Guns on the Battlefield

In Battletech in 3075 there are dozens and dozens of weapons, special weapons, workhorse weapons, novelty weapons and shiny toy weapons. By the 3345 has arrived weaponry has simultaneously evolved and simplified.

The three most common weapons in the Inner Sphere are the Large Laser, the Medium Laser and the Auto Cannon 10.

Why those three? Well for starters the Federated Suns with their thousands of Mechs have two primary workhorse designs, the Enforcer, 3025 model, with CASE, a medium laser where the small used to be and no jump jets, and the Watchman, the 3055 model with the MGs replaced with Small Pulse Lasers. Those two Mechs represent 80% of the Federated Suns forces. The remaining 20% spread over a wide range of specialist designs from lumbering Assault Mechs to specially designed Clan Omni Mechs to equip elite forces.

Yes Clan technology, everyone has it, but it is expensive, and based around manufacturing tolerances that lean more toward hand built prototypes then to mass production. Where as a single Enforcer factory can build just over a thousand units every year, a factory may produce a hundred Clan Mechs in a single year, and sometimes less depending on material availability.

A moment for nomenclature, it's called Clan tech, even 300 years after its arrival in the Inner Sphere because it was brought by the clans, many industry members don't refer to it as Clan tech but to the common man it's Clan tech. Similar to how Band Aids are band aids no matter who makes them.