The main reason the IS tried so hard to clone the Madcat was because it was absolutley terrifying to go up against to the average IS pilot.
The mech was essentially a Marauder and a Catapult smashed together. (two awesome mechs smashed into an bigger mech.)
Timberwolves still rank among some of the most deadly mechs in battletech. They are brutally efficient, have mixed loadouts that makes them terrifying at all ranges in TT. (Where mixed loadouts actually have benefits to using them.) They have a utility that is just not found in other mech designs, all cooked up with the nightmarish legacy of their efficiency and performance durring the invasion.
Long and short, THIS was the most terrifying mech in the entire clan arsenal in the eyes of the IS. So naturally, they wanted to emulate it to repeat the sucess of the design through mechs like the Rakasha.
MeiSooHaityu, on 20 May 2015 - 04:40 AM, said:
Why did the Clans name their versions Madcat? Clan have so much hate and disdain for the IS, why would they even consider giving an IS name to their mechs? Just weird.
I suppose outside of lore you could say marketing reasons, but that didn't stop them from naming the IS version the Rakasha.
It just strikes me as odd.
The Madcat MK II and III where manufactured by Clan Dimond shark with the explicit intent to sell the designs to the highest bidder in the IS. They named the mech "Madcat" specifically to appeal to IS buyers. Dimond Sharks tempted the fate of clan law by designing a series of second line designs with clan tech with the explicit intent to sell them to the IS. Madcat II and III where pretty much the poster child of these sales due to the IS desperately wanting Madcat's of their own. (heance the Rakasha which was a rushed attempt to emulate the design in the mid 3050's.) But they where not the only mechs that they did this with. They created the "Ha Otoko" mech specifically to Manufacture a clan mech on the cheap, and appeal to the tastes of House Kurita to proportedly sell it for a high profit (given it was made on the cheap, but to the IS, clan tech is clan tech.)
It was these kinds of shinanagins that eventually came to bite the dimond sharks in the rear as they got more and more brazen with their attempts to clearly manufacture clan mech designs to explicitly sell them to the IS powers. (Madcat mk. III was if I recall one of the true breaking points.) Which ultimately lead to their clan's downfall and forced them to reform under their original "Clan Sea Fox" designation.
The clan's liked the MK II design as a solid second line mech, but in all honesty, given that clans only consider standard mechs as "garrison" and not front-line mechs, the MK II's and III's ended up being more popular in the IS states then it ever was with the clans. (This was part of the reason dimondsharks where able to get away with it for as long as they did given that clans already thought of standard mechs as "inferior" to omnimechs.)
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