OmniMech

An OmniMech is a BattleMech which is highly modular in it's construction, developed by Clan Coyote with some Sea Fox assistance in 2854. It was a major leap in Mech technology; a massive game-changer that ultimately began to change the way the technology was utilized for years to come.

Development

The OmniMech as a concept came into being from Clan Coyote, who spent years studying the revolutionary replacement plug-and-play system of the Mercury Battlemech, which could have it's Small Lasers on the head and chest changed out if they were damaged. Eventually they found that this system could be the basis for the entire mech itself, creating the OmniPod technology, which allowed for all of the weapons and structural elements to be swapped out or replaced at a moment's notice, culminating in the Coyotl OmniMech in 2854. But it was not a smooth development; the prototypes of Coyotl were often plagued with stability and targeting problems due to the sheer major changes that, up till then, had never been asked of BattleMechs before. It took almost a year and a half for Coyotl to actually see major combat. But when it did, it hit hard in the Kerensky Cluster; Coyote (and Sea Fox to a lesser extent) spread like weeds across dozens of worlds. After three years of major success, Clan Jade Falcon threw a total shitfit about it and complained to the Clan Council to get in on that action. Naturally, Clan Coyote was against that, but a week of negotiations eventually decided on a yearly trial to allow each Clan the opportunity to get the tech, inevitably ending in the entire Clan society receiving them almost ten years later, with Ghost Bear being the last ones to adopt them, as per usual.

Advantages and Disadvantages

The OmniMech is, as previously stated, extremely versatile in their design; able to swap out weapons and loadouts in a fraction of the time of regular BattleMechs, and as a result can change their role on the battlefield within an hour if personnel allows, allowing for a single BattleMech to take the role of four or five and be out on a theater of war causing plenty of havoc. Further, the modular construction allows for exceptionally easy repair of broken weapons, arms, legs, and even parts of the cockpit. It even extends to salvage, where if an OmniMech that's been fucked up badly but the OmniPod survives, the pod can be popped out of the husk, and then have fresh parts slapped on and it'll be as if it walked out of the factory fresh as a daisy. Combine that with clan weaponry and technology, these Mechs easily allowed the Clans to make the gains they did during the Invasion, and every further gain they made afterwards. Additionally, due to their modular connections, they can also double as a Battle Armor carriers with the Clans (noticeably the Hell's Horses) pioneering combined arms with the Clan Elementals piggybacking off of them to get from warzone to warzone without relying on vulnerable transportation vehicles.

However, they aren't superweapons on their own; and they do have their issues. For one thing, they aren't entirely modular; an OmniMech's weapons are modular, but their electronics, armor, and internal components aren't, and any changes to those effectively just turns it back into a regular Battlemech. Further, most OmniMech arms are typically setup to carry the larger guns in any variation of your typical OmniMech, meaning that forearm and hand actuators are typically popped off in order to accommodate for the sheer weight and size of the usually fairly long-range guns; which means if a mech is fast enough, it can quickly get into close combat with some OmniMechs and seriously fuck them up. Finally, as a result of the special materials and electronics used in their construction, they are horrifically expensive, almost 5 to 10 million c-bills more than a regular BattleMech of the same weight class. So while they were a terrifying part of the Clan advance, the Clans realistically only had enough to fill out their front-line units, and waves of the invasion post-initial invasion used the more cost-effective BattleMechs. Also because of the way their weapons have to be mounted, any materials of the physical guns have to be set only for OmniMechs, only with ammunition being able to be shared, making OmniMechs a major logistical nightmare for larger armies. Oh, and eventually they stopped being Clanner only, as many major Inner Sphere powers managed to reverse engineer the technology and integrated them into their armies, some being even better than some of the Clan Mechs they brought into the Inner Sphere.