The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1486

The sandman invasion did not come at a good time. Ves knew that the commencement of the next mech generation could happen at any day now.

He idly stroked Lucky’s back as his cat had crawled onto his lap. "I highly doubt the MTA will delay the onset of the next mech generation because of a minor conflict in a single frontier star sector. Don’t you think so, buddy?"

"Meow."

"It matters! One of my greatest fears is that I’ll spend months designing a ballistic rifleman mech, only for the transition to happen halfway! What am I supposed to do with my project now that its core components are outdated?!"

"Meow meow."

"Replacing lastgen components with currentgen components is not as easy as you make it sound! A lot of changes and updates take place across almost every area related to mechs! While the major increase in the performance of laser weapons is rumored to take the crown, that doesn’t mean the other components won’t see a lot of smaller revisions!"

Every component, from power reactors, mech engines, cockpits, artificial musculature systems and more would receive some attention. This often came in the form of new standards, updated technologies, the introduction of new materials and so on. The changes were so comprehensive that trying to slot them in the place where their lastgen equivalent used to rest was not a good idea!

In effect, if Ves wanted to update an ongoing design project with newer components, he might as well scrap his entire project and begin from scratch!

If there was one thing Ves hated a lot, it was wasting his time!

"Goddammit! Can’t the sandman at least delay their invasion until after the MTA announced the start of the next mech generation? Why can’t they give me a break!"

Of course, considering the possible mastermind behind the massive sandman invasion, Ves suspected that it was no coincidence that the aliens inconvenienced him so much.

Ves didn’t believe that Sigrund organized a massive invasion just to screw around with him. However, the sentient alien AI probably derived a lot of schadenfreude out of the events he put into motion!

The result of these unfortunate circumstances was that Ves faced a devilish dilemma.

He decided to summon Gavin to his stateroom to discuss his options.

"You called, boss?"

"Yeah. It’s about the imminent future."

He briefly described the situation he faced as a mech designer who was about to get swept up in this crisis. Since Gavin knew the score as well as Ves, he quickly started thinking.

"Now that you put it that way, it’s not that easy to make a choice." He frowned. "Everyone already knew that the sandman invasion kept growing more severe, but everyone in the way expected the Big Two to neutralize the threat before they inflicted too much damage."

"Well, that prediction sure didn’t pan out." Ves responded dryly. "How have the mech markets of the states under threat reacted to these events?"

"Not good. The mech markets of the states that comprise the first four lines of defense are undergoing a massive upheaval. Sales of melee mechs and laser mechs have plummeted! Prices have sunk to rock bottom in order to empty inventories as fast as possible. The demand for mechs armed with ballistic and kinetic weaponry has ballooned to such an extent that customers are even buying up low-quality variants designed by struggling Novices in order to bolster their effective strength as fast as possible!"

Gavin passed on a couple of industry articles to Ves. The situation was worse than he feared. Not only did the demand evaporate for mechs that fared poorly against the sandman threat, a lot of outfits were even trying to sell their existing mechs on the second-hand market!

This massive dumping phenomenon further devalued melee mechs!

"The market for melee mechs is practically dead for the duration of this crisis. As for mechs armed with laser weapons, the sale of new mechs have plummeted, but the existing ones aren’t entirely useless. Most outfits have replaced the primary armament of laser rifleman mechs with ballistic weapons. A lot of manufacturing facilities are cranking out spare ballistic and kinetic rifles as fast as possible!"

Ves nodded in understanding. "That’s the advantage of humanoid mechs. Since most laser rifleman mechs in the Bright Republic wield rifles, their owners can simply take them away and place ballistic rifles in their place."

It was not quite as simple as it sounded. Due to the strong emphasis on specialization, a laser rifleman mech inevitably performed worse when they wielded a ballistic or kinetic rifle. The added weight, the redundant energy reserves, the recoil, the lack of capacity to carry ammunition, the unoptimized targeting systems and more all posed a negative influence to laser mechs that forcibly made use of ballistic weapons.

Even if their owners invested some money into modifying their old machines to improve their handling of ballistic weapons, this was still a half-baked solution! A mech frame optimized for laser weapons would never be as good in wielding ballistic weaponry as a mech designed to handle them from the start!

"Market demand for ballistic rifleman mechs, kinetic rifleman mechs and various frontline mechs armed with the same weapon types have skyrocketed!" Gavin gushed. "You can’t believe how much of a premium they command now. Prices of most mech models have risen by as much as fifty percent! Mech companies who have lost a lot of sales now that most of their mech catalog has become irrelevant are at least able to keep themselves afloat by retooling all of their production lines to produce the mechs that everyone wants! Unfortunately..."

Both of their faces fell.

"The LMC is not included in that group." Ves morosely observed. "Our mech catalog only consists of three mech models. The Blackbeak is a landbound knight mech. The Crystal Lord is a landbound laser rifleman mech. The Aurora Titan is a super-medium space knight."

None of these mech models fared well against the sandmen! It would be practically criminal to deploy Blackbeaks and Aurora Titans against the alien threat.