I mean, I know that a lot of Vipers died in their mechs during the invasion of Lum, it just seems odd to me that there are so many Crossbows left in the RA 70 years later given the turnover in the Raven touman. I mean, we don't even have Minoraurs or Centaurs left on our Protomech RATs by 3145, but we have somehow have Crossbows... ??? Maybe our R-teams did a really good job? Or the Raven Touman really is that small now and we're really only talking about only 10 Crossbows here?
Given that salvaged Mechs are almost always in the 2 or 12 position on RATs (e.g. Black Lanner on the Steel Viper tables in FM:WC, Blood Kites on the Star Adder tables, etc) a 7 position would seem to imply that the RA produces them. I'm not the biggest fan of the Crossbow, partially because of its association with the Viper aesthetic but also not least of which is that it can't even manage to have 20 points of armor on certain locations (bleh!) The only variant that suits my style is the B, although the E seems intriguing.
I would be inclined to agree that it's in easy Omnimech to churn out, given that it doesn't have any advanced components, you really just need Omni pods and you're good to go.
Of course, the question on my mind is why didn't we start up a Stormcrow factory? It's basically the Raven totem Mech and is all I could ask for (why bother producing heavy Mechs when you have the Stormcrow?). The Ryoken II however, is a joke.