the Luzerne core, or the Hegemoney Memory Core.

Even if the weapon manufacturer has no use for advanced Clan farming technology, they can still sell the data to someone else that wants it.

[Prospernia]

Best is anything you can get.

The Inner-Sphere should by 3055, have integrated some of Clan's technology in their mechs.  War tends to accelerate scientific-growth. 

Including crew and passengers.

Ruger

Preferably, through espionage, or a massive lie in which the Clans were duped into believing. The Inner-Sphere should be good at that; they've been dealing with Periphery-states for centuries.

[Iron Grenadier]

Players were hired to do this for the Lyran side of StarCorps. They had a previous working relationship with them from the Feddie side.

They hit Steelton - StarCorps had hired a survivor of the 12th Star Guards to serve as a liaison. I recall it was Jade Falcon but not which unit exactly anymore, but the mission was a success.

[Greatclub]

The biggest problem is that if you're doing this from the the FedCom side, they're going to demand you turn over all the shinies to them.

They're kind of jerks that way for a while.

[Iron Grenadier]

Very true. Players had one more raid for StarCorps, then FedCom picked them up to do the same for them. Some slim pickings during those years...

[CitizenErased]

I'd say crated equipment would be the best to grab specifically in this context, as ideally that would somehow enclose any necessary technical documentation. Grabbing a Clan firebase's 'Techs would be great in other contexts, but the people who perform maintenance on the equipment aren't guaranteed to know how to build you a new one; might as well ask the kids at a Mechit-Lube in downtown Solaris City if they know the engineering principles behind the Banshee they're doing a coolant overhaul on. Salvaged gear is good but there's no guarantee of quality once something is exposed to a firefight. And as other people have said, an intact memory core would really be the ideal way to get every possible bit of relevant information. Especially in 3055 or so, now that I think about it, because Spheroid scientists were well aware of the extent of the technological gap and should hopefully have realized that understanding Clan materials engineering was the key to achieving mass-production (see the introductory page from Maximum Tech).

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Intact weaponry/equipment is good, but fully intact omnimechs were worth major C-Bills to all the Great Houses for their own omnimech research programs.

[Orwell84]

Human resources might be a good bet, especially if they can be turned to the dark side by the Sphere's better standard of living. Even if captured techs can't immediately help replicate Clan weaponry they should still be able to help with R&D.

One of the stories in Slack Tide deals with this kind of scenario, if anybody's looking for some fictional inspiration. "Horn and Fang" covers a Capellan-sponsored raid on a Steel Viper garrison in 3053, the overt objective being an OmniMech pod.

[nerd]

Going after technical documentation. Descriptions are a lot of use to reverse engineer, and the industrial tooling was always an issue in the Inner Sphere.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

That sort of acquisition is better left to deep agents, not commando raids.