Does Niops have battlemech production? I've always wondered about that, and if so what do they produce? I know they have like three planets in one system correct?
In 3064 (when FM: Periphery was published) Niops had a population of 19,200,000 spread across three worlds. The bulk of that population lives on Niops VII. The Association has no true mech production facilities, but can build any of the designs they field natively by hand. This means a handful of additional units per year, so it would be extremely difficult to make up losses this way if they were to engage in a protracted campaign.
We've never actually been told what units they have, to my knowledge, but a reasonable guess would be older Terran Hegemony/Star League era designs (Non Royal versions, I would think). I like to think anything manufactured before about 2700 is fair game. Beyond that, you start getting into the Periphery troubles and the Amaris Civil War and it doesn't make sense to send cutting edge equipment to garrison a science outpost.