Like the Avatar, the Sunder was an attempt to re-engineer captured Clan equipment to make it compatible with Inner Sphere technology. The Sunder used captured Loki and Thor chassis as its basis. Unfortunately, this 'Mech's development process was plagued with false starts and technological failures. The first problem to crop up involved the chassis design and weight allocation - the Sunder was intended to carry far more tons of equipment than the Clan Loki and Thor OmniMechs on which it was based. Rurik Drascir and the other engineers at Luthien Armor Works believed they could easily add this extra weight, and it is true that the additional stress did not cause catastrophic failures in the skeleton. However, the Sunder's actuators wore out at an alarming rate and had to be replaced with larger and more robust versions.
       The upper torso was redesigned to accept a bulkier recovered Star League engine. This change meant rearranging the 'Mech's internal spaces, and so the designers moved the torso weapons bay above the cockpit. This reconfiguration posed no problems when the weapon pods were loaded with energy weapons, but firing missiles sprayed caustic gasses all over the cockpit canopy and sensor arrays. The engineers eventually fixed the problem, but the delays made the Sunder one of the last DCMS OmniMechs to be authorized for full-scale production.
         The Sunder, with its advanced engine and other systems, fared badly during the Jihad though, and numerous other issues cropped up as well. When the DCMS ordered a full reengineering of the design, Rurik Drascir and his team of engineers did their best to fix the various oversights and problems of the original design. They seemed to have done their job well, and the Sunder has become the mainstay of the Combine assault forces.

       When compared to other Inner Sphere assault 'Mechs, the Sunder is an extremely capable machine. The Sunder's bay can accept an amazing fourty-four tons of weapons, nearly half the weight of the machine itself, and a full eight tons more than the original Sunder. To do this, with the standard fusion engine that Jihad-era logistics required, the engineers were forced to downgrade the engine, and the Sunder's maximum speed. Even so, the Sunder's heavy Star Slab Glaze laser-reflective armor makes is difficult to bring down and its heavy weapons load makes it deadly to all enemies.
         The primary configuration sports a massive assault-class autocannon capable of ripping apart even the heaviest foes in the left arm, and two heavy lasers in the right arm. Twelve short-range missile tubes in the torso make it deadly against a range of opponents, and an array of smaller lasers give it a good fallback armament should the Sunder's ammunition load run out. Other configurations carry LRM and MRM racks, particle cannons, and high-velocity autocannons. The Echo configuration, what many call the "Awesome Killer", carries a massive heavy particle cannon in each arm, and can effectively fire the two weapons for the duration of the battle.
         Interestingly, some DCMS warriors have taken the initiative of "acquiring" weapons pods designed for Sunder 1s built in other nations and installing them on their Sunder 2s. The excess mass available on the Sunder 2 allows them to fill out the space around the pods with extra heat sinks or lasers. The recovered Star League technologies that this practice allows access to has begun to impress the DCMS in general and this practice is beginning to extend into other OmniMechs with equivalents still built in other nations.

         If the Hatamoto-Chi is the symbol of the DCMS, the Sunder is the work horse. Traditional OmniMech line units are almost always commanded by a Sunder, and the sight of a lance of these deadly OmniMechs approaching an enemy unit have often caused them to surrender without a fight. Deployed only after the worst of the Jihad bombardments were completed, the Sunder 2 suffered little from that war and very few fell into non-aligned hands. As such, the vast majority of Sunder 2s are only used by the Draconis Combine.