The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1034

Ves wanted to tread into designing spaceborn mechs for a while now. Even though he lacked serious design experience in this area, his extensive amount of time as head designer with the Flagrant Vandals gave him more than enough insights on how spaceborn mechs worked.

Witnessing the likes of their internally-developed Inheritor and Hellcat mechs in combat and dealing with the aftermath of every battle tended to bring him up to speed with this class of mechs even if he never designed one from scratch.

He knew their main design traits and their strengths and weaknesses. Different from landbound mechs, their legs didn’t serve as the foundation of their mech frames. Instead, all of that importance went into the flight system mounted on their backs.

This flight system not only consumed a lot of energy, it was also a major weak point present in every spaceborn mech due to its fragile structure.

Unlike legs which could be armored and weighed down as much as a mech designer wanted, the flight systems were as fragile as sticks in comparison. Armoring them helped protect them against shrapnel and incidental damage, but the currents state of flight system technology didn’t allow them to be covered under many layers of armor.

This basically forced any spaceborn mech to carry around a permanent target on their backs.

The various dynamics introduced with the addition of a flight system onto any mech put aerial mechs and spaceborn mechs into drastically different machines compared to landbound mechs.

Even so, Ves felt ready to make the step into designing a spaceborn mech. Laida Nnvist’s tutoring, his own studies, his broad experiences in working with spaceborn mechs with the Flagrant Vandals, his design work on the Evaporating Spear during a ritual duel with the Church of Haatumak and also his work as a supervisor for the mech designers working as analysts to dissect the Vesian mech models at Frozen Point Research Base all gave him an ample amount of theoretical preparation for this task.

It was harder to design a spaceborn mech than a landbound mech. While many mech designers immediately hit the ground running by designing spaceborn mechs from the start of their careers, such a luxury was only relegated to the rich, powerful or well-prepared among starting mech designers.

Even Ves did not dare to enter the market for spaceborn mechs until now.

The added difficulty and complexity around spaceborn mechs meant that there was significantly less mech models for sale from the bottom end of the market. However, the competition was just as fierce regardless.

Having successfully brought two different mech models to markets, Ves did not fear the challenge of trying to compete in the busy spaceborn mech markets. Still, just like before, he needed to be prudent and thoughtful on how to position his next product in the market.

Even with Professor Ventag’s help, it was extremely unlikely that his products would be able to capture a big chunk of market share in any of the major product categories.

"What kind of mechs do you want to design, Ves?" Lord Javier idly asked as he took a swig of his mug of beer.

Ves first explained his rationale. "I want to design something new. The LMC won’t benefit if I design a successor to my two prior mech designs when they remain enduring sellers. Yet I also wanted to stick to my strengths. I would be doing Professor Ventag and the market a disservice if I rashly design a mech from an archetype I don’t have sufficient experience in working with. Considering these concerns, I’ve come up with the decision to design a space knight or a spaceborn rifleman mech. I also considered designing a spaceborn light skirmisher inspired by the Inheritor mechs of the Flagrant Vandals for a time."

That cause Lord Javier to raise his head. "A light skirmisher? That sounds interesting. Why did you rule it out?"

Yes, Ves truly considered designing a spaceborn light skirmisher. One of the most prevalent mech models he fixed and tweaked while he held the position of head designer was their ubiquitous Inheritor mechs. He held very strong feelings for this modest but extremely mobile-centric mech model.

Such inspiration served as great fuel in any design endeavors related to the Inheritor mech model.

Yet practical concerns hindered him from pursuing this particular passion. "A light skirmisher is by nature more affordable to manufacturers and buyers that want a quick and cheap option to bolster their numbers. Rarely do you ever hear of premium-priced light skirmishers, while mid-range light skirmishers are also in low demand. They’re predominantly sold at budget or bargain bin price levels. Not only that, the competition is so high that profit margins are thinner as well. If I want to keep my mech design relevant for at least twenty years instead of just five years, then I will have to start with a high profit margin!"

The higher the profit margin, the longer his mech model remained economically viable to produce and sell! The longer the LMC and NORA Consolidated sold copies of their joint design, the more they continued to associate with each other!

As long as the joint design remained relevant in the market, the LMC would continue to be able to borrow the reputation of the larger and more successful company!

It was like an older brother helping his younger brother get his footing.

After witnessing the scale and prosperity of the Kadar-Neyvis Group and knowing that the NORA Consolidated dwarfed that company, Ves had no illusion that the LMC was merely a footnote in comparison. It could definitely benefit from the help offered by a big brother.

With longevity as a goal, Ves needed to design a mech with sufficiently high profit margins. This gave him greater room to adjust the pricing of the mechs based on the design according to the circumstances.

The passing of years, the introduction of a new mech generation, the fluctuating prices of raw material prices and changing market sentiment all affected how much it cost to fabricate a mech and how much it sold for in the market.

It was almost certain that he needed to keep cutting the prices of his existing mech models over time. Older was cheaper. This was a fundamental rule in many markets, not just with mechs.