The Mech Touch

Miss Alexa Streon came from a Terran ancient clan. She was familiar with the benefits and the rationale of building up a mech roster of exclusive models.

However, the Larkinson Clan was different from the Streon Ancient Clan.

The latter was a behemoth and had so many mech designers at its disposal that it was not short on exclusive and commercial works.

The Larkinson Clan was much smaller and needed to earn a lot more money in order to deepen its foundation.

The Larkinsons had a lot of ambitions, but not enough funding, resources, access and relationships to strengthen and deepen their roots in human society.

The successful expeditions occasionally produced massive windfalls, but these were incidental and unreliable earnings that had nothing to do with normal economic activity.

Due to the expeditionary fleet's penchant for challenging ever more powerful adversaries, the Larkinson Clan was forced to invest much of the money and resources obtained from plunder into strengthening its own forces!

In short, the Larkinson Clan's military arm had grown disproportionately large compared to its civilian arm!

That was not a healthy development at all. If the former ever suffered a catastrophe, the flawed foundation of the clan would immediately teeter on the precipice of collapse.

This was because it was impossible for the underdeveloped industries of the Larkinson Clan to maintain the current level of expenditures and other needs of the vastly oversized Larkinson Army and the Larkinson Navy!

What was worse was that the Larkinson Clan had recently founded a lot of side branches on different planets.

Each of them enabled the LMC and other daughter companies to enter into a lot of new markets, but it took a lot of time and money to pay back the initial investments.

In short, the Larkinson Clan was still stuck at the stage where it needed to put a lot of effort into building up enough profit-generating activities to sustain its high consumption.

It made a lot more sense for the Larkinsons to focus a lot more on building up its core businesses, of which the Living Mech Corporation was by far the most important.

Yet instead of devoting more time and energy on expanding its product catalog, Ves directed an unreasonable amount of time and effort into designing and updating all kinds of Larkinson-exclusive mechs!

Though Ves understood Alexa's underlying perspective, he did not entirely agree with her perspective.

He shook his head even as he stared at all of the trial mechs being put to use. "We are all products of our environments. During my career, I have found that depending on others is dangerous without enough force on hand. The cost of betraying us was not high enough because we weren't strong enough to retaliate. That has started to change as our clan built up its mech legions and started to win impressive victories with the help of our exclusive mechs as well as our expert mechs. We pursued growth through the fastest means possible, and that strategy has paid off. We would have never been able to earn so much glory, fear and respect in such a short span of time. Have you forgotten the lessons that I have taught during my Frontier Wisdom course?"

"I did not forget, but... you have neglected your mech company for too long, sir. You are lucky that you have designed a remarkably powerful mech that can captivate the market this time. If you failed to design a mech that is close to the level of the Fey Fianna, you would have been unable to stand out from the competition. It would have been much harder for you to reverse the decline of the LMC at the start of the new mech generation."

Ves nodded. She had a good point. It was not healthy to rely on flukes and other rare blowout successes to correct for his mistakes.

He continued to watch the trial mechs being piloted by both experienced drone mech pilots as well as complete newcomers to this mech type.

It was interesting to see that both groups responded well to the Fey Fianna. Hardly any of them exhibited any frustration or lack of trust towards the living mechs.

"I intend to invest a lot more into expanding and updating the product catalog of the LMC in the next two or three years." Ves decided. "You are correct that our clan's economic foundation is not good enough. We grew so quickly that our uneven development has caused many parts of our clan to fall behind I will focus on designing a lot more commercial mechs in the second-class market. The Design Department will also undergo a large expansion to scale up our design activities. I hope that our clan will be in a much more solid position by the time we begin to participate in the deep strike operations. By then, my focus will largely be centered around strengthening our clan's core combat capabilities."

"In other words, you wish to go back to old habits."

"So long as our product catalog is large enough, our clan should be in a much more stable position." Ves responded. "Aside from that, we have a much larger number of mech designers at our disposal. We can design a lot of mechs even when I am busy with other affairs."

"The quality of our designs and the popularity of our products are highly dependent on your work, professor. The lack of Master Mech Designers in our Design Department is a major limitation."

"I know, but that just means that we should put a little more effort into raising other competent mech designers. What people actually want are living mechs that introduce a lot of new stuff that they have never seen from any other machines. They do not necessarily have to be designed by Masters or an outlier like myself in order to become popular. Just look at Ketis. Her unusual circumstances have led her to find her own path to success. Her swordsman mechs are so useful that they will always have a place in the market."

"Ketis alone is not enough to take over the burden of supporting our clan."

"Then we just need to obtain more mech designers who can design living mechs by themselves." Ves shrugged. "You are on your way to becoming one. There's also a kid in our Design Department that has been puzzling over living mechs for a while. Then there are my students who are on track to graduate from the Eden Institute in the coming years. Each of them can expand our design capacity in the best way possible. Wouldn't it be great if you are in charge of your own design projects?"

The former Terran scion did not think she was ready to bear this heavy burden.

"It is too premature to conclude that I can take over your role and design new living mechs that can achieve the same level of sales as your past successes. 1 am not entirely suited to working on second-class mechs either. I am much more at home with first-class multipurpose mechs, and the same applies to the graduates of the Eden Institute."

"Don't worry. I promise you that our Design Department will go through a major expansion in the near future." Ves said with a reassuring expression. "One of the reasons why I agreed to take a trip to Bortele is because I intend to hire a lot of second-class mech designers to fill up the void left behind by the lead designers who chose to undergo EdNet training. The success of our latest product reveal will definitely make it easy to hire a lot of competent Journeymen."

Ves did not intend to return to New Constantinople VIII without a handful of mech designers who were just as good as his other lead designers.

Though Ves had his mind set on becoming a first-class mech designer, the product reveal today had renewed his appreciation for second-class mechs. They were still an important pillar of the Larkinson Clan, and it would be short-sighted to waste all of this accumulation because he wanted to play with shinier toys.

Even a first-class mech designer such as Alexa Streon believed that the Larkinson Clan should strengthen its commitment to second-class mechs.

Gavin helpfully tried to assist in this matter.

"We have received a lot of offers and applications this afternoon. We are already used to them, but the amount of people who are interested in working with us has skyrocketed. I can tell you that there are dozens of Journeyman Mech Designers among them who are currently in Bortele. You won't find many places where you can find a larger reserve of mech designers for hire. If you want, you can inspect their records and invite them to an interview. This will allow you to return to Diandi Base with half-a-dozen of Journeymen that can alleviate our lack of manpower."

That was a good suggestion. Ves originally planned to travel to a different destination to hire a batch of Journeymen, but he might as well start in Bortele since it hosted an even larger mech scene.

"I will be busy inspecting and tuning the Fey Fiannas for tomorrow's challenges for the remainder of the night." He said before turning to his latest student. "Alexa, you have learned enough about our clan to understand our needs. Can I leave this responsibility to you? By the time we depart from Bortele, you should ideally bring along 6 Journeyman Mech Designers that can enrich our Design Department."

The woman did not expect to be handed so much responsibility. "I should be able to handle it. What are your requirements?"

"You should already have an idea of what I generally want. Limit your hiring to Journeyman Mech Designers. We can hire large amounts of Apprentices everywhere, so don't worry about them. Don't look at Seniors or Masters. It will be difficult for them to accept that they have to answer to me. What I need are talents that are willing to commit to the Larkinson Clan and answer to me. If that is not possible, then you can just leave them out of consideration."

"Understood, sir. Your demands will disqualify many promising Journeymen, but I understand your concerns."

"That reminds me that we need to work on filling up the gaps in specializations. For a long time, our Design Department has been subject to shortcomings and limitations arising from a lack of relevant specialists. Try and put extra effort into hiring Journeymen who are specialized in ranged kinetic weapons, ranged energy weapons, energy shield generators, light mechs, heavy mechs, ECM systems, auxiliary mechs, field repair systems and smart metal systems."

Both Gavin and Alexa became overwhelmed by Ves' wish list.

"Your demands are not small." The woman responded after a few seconds. "Unless you are willing to lower your requirements, I do not think it will be possible for us to hire enough Journeymen that can cover all of your demands."

"It's okay, Alexa. Just do the best you can. I have listed my demands in order of priority. I am already happy so long as we can add a few ranged weapons specialists to our Design Department, but it is always if we can cover all of the other fields that I have mentioned. If we want to increase our sales even further, we will have to design more mechs and make use of more advanced tech and more original design solutions. It will be difficult for our mech company to break into the much more competitive markets for rifleman mechs and so on if we don't even have a proper ranged weapon specialist on hand."

Previously, the products of the LMC had no hope of becoming a market leader, so it didn't really matter if they possessed obvious technical shortcomings.

That was becoming increasingly less tenable now that he wanted to enter the big leagues. As Ves continued to move up in the mech industry, he learned that mech design was increasingly becoming more of a team effort.

It was not enough to rely on his own efforts to design good mechs. He needed to have an excellent team around him to support his ambitions!