Here I am, Ostroc you like a hurricane
One of the key core concepts of the 357th and unit design is keeping some kind of logical fealty towards the faction that a unit is from, a unit works for, or a unit is to represent. And that philosophy still really holds true - you want your Cappie, Drac, or Feddie unit to feel "authentic." However, now there are a couple other wrinkles I'm throwing into every new force I'm building - era and Alpha Strike/Total Warfare.
Basically, after multiple discussions in our last few game sessions, it's come up that some 'Mechs are -fantastic- in Alpha Strike, then garbage in TW. The Mackie is a huge example of this. By AS stats, this thing really rocks on the table top. I might actually prefer it, for the points, to a lot of contemporary IS 'Mechs. Then you switch over to TW and it's laughably easy to exterminate.
Era is less of a concern but then also, matching up your Clan Invasion-era 4th Tau Ceti against someone else's Civil War/Jihad Davion force can be a bummer in Alpha Strike. I'd never consider such a huge BV difference in Total Warfare. Turns out though, that a CI Tau can win if the dice are in your favor.
But really, for my own personal edification, I'm looking at - Succession Wars (3025) era, Clan Invasion (3049-3052) era, Civil War/Jihad (3062-3075) era, Republic/Dark Age (3083-3151) era, and IlClan (3151+) at force composition. I assume those dates are pretty close to CGL's for era breakdown, depending on what they consider the start and there are some gaps in there, obv (SW tech works up until the Helm 3039 updates but you can roll those in CI era, and whilst lots of stuff came out between that and the FedCom Civil War, it's easier to just go the next era up).
A lot of canon changes occur in the transition between eras, or writers, as it were. So, the 4th Tau Ceti becomes a light force for some reason, but I think all iterations of it that I'll be running (barring SW) will be built along the lines of Cappie tactical doctrine with the augmented lances, as an example. I might run a 3L Raven in '49, but I'll for sure be running a 4L or better in '67. The Recognition Guide series brings new IlClan variants of older 'Mechs as well, so that'll inform my decision making process on current timeline stuff.
This isn't very important for pickup games, though even then we try to stick somewhat to cohesive unit choice buuuuut we're debating a "splintered timelines" approach to campaigning coming up. We're thinking a series of "what ifs" because any player campaign, by definition, is going to deviate from canon.
One campaign for sure is Nachtfalke, and that is going to be almost wholly using what we can, best versions of stuff to fit our play styles. Then, mayhaps, there's an alt 4th Succession War/3025 era/early Clan Invasion timeline depending, wherein we follow more old school MechForce stuff, tallying up wins and having leaders of each faction determine the direction of planetary conquest. Jihad era, we have a real humdinger of a situation laid out for our 5th Succession War that'll see some really interesting developments. And then there are so many mini campaigns, Tukkayid, Wars of Reaving, Hinterlands stuff coming up, Chaos Campaign framework, etc.
Flexibility in units is a must, even with how massive our collective resources are in miniatures.
Edit for clarity - I don't mean building/rebuilding/buying a thousand 'Mechs to have one battalion of 36 for each era, I mean using era-relevant variants or configurations with an existing force. I'll have to post my 4th Tau TO&E since that's what I'm using as an example here but essentially - for Succession War-era games going into Clan Invasion, I'd have a scout lance led by an RVN-1X Raven (a 3024 model, the prototypical test bed), but then for Clan Invasion, I'd switch the Raven model to the RVN-3L (a 3048 model using recovered technology) and switch again to the RVN-4L (a 3062 model with Stealth armor) going into the FedCom Civil War, as an anchor for Shadow Lances (lances of 4 'Mechs all equipped with Stealth armor). My battalion of 36 'Mechs would be shuffled on paper to fit these different eras & which 'Mechs thematically fit better in each lance, but overall, it's still the same 36 'Mechs.
Only exception to this, for me anyway, would be 'Mechs that don't exist in an earlier era. Like if I have Mad Cat Mk IV/Savage Wolves (a 3130 OmniMech) in a bunch of Clan Wolf forces, I'd probably want something to swap out for games set before the Republic/Dark Ages era.
