OBT Forum

My starting point is that at some point in history, the IlKhan manages to push the Clans towards a real war economy.

This means that all the factories in Clan space will focus on a "few" designs that are all Omni, in order to maximise their efficiency and flexibility. After all, who needs 3 designs when you have one that can do the job?

To illustrate my idea, I will focus for now only on BattleMechs but feel free to elaborate on Vehicles and Aerospace Fighters.

Let's say that for each class, only 3 different designs exist and that all factories must focus on these 12 designs, depending on what they can build, they will build one or several of these BattleMechs.

All the production is gathered and split in 20 (for the original Clans) with each Clan becoming 1/20th.
For what remains, competition is open through Trials.

This will not endanger the biggest Touman as the existing BattleMechs are kept and are either replaced after loses in combat or dropped to Second Line units once the new standardised 'Mechs become more available.

This could in a few years create a bigger pool of resources thanks to the experience in building these 'Mechs.

Well Quicksilver in my mind was more of a unified war economy than anything else.

Isn't there a TRO that describes Clan industry in a forward?

Well Quicksilver in my mind was more of a unified war economy than anything else.

Isn't there a TRO that describes Clan industry in a forward?

I think there are things in the two Field Manuals and in the Clans/Wolf/Jade Falcon Sourcebooks.

I finally found that blurb I was talking about but it was a none canon source, Objective Raids 3067 by MadCapellan. While unofficial it is extremely detailed work which is well researched and I have to agree with the conclusions he came to. The following is cut and pasted here for your review and I highly recommend you download this fanfic. Enjoy!

OBJECTIVE RAIDS: 3067
THE CLAN HOMEWORLDS

Almost two decades ago, the source of the Clans incredible battlefield technology was a mystery, more so than
even they themselves. Over the past years, we have gathered an incredible volume of information on the Clans in our
attempts to defeat them and put an end to their invasion of the Inner Sphere. Following Operations Bulldog and Serpant, the
SLDF has even established an enclave deep within Clan Space, and obliterated an entire Clan. Despite all of our amazing
gains in the past years, however, many things about the Clans remain a mystery. Whilst we have been able to gather a large
amount of data about the Clans’ manufacturing capacity, much remains unknown.

Sensibly unwilling to be forthright with information regarding their military capabilities, what little we know of
Clan Industry comes from what has been made public knowledge, hearsay, or uncovered through the dangerous and difficult
work of our intelligence operatives. What we learned was that the Clans’ manufacturing process is far more complex and
decentralized than that found in the Inner Sphere. Most every world in the Kerensky Cluster is home to at least one small
armament manufacturing facility supplying the fighting forces there with replacement parts, weapons pods, ammunition,
and armor plating, and even their main manufacturing centers are operated more in the fashion of an artisan’s workshop
than an assembly line. Whilst this does limit their manufacturing output somewhat, it allows for an incredible flexibility in
the manufacturing process, where a line producing a Heavy BattleMech one day may suddenly be constructing hovercraft in
only a few short weeks. Experts have theorized that the reason behind such a system is the Clans culture of constant, low
intensity warfare guarantees that industrial centers will be won and lost with relative frequency, requiring them to be
adaptable to the materials available.

That being said, despite our best attempts at creating an all encompassing document, what is available is far short
of a complete index of the Clans’ industrial complex. Rather than leave this information out of the report, however, I felt
that the information we have managed to gather over the years was of such value that not including it would be depriving
those using this report of vital information necessary to our efforts to triumph over the Clans, and would be an injustice to
the brave men and women who placed their own lives in peril to gather this data. Thus, I have strived to provide the most
complete picture we have of the Clans’ military factories and production facilities. Data provided in italics is speculative
data based on the best intel provided by our agents in the field. Rather than list dozens upon dozens of small workshops, we
also choose to limit our report to only those sites producing finished combat vehicles, omitting what would’ve been a
hundred pages of small local facilities that have limited production capacity, such as one which turns out eight to ten small
pulse lasers annually.