the whole "omnismoke" thing was IMO just another justification to explain why people still use non omnis, even though once they become available there really isn't a good reason to NOT phase out all the non omnis in favor of Omni units. when they are available. I mean I totally get the whole why do we need all this new fangled ... the old whatever works just fine... resistance to change thing. but there is a reason all the clans were heavily Omni loaded in their front line units, its because they really are significantly better than standard units in most ways. even with a limitation of modifying the base chassis being a bit of a pain in the butt.
Yeah, I didn't buy the justifications given for not using Omnis. Once they become available, everybody should start using them. They make too much sense not to use them, even with the extra 25% price. The faster repair times alone make it worth it, not to mention allowing one mech to fulfill the roles of multiple specialists.
The problem was, they didn't make economic sense in real life -- as I understand it, the best selling Battletech products are Technical Readouts with new mechs. And once you've got a 75 ton mech with good armor and 5/8 movement, that can carry 50 different weapons combinations, how many more do you need? Why bother reinventing the wheel? So despite the huge advantages, nobody really makes use of Omnimechs anymore because reasons.
I sort of expected this to be the case after finally realizing why OmniMechs were a big deal (in the computer games, swapping around stuff is no big deal for any mech). It is kind of surprising, talking about lore, to find even the major players not just fielding but still building standard Battlemechs in any real numbers
a full century after the IS encountered OmniMechs. After at least two major military expansions to boot.
Also, I originally thought that the omnipods were a configurable sub-structure that went inside the mech, along with the mech itself being designed with supporting structures that worked like an "exploded" diagram. So in order to install an arm-mounted gauss rifle, for example, you'd have what amounts to a giant tinker toy set wrapped around the weapon itself and just figure which connections needed to be set in order to fit, open up the appropriate location, then hook up the auxiliary systems (coolant, data, myomer connections, etc.) and badda bing, badda boom. Done. I don't know where that impression came from, but I swear it was something I actually read. It might have been the MW2 manual (the one with little notes and sketches, "Torso twist OR DIE!!!") or something similarly non-canon but I felt there was a perfectly reasonable description that I can no longer find.
