The Mech Touch

The release of the Ferocious Piranha redefined space combat.

This was not an exaggeration. Wherever the mech showed up, both friendlies and enemies had to shift their battle tactics.

Many outfits stubbornly resisted the need for change. They were already accustomed to using mechs developed by their favorite mech designers or sold by their favorite mech companies.

In fact, a fair number of established mercenary corps and security companies entered into favorable long-term contracts with specific mech manufacturers. While they usually weren't penalized for buying mechs from other companies, dedicated customers received generous discounts and extended after-sales support if they stuck to a single provider.

The Living Star Club set up by the LMC was hardly unique when it came to capturing customers.

Even without these contracts, there were other reasons for outfits to look away from the Ferocious Piranha.

Larger mech companies always organized their mech models in product groups. These groups consisted of products that were designed to work in unison.

Mechs designed and sold by a single mech company were specifically designed to synergize with each other in battle. They easily covered each other's weaknesses so that every mech could fully exert their strength.

Product groups also brought significant benefits out of battle. The mechs usually shared some of the same materials and components. This simplified the logistics of an outfit as they could easily keep a mech company supplied with a lower stock of spare parts.

The introduction of an expensive mech like the Ferocious Piranha introduced a significant burden to its buyers.

First, the outfits had to fork over a lot of money. The Ferocious Piranha sold for 3 million hex credits.

For a light mech, that was an exorbitant price!

Outfits could have bought five budget mechs or two to three mid-range mechs for the same amount of money.

If customers were short on carrier space, then they could have invested the money in a space knight such as the Aurora Titan with a bit of money to spare.

While mech companies sold many different mech types at every conceivable price level, many consumers assumed that the price of a mech should be proportional to the mass and dimensions of the product.

It was normal to pay more money for bigger and fatter mechs. Their increased volume and surface area meant they carried more protective armor. Since the armor system of a mech was often its most expensive portion, the mech market simply became accustomed to paying more for knight mechs and other well-protected mechs.

The opposite was true for light mechs. They weren't as tall as medium mechs. Their limbs and torsos were also slimmer while their armor plating was at least half as thick. With so much armor shaved off their frames, the cost savings were significant.

Light mechs should be cheaper for this reason!

The mech market's tolerance for expensive light mechs was very low. Light skirmishers that sold for more than 1.5 million hex credits were immediately scorned by most consumers. The only outfits who bought premium light mechs were those who wanted to empower their mech champions or mech officers who happened to be specialized in this swift and agile mech type.

Outside of mech militaries and very large organizations, it made no sense for outfits to assign premium light mechs to their rank-and-file!

Light mechs were usually utilized as scouts, troubleshooters, harassers and flanking units. These roles did not necessarily call for expensive mechs. Cheaper ones usually did the job just as well.

It didn't help that outfits tended to assign light mechs to their least-skilled mech pilots. To them, the quality of their assigned machines hardly affected their performance. Due to their low skill and lack of experience, they weren't capable of making the most out of powerful light mechs.

This was the prevailing paradigm of light mechs in the third-class mech market. While the story was different in the second-class mech market, at the lowest tier light mechs simply couldn't accommodate enough features to make them worthy of greater investment.

The Ferocious Piranha broke this pattern.

Certainly, the new light skirmisher model offered decent performance for its very premium price. Its thin but surprisingly resilient armor system surprised both its pilots and enemies alike by how much damage it was able to resist.

"You get what you pay for! Do you think this mech is truly overpriced? Its armor is the real deal."

While the mech was harder to take down than other light mechs, it cost quite a lot to repair any damage it incurred. Its expensive armor system directly gave its buyers a lot of worries. If they wanted to restore a damaged mech to peak condition, they had to buy or make parts made out of expensive materials, thereby worsening their financial situation.

"It's worth it, though! Repairing a damaged mech is better than trying to salvage a destroyed machine."

As more and more outfits began to employ the Ferocious Piranha, they discovered the benefits of fielding expensive light mechs.

Casualty rates among light mechs was often the highest. While it was not that difficult to figure out that fielding more expensive mechs allowed them to survive longer, many times the cost wasn't worth the gain.

It was different for the Ferocious Piranha. Outside of its premium specs, it also came with a feature that was completely independent from the size of its frame.

The number one reason why so many customers bought this expensive product was for its glow. The advantages it brought were very useful. Not a single outfit hated the glow. The ability to discomfort or outright disable enemy mech pilots irrespective of the mechs they piloted opened up a lot of new options.

Just as with the introduction of the Doom Guard, no longer were large mobs of undisciplined ruffians able to bully smaller outfits at will. Any time a Doom Guard or a Ferocious Piranha showed up, pirates and other scum suffered disproportionate losses!

In fact, in the Hexer half of the Komodo Star Sector, the incidences of pirate attacks had dropped by as much as 10 percent ever since the Doom Guard came onto the scene.

This figure would probably double or triple once the Ferocious Piranha became more ubiquitous!

Unlike the Doom Guard which was only confined to a defensive role, the Ferocious Piranha possessed great offensive potential.

It shouldn't be a surprise to the LMC that its most avid buyers turned out to be the Peacekeeper outfits of the Sentinel Kingdom!

During the Larkinson Clan's stay in the Cinach System, the LMC entrenched itself in the powerful third-rate state. The company not only forged ties with many noble houses and local companies, but also built up its brand.

When the Ferocious Piranha entered the market, the LMC already projected that the Peacekeeper outfits would embrace it. A lot of mech factories started to pump out Ferocious Piranhas straight away, thereby allowing most outfits to obtain at least a couple of copies to integrate into their combat system.

Though it took some time for the Peacekeeper outfits to bring their new purchases to Nyxian Gap, once they did, the results were astounding.

"What is this new mech!?"

"Damn, it's the Ferocious Piranha! Run away!"

The pirate gangs that infested the outer perimeter of the Nyxian Gap experienced the terror of the LMC's new light skirmisher. The mech's mobility allowed it to approach and chase after pirates with great ease. Once its glow enveloped the pirate mechs, the Ferocious Piranha almost always faced an easy fight!

Wreckage Paradise suddenly welcomed a lot of new debris. Peacekeeper outfit after Peacekeeper outfit began to experiment and refine their usage of their latest purchases. The pirates who normally terrorized these lanes each turned into their unwilling punching bags!

It didn't used to be this way. The pirate gangs roaming the outer perimeter usually fared a lot better against the outfits who came from civilized space.

Pirate scouts were always on the lookout for strong Peacekeeper elements. As long as they spotted anything amiss, they quickly packed their bags and fled. Due to all of the asteroids floating inside this region of warped space, it was too easily to shake off any pursuit.

The Doom Guard wasn't able to change this pattern. While its introduction offered a lot more security to the Peacekeepers, it did not give them a lot of options against pirate gangs that tried their best to slip away.

If the Peaekeepers dispatched pursuers in the form of light mechs and fast-moving medium mechs, then these fragile elements might easily encounter a ferocious pirate ambush.

It was too difficult to pursue a fleeing band of pirates!

The Ferocious Piranha changed all of this. As long as an outfit dispatched enough of the new mechs, these light skirmishers were very difficult to ambush. Its disorienting glow was able to act upon a lot of mech pilots, so outnumbering the Ferocious Piranha didn't always work.

Only strong-willed pirate mech pilots were able to resist the glow, but how many of them were actually there? Perhaps the more powerful pirate groups situated closer to the center of the Nyxian Gap might have these rare elites, but the bottom-feeder pirate gangs that were based in the periphery of the Nyxian Gap were not so fortunate!

Stories soon began to circulate about small numbers of Ferocious Piranhas wiping out entire pirate outfits by themselves!

"This is unreal! How can this be? Are the pirates this weak?"

"It's all due to the glow. It's too cancerous!"

The light skirmishers didn't even have to wait for reinforcements in order to defeat the pirates. Their good specs, relatively good armor and killer glow gave them all the tools they needed to upend enemy outfits.

"Damnit, these Ferocious Piranhas are so unfair. Any melee mech that gets close turns into a punching bag to these evil machines."

"Forget about fielding melee mechs. I'm going to get my hands on as many rifleman mechs and striker mechs as possible."

"We need to get our hands on as many Doom Guards as possible! In fact, we need to get some Ferocious Piranhas ourselves!"

As more and more Ferocious Piranhas showed up on the battlefield, the demand for the Doom Guard and this new model continued to skyrocket.

Even pirates were trying to obtain these expensive mechs!

While the LMC and its vendors refused to sell their products to pirates and illicit organizations, that did not stop black market organizations from taking advantage of the situation.

They simply used figureheads to buy the mechs before delivering them to specific pirate customers.

Naturally, these smugglers charged a high markup for their services. Pirates from the Nyxian Gap and elsewhere were bleeding money and valuables due to the need to obtain some LMC mechs.

Any pirate gang that didn't possess a Doom Guard or a Ferocious Piranha was considered vulnerable to the changing patterns of the battlefield.

Either they embraced the change, or became swept by it. There was no middle ground!

The Ferocious Piranha introduced so many problems and solutions that the popularity of this mech model continued to spread even further.

Vicious Mountain and Majestic Teal already embraced the mech. What was truly noteworthy was that some of the more distant star sectors began to utilize the mech at a greater scale as well.

Not even the Winged Serenade Star Sector was left out! Even though the LMC only established some small subsidiaries in the middle of the Yeina Star Cluster, the early adopters were already popularizing the new product at a rapid pace.

Success was crucial here. As the most prosperous and influential star sector of the Yeina Star Cluster, any trends that rose up here quickly spread to the surrounding star sectors.

This caused the LMC to receive an increasing amount of orders from customers who were based in areas where the LMC had yet to enter.

Even other star clusters began to show some interest! The impact of the Ferocious Piranha was simply too great to ignore no matter the distance!