Tetatae Squawkins, on 03 August 2018 - 06:29 AM, said:
I think it's just faffing about for the sake of selling more books. All a person needs is TROs which list when a unit becomes available.
FLG 01, on 03 August 2018 - 06:22 AM, said:
You would not find any L-PPC in a pre-Jihad TRO, for example, simply because the new IS PPCs were introduced in 3067 and they were not installed on the new Mechs. Some found their way to new variants sooner but those are not covered by TROs.
I think you're over thinking it. Of course they're looking at TROs (or perhaps sarna) because they're thinking, this looks cool, this is popular, this isn't, etcetera. As for weapons. They probably just looked at the overall lists and thought what they could bring in. You're right that the PPCs were probably not brought in via TRO, they were probably seen on a list and then they wanted to integrate them and the intro date worked in their favour.
I would be surprised if anyone at PGI is scrutinizing over lists like those found in IO where it mentions everything including the kitchen sink and RPG tech ratings and nonsense like that. None of which is useful for actually playing the game.