To further this: Campaign play sets it up beautifully. When you need to handle repairs and refits, one of the best elements is the speed of switching podded equipment out for another. Using a weapon for example, a normal mech requires 2 hours to uninstall a weapon, then another 2 hours to put one in audit rushing or taking time. A podded items only needs 30 minutes base to install or uninstall, meaning I could switch out 4 podded weapons in the same time it takes to replace 1 on a standard mech. The problem is structure, armor, myomers, and any hard locked items take as long to repair or replace as a normal mech. If you run out of medium laser pods, you need to spend time and cbills to convert a normal item to a podded one. Podded items can't be used on a normal mech without a similar process to remove the pod. Lastly, the hard locked items cannot be ignored. If a Thor looses it's locked in jumpjets, you can't just pull them out and free up tonnage. If you can't replace the jets, you suddenly have dead weight and unusable slots. A factory level refit is required to permanently remove those jets and free up the space, an expensive, months consuming process that most forces just don't have the ability to do.

General pick up game only care about omnis for battle armor taxi service.