I think people needed to look at the mech they were buying before they did so.
As has been noted in the omnimech rules for MWO, Clan crit spaces for Endosteel and Ferrofibrous Armor will be fixed to their slotted location. Referrencing the placement of these in the original mech sheet for the Timberwolf yields the following facts:
1) The Center Torso has a single Endosteel slot allocated. This means no ballistic weapon except a Machine Gun will be possible in this location. Also, this location will be able to mount a BAP, due to the Clan model being only 1 critical.
2) Only two other configurations are being put in for the Timberwolf, not the four that were the baseline models. This will mean at least two configurations will not be in the game (which two are not known). It seems likely that, based on pod mounting, the best guesses are the B due to it's similarity to the C, and the A which might be possibly too close to the Prime.
3) The only configurations with Ballistic mounts in the arms are the B (Gauss Rifle) and C (UAC/5). As both of these use the Right arm to mount them and have a Ferrofibrous armor crit in them, and as the Prime RT has two Ferrofibrous and one Endosteel crit assigned, no Timberwolf will be capable of mounting more than a single UAC/20 or LB 20-X AC. Configurations with multiple ACs will most likely only be possible with one in the arm, one in the torso.
This does assume the Timber Wolf Prime retains its side torso ballistic mount for the Machine Gun there.
4) Nothing at all will be able to be placed in the legs due to all crits being assigned to Endosteel.
5) Nothing at all will be able to be placed in the Head, as the only slot there is allocated to Ferrofibrous.
6) Each side torso will only have seven critical spaces available for use (the rest occupied by Engine, Ferrofibrous, and Endosteel).
7) Unlike the Catapult, the Timber Wolf's missile pods are torso mounts, which will make this mech more vunerable to side torso destruction. It remains to be seen if it will retain the large cockpit hitbox of the Catapult in addition to this.
8) The Timber Wolf will always have 15 heat sinks at the minimum, which cannot be removed to lighten tonnage.
Since these are all based on the original material, they are subject to change by the way the Devs introduce various equipment and allocate the minimum crits in the Timber Wolf. However, it is likely the above can be counted on as a general overview of what owners of the Timber Wolf can expect when they attempt to modify the mech they receive to weapons mountings of their own choosing. If any and all of the above is unacceptable to you, then you should avoid hoping the Timber Wolf will be the mech you hope it will be to you.
My own two cents.
Edited by Jakob Knight, 07 February 2014 - 02:10 PM.