The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1503

After a long period of thought, Ves decided to call his next mech design the Desolate Soldier.

The name encapsulated his feelings on his upcoming mech design.

"The Desolate Soldier is not a flashy, expensive mech. It is not meant to pamper a mech pilot nor serve as trump cards."

Instead, Ves imagined the Desolate Soldiers deployed in large numbers in space. The ballistic rifleman mechs flew in formation and fired their rifles in measured salvos against distant but approaching sandman vessels.

From time to time, gigantic laser beams would strike the mechs. The mechs stood no chance of survival. The best a mech pilot could hope was if the laser beams struck far enough away from the cockpit to give them a chance of survival. Dodging and adopting an evasion pattern could only do so much.

"Every Desolate Soldier is disposable when it comes down to it. I just have to make sure their sacrifice is worth it and the other mechs will be able to finish the job."

Though his mechs were destined to be used as cannon fodder, Ves wanted to impart as much value as possible despite their constraints. He wanted to make the Desolate Soldier one of the best mech models in its price range.

"Applying my specialty is one of the means to increase its value, but not the only one. Pure performance is also an important component!"

Ves began to browse the component licenses his company currently held. Many of them were either outdated or not appropriate for the mech he envisioned.

"I’ll have to invest some capital into acquiring some new licenses."

Fortunately, component licenses for cheaper mechs tended to be less sophisticated and therefore cheaper. In addition, everyone expected the transition to the next mech generation to happen very soon. Which mech designer was crazy enough to buy a soon-to-be-outdated component license at this time?

For this reason, many component licenses for low-tier mechs became dirt cheap. Their relatively low prices had already sunk down as the original developers or licensors wanted to milk their intellectual property as much as possible before they lost most of their value!

After a couple of hours of browsing the MTA’s component catalog, Ves realized that he could get by with a full set of decent component licenses for less than a billion bright credits!

"That’s still a lot of money, but not a problem for me or the LMC!"

Of course, the cost still posed a hindrance to Novices and Apprentices who operated smaller mech boutiques, but LMC easily bore the costs.

While it took a few hours of coordination with the headquarters of the LMC to obtain the licenses in their name, the deal was finally done.

Ves immediately began to puzzle together the newly-licensed component in a hasty draft design.

A preliminary version of the Desolate Soldier soon took shape! As Ves hastily slapped the parts together and formed them into a coherent mech frame, he began to look at his handiwork.

He hadn’t really solidified his vision for his mech yet, so the current shape of the draft design wasn’t reflective of his end goal.

Nonetheless, the draft closely matched his requirements.

"It’s a solemn mech. It’s a mech designed to serve its duty and encourage others to serve their duty."

An important style decision involved making the Desolate Soldier appear a lot more sober and utilitarian than his premium mech designs.

This was not a Crystal Lord, which Ves purposed as a mech for leaders and mech officers.

This was not an Aurora Titan, a mech designed to outperform nearly every other mech in a defensive capacity!

"My mech won’t win any awards related to performance, that’s for sure!"

This was a mech for the average grunt among mech pilots. Ves knew that a lot of melee specialists were in the process of retraining to become proficient in piloting ranged mechs right now.

All of these mech pilots weren’t capable of bringing out the most in a powerful mech. What they needed more was a serviceable and dependable mech that did the job without costing too much.

The fairly plain sand-brown coating complemented its utilitarian aesthetic. Anyone looking at the Desolate Soldier would immediately know that it was solely designed to do its duty! Nothing more! Nothing less!

Though it went against his instincts to distinguish his products from the competition, in actual fact Ves believed that it was best if he stuck to a sober exterior design.

The draft design’s appearance completely conformed to the tastes of the Bright Republic’s mech market. Its utilitarian, military-inspired look not only made it easier to fabricate or repair the mech, but also minimized the chance of offending or repelling foreign customers.

While Ves mainly wished to serve the Bright Republic with his upcoming mech design, he also harbored ambitions to make it popular throughout the states under threat.

Throughout his current tour, Ves already noticed that many mech markets possessed different standards and tastes. Sometimes they diverged a lot, as was in the case of the Ylvaine Protectorate, but in most cases they never had a problem with neutral-looking mechs.

To an artist like Ves who liked to treat his mechs as his canvas, it was difficult for him to restrain himself from adding some visual flourishes to his mech. He did his best to hold himself back. If he began to go wild, the Desolate Soldier’s complexity would increase, which not only made it more troublesome to fabricate its armor plating, but also increased the difficulty of fabricating replacement plating.

"Even if it adds an extra 100,000 bright credits to the total bill, that can make a huge difference if the Desolate Soldier is employed in huge numbers!"

Unlike his other premium mechs, Ves expected his customers to buy his Desolate Soldiers in batches rather than one at a time. The mech would be cheap enough to make it easy to buy them in numbers, and the advantages of doing so was significant.

If the Desolate Soldier made up the only ranged mech model of an outfit, then they could simplify their maintenance and logistical operations.

It was a lot less burdensome to maintain a single mech model rather than several at the same time! The outfit in question could just buy a single batch of spare parts and supplies to cover most of their needs without dealing with incompatibility issues.

Ves possessed plenty of practical experience on how outfits and mech regiments managed their maintenance operations. He put this knowledge to good use by refining the draft design in a way that minimized the amount of hassle the mech technicians dealt with on a daily basis.