>True, but I'm not talking about tinkering or House variants of
>existing machines. Haven't you ever run into a player whose
>MechWarrior seemed to have his very own Skunk Works in the back 40
>churning out custom prototypes, each more outlandish than the last,
>for him to ride into battle each week?

Eh, in the post-Clan Invasion era, the mercenary regiment I was XO of made more than our contract's pay selling OmniMech carcasses to the Draconis Combine. We figured they had enough parts to field an entire regiment of clan mechs and we had enough money to commission short production runs (mostly of vehicles, not Mechs but with some exceptions) from the Free Worlds League.

And then our dropship got shot down and we were broke with nothing but our personal Mechs to our name. That's the breaks in BattleTech.