The Mech Touch

Ves felt it was premature to shove so many responsibilities to a new Larkinson mech designer who had only joined up relatively recently. Nevertheless, Alexa had proven that she was competent and trustworthy to take care of important matters.

She was particularly good at administration and working with high technologies. This meant that she was one of the most ideal assistants he could ask for, especially now that the Design Department had become a lot emptier than before.

Ves felt almost guilty for thinking about ways to keep her by his side. Alexa would never reach her full potential if she continued to act as his gopher. She needed to design mechs on her own once she broke through to the rank of Journeyman.

Now that he had clarified his plans for the immediate future, he observed the trial mechs and people's reactions to them for a while before he decided to retreat.

The challenge matches scheduled for the next day loomed over his shoulders. Ves was certain that none of them would be easy to win. The prospect of losing was a very realistic prospect.

This was why Ves was more than willing to pull another all-nighter. There were always ways for a clever enough mech designer to squeeze more performance out of a mech design.

Unfortunately, many of his options were limited. The challenges centered around proving the combat effectiveness of standard mech models.

The rules set by Ves and his challengers explicitly prohibited any modifications and upgrades that deviated from the base models.

The most Ves could do was to conduct repairs and tune the components within a narrow range that was permissible.

Many standard mechs required extensive changes to their settings. A number of their parts also had to be manually tuned in order to accommodate their individual piloting and fighting styles.

It was generally sufficient to rely on mech technicians or maybe low-ranking mech designers to perform these basic tweaks.

Ves doing all of this work in person was overkill, but he didn't care. He understood his mech designs the best. He was one of the only people who could tune and optimize them to the next level.

Nothing exciting happened as an entire night had passed in Bortele III. Ves did not go out or take any unnecessary risks. He did not even bother to leave Phoca Arena as its mech workshops already satisfied his needs.

Once the local star rose above the horizon of the capital city again, Ves finally took a break and freshened himself up to face the new day.

Once he started to enjoy breakfast, he checked the news and paid attention to the initial reactions to his Fey Fianna.

Many people still retained a high opinion of the Fey Fianna, but that did not mean that they were completely confident in this radical new drone mech line.

The most important criteria was whether it would be able to hold its own in the battles of the Red War.

Battles between different mech forces had subsided by a lot now that red humanity faced an existential threat.

All of the bouts between the Fey Fianna and other mech models mainly demonstrated their combat prowess when fighting against other 'small craft'.

What truly lingered on people's minds was whether the decoys and the other functions of the Fey Fianna would hold up when they fought against actual alien warships.

"Our initial orders are already high, so much so that they can keep our mech factories busy for months." Gavin explained as he entered the VIP dining room that Ves had claimed for himself. "This is only the tip of the iceberg, though. Many potential customers are not in a hurry. The Fey Fianna imposes a lot of demands on their owners. Mech forces will have to plan around the use of drone mechs, and they will also have to start with stocking up on a lot of spare fey. Their leaders are questioning whether it is worth it to change the way they fight just to accommodate the Fey Fianna."

Ves briefly paused.

The only noises in the room were produced by Lucky, who was crunching on his own bowl of high-grade exotics. Rare and difficult to obtain materials worth thousands of MTA credits steadily disappeared into his gullet.

"Meow-"

"I don't expect our Fey Fianna to become a must-have for second-raters, but it sounds like people still need a lot more convincing."

"That is right, boss. The challenge matches scheduled in the afternoon will help with this, but the true test will take place on the battlefield."

"It will take months before the Fey Fianna will deliver a steady stream of positive battle results if that is the case." Ves furrowed his brows. "Will we be able to maintain the momentum of our new product line in the absence of immediate proof?"

"Every brand-new mech model suffers from the same problem." Gavin nonchalantly replied as if it was not a big deal. "If we want to speed this process up, you can instruct the expeditionary fleet to prioritize their deployment in the field. The Spirit of Bentheim can produce them quickly enough, and it will only take a month or two for our mech pilots to become proficient enough to use them in actual battle."

"That won't be necessary. General Verle and the legion commanders can make their own decisions on this matter. I do not believe that they are blind to the many advantages of the Fey Fianna."

They just had to be patient.

Gavin shook his head. "It doesn't matter if our mechs has yet to reach its peak. Our production capacity has already reached its limit, and it is not easy to find third-party manufacturers that can expand our production. Greater demand will just make the waiting list longer."

"You've mentioned that multiple times. Has it become difficult for us to increase the mass production of our mechs?"

"We were hopeful about the market appeal of the Fey Fianna, but we were not truly ready for a response as big as this, boss. You should already know that production is mainly limited by two factors. First, many third-party manufacturers are already locked into existing contracts with fixed business partners. Sales of mechs are booming because we are in the early stages of a galaxy-wide upgrade spree. Many forces are swapping their lastgen mechs for brand-new hyper mechs, and that means that many mech production lines are working around the clock."

"So that is why it is so difficult for us to find new third-party manufacturers to take care of production, particularly in more distant middle zones."

"Raw materials are also in short supply. The prices for everything has increased even further because demand has increased. Many colonists chose to relocate from the front to the rear of human-occupied space. It takes a large amount of construction materials to build all of their new apartments, houses and workplaces. Then there is the increased attrition from all of the battles and skirmishes of the Red War. Both mechs and warships are getting destroyed at an increasing rate. These losses can be made up as long as our side is able to salvage the battlefield, but the aliens sent to attack our border systems are just as greedy for them, especially if there is a large amount of advanced tech or transphasic parts flying around."

"I see."

As red humanity increased its exploitation of the star systems within its territory, more and more raw materials became available.

Yet the demand for materials rose even faster!

It had only been a decade or so since the Red Ocean became open to widespread human colonization. Many settlements and colonies were still stuck in a relatively rudimentary stage of planetary development.

In addition, the New Elites Program encouraged many parties to expand their armed forces. More mechs and starships were being built than ever in the Red Ocean, yet the increased supply was only a drop in a bucket compared to the huge demand!

"This is a situation where centuries-old megacorporations have an inherent advantage over smaller upstarts such as us." Gavin explained to Ves. "Many large mining companies and material wholesalers always supply their goods to their biggest and most reliable clients first. Smaller players such as us are next in line. Whatever is left gets sold on the open market, but that has become increasingly more scarce."

Ves scratched his head. "Hearing this makes me think that our clan should branch out into the mining sector. Why should we continue to rely on these material suppliers who are constantly playing favorites with their old buddies?"

"It is not that bad. Our clan is already starting to break into the old boys network. You are a tier 3 galactic citizen, after all. Many companies are willing to do you a favor and give you special treatment just to stay on your good side."

Ves was vaguely aware of that. "It is not enough, or else you wouldn't have mentioned this issue."

"You know how it goes. It takes a lot of time for large companies to pivot and change."

They soon returned to talking about more relevant topics such as the sales projections of the Fey Fianna.

The numbers were optimistic, but it was difficult to know how much the Fey Fianna's rise would lead to the downfall of other competing drone mech models.

"We cannot estimate how much market share the Fey Fianna can gain due to the fact that it is attracting a lot of mech buyers who are unfamiliar with drone mechs. Our loosest estimate is that we should comfortably be able to capture 10 percent of the drone mech market if we account for the expansion."

"That sounds like a minimum safe number."

Gavin did not even deny this. "Personally, I think the Fey Fianna can easily occupy 15 or maybe even 20 percent of the market for drone mechs, but we need to keep track of so many interrelated variables that it is impossible for us to know for sure."

A market share of just 15 percent in a specific product category was already enough to turn the LMC into an established player in the mech market!

This much market share meant that the mech company was able to design such good mechs and sell enough of them to repeat these successes in the future.

It was not enough for Ves, though.

He wanted the Fey Fianna to overtake the Sparrow Storm Mark XII and capture at least 30 percent of the market, if not more.

"It will be much more difficult to jump from 20 percent to 30 percent." Gavin warned his boss. "Part of the reason why the Sparrow Storm is so widely used among drone mech users is because there is a rich and vibrant community of third-party mech designers and development companies that have designed many different varieties of Sparrows. They can easily license one of many official Sparrow designs and modify them to perform better under different circumstances. They can also obtain a more general license and design their own custom Sparrows from scratch that can complete missions that cannot be done by official Sparrows."

Third-party spurs were not always the most reliable, but they had many other advantages. They could be cheaper, more versatile, obtain new functions or make use of brand-new tech that had yet to be integrated in any official models.

"Are there many people and companies who have decided to license our standalone fey?"

"There are, but not too much. It is too early to tell whether we will be able to create a large and vibrant community of third-party fey developers. Just like many customers, they are still waiting to see whether the Fey Fianna has the qualities it needs to become a market leader or close to it. Developers do not want to risk the chance of investing so much time and money into developing a new fey model, only to find out that the Fey Fianna has collapsed in popularity."

In other words, this took time as well.

"We'll just have to wait. Perhaps we should reward the early movers and incentivize more companies to invest in our fey systems."

"The LMC is already working on that. For example, they have recently begun to organize a contest."

"A contest?"