First Look at FWL 3025 Manufacturing

House Marik: The Free Worlds League (FASA 1622), page 114:

The Free Worlds League presently has 17 fully or partly operational 'Mech production facilities, manufacturing an estimated 500 'Mechs per year. Another seven production lines are currently shut down (due to component shortages) or disabled. Twenty-four different 'Mech types are currently manufactured in the League, with the most common being Stingers, Wasps, Orions, Griffins, Hermes IIs, Locusts, Wolverines, and Warhammers.  

Those most common 'Mechs don't seem to be in any kind of order, unless they're being listed from most-produced to least-produced:

42    Stinger (9 shy)
51    Wasp
42    Orion
41    Griffin
34    Hermes II (2 shy)
32    Locust (4 shy)
36    Wolverine-M
22    Warhammer

21    Marauder-M
16    Trebuchet
16    Spider
15    Archer
14    Hunchback
14    Shadow Hawk
13    Phoenix Hawk
13    Vulcan
12    BattleMaster
11    Stalker
9    Quickdraw
8    Rifleman
7    Awesome
7    Crusader
6    Cicada
4    Goliath

The chart lists thirteen production sites and 486 'Mechs built annually--four sites and fourteen 'Mechs fewer than stated in the text. I know from the Davion and Kurita books that some factories don't get listed in the production chapter, so I'm inclined to think these four "missing" sites were simply too small to appear on the chart, and that they're responsible for the 9 Stingers and 4 Locusts needed to put the "most manufactured" list in order. (Per the Free Worlds Defense Industries profile on page 126, the 2 extra Hermes IIs seem to come from a troubled line on Gibson.)

The corporate profiles don't mention Shiro III's Stalker line (which must be new, since the FWL hadn't built any Stalkers in the past century), Irian's Awesome line (newly rebuilt) or Keystone's BattleMaster line (I don't know why). Per the chart, these three lines produce 30 'Mechs annually; the text says all four make 30 together, but I think that's forgetting to add the Goliath line in, or maybe shorting the new/rebuilt lines.

The profiles also have Thunderbolts instead of Phoenix Hawks built on Keystone (TR:3050 gives it both, so I'll assume the Thunderbolt line is simply fallow in 3025) and Calloway VI retooling for Phoenix Hawks instead of Shadow Hawks (probably a copy error - either the wrong Hawk or the wrong planet).


To be continued later.

Pathfinder Run #1: Space Loop

Our primary Pathfinder GM currently misses most sessions, so we've been rotating that duty for a while. The last adventure I ran started with the party trying to leave a small adventurer's/crossroads town, only to discover the town was trapped in a space loop. High skill rolls revealed that the space loop was centered on the town alchemist shop and had been initiated by some sort of blood rite.

Quest below the cut.

How Many BattleMechs Exist in 3025?

[Edit: more exact estimates on Aug 10, 2017 /Edit]

I estimate a ceiling of 54 thousand BattleMechs.

383 regiments employed directly by the Successor States
(plus 744 regimental and 1152 battalion command lances)
24.83 regiments known to operate in the Periphery
(plus 18 regimental and 22 battalion command lances)
3.2 regiments estimated among lesser, unnamed Bandit Kings
2.75 estimated merc regiments otherwise (un)employed
11.5 regiments estimated under corporate control
5 potential regiments of unlisted FWL provincial forces

[Edit, Sep 1, 2015: but see also this post. /Edit]

Such an exact accounting of forces might seem restrictive to some people. But like the Kurita house book says:

Although efforts have been made to gather the most up-to-date information possible on the forces, readers must remember that regiments are constantly being reformed, transferred, temporarily removed from active service, reactivated, or decommissioned for spares.

Especially with mercs, there's a constant churn of big units fragmenting into little units, and little units joining up to reform into big units, so there's plenty of room for a Player Unit of just about any size and type to form up in just about any part of the Successor States.

Details below the jump.