The Mech Touch novel Chapter 231

Regarding the Mech Designer System, Ves had many ideas on where to spend his DP. The most luxurious one would be to upgrade his stealth module on his comm, but that drained pretty much all of his recent earnings.

"It’s better to spend them on skills and attributes this time."

The more he thought about the prospect of designing an original mech, the more he realized the daunting nature of the endeavor. Not only did he have to make a functional mech, he also had to make it sell.

A peculiar trend in the mech industry was that mechs with strong strengths and weaknesses sold better than they ought to. This pattern became especially prevalent in the lower segments of the market.

They considered balanced mechs with no obvious traits the safe and boring option. Many of the mainstream models throughout the galactic rim, heartland and center consisted of these kinds of mechs. Even if they were as flavorless as water, their excellent quality control and lack of exploitable weaknesses made them safe to deploy in large amounts.

Generally, the mech industry believed that newcomers should focus on their strengths rather than balance out their weaknesses. Mech pilots sought out mechs that complimented their strengths. Even if their favorite models came with caveats, knowing about them beforehand allowed them to mitigate these weaknesses.

"It’s probably too much to aim for upgrading a Skill to Journeyman-level." Ves considered as he finalized the shipment of the final mechs.

Excluding the original show models, Ves completed the fabrication of three copies of the Marcus Aurelius, fifteen copies of the Caesar Augustus Eternal Edition and around thirty-four copies of the Marc Antony Mark II Eternal Edition.

All of this should have taken more than a year in his old workshop, but with his new machines and mech technicians, he finished it all in just over two months. The speed at which his workshop completed the orders showcased the benefits of superior capital and labor.

"It’s a bit daunting to sit around so many expensive machines. I also have to be responsible for my workers."

Even when Ves hired Carlos, Calsie and Gavin to help him manage the Living Mech Corporation, he always felt alone. In essence, he never really shed the sense that it was essentially a one-man operation.

Now, with the addition of eleven pair of hands in the workshop floor, every day turned lively. Even as they finally finished all the limited edition mechs, they still had a busy week ahead with the fabrication of the regular silver label Mark II’s.

One benefit of his high-profile participation in the Vintage Festival was that the demand for his products spiked up. Marcella often received solicitations for Ves to fabricate a Marcus Aurelius or a Caesar Augustus.

Sadly for the latecomers, Ves had no intentions reducing the scarcity of those mechs. They stopped being rare if too many copies circulated in the market.

Thus, most customers turned away when they heard that Ves stopped providing mechs of that caliber. The only model Ves offered freely were the silver label Mark II’s. His well-practiced mech technicians eagerly tackled the challenge of fabricating the Mark II’s without direct involvement from Ves.

With Carlos and Chief Cyril watching over the eager men and women, Ves had nothing to worry about on that end. They used the new production line for the silver label Mark II’s, which not only sped up the work, but also ensured the quality of the finished components.

The LMC sold an average of three silver label Mark II’s per week. Despite tripling the rate of production, the drastically higher resource costs meant that his gross profits hadn’t really increased all that much.

At this time, Ves also finished tallying up his finances for the end of the fiscal year.

Excluding the recent orders, the LMC accumulated around 700 million credits in regular business activities. The sum consisted of the investment made by the Larkinson family, the profits out of fulfilling orders for the gold and silver label Mark II’s and the compensation for fulfilling ’irregular’ orders.

To make the long story short, Ves earned around a billion credits in gross profits from the entire event. While Ves received more than that as payment for delivering the mechs, the painfully high resource costs as well as the minor cut to his mech broker reduced his earnings.

When Ves added various fees such as a one percent cut to the organizers of the festival and the various shipping and insurance costs, then Ves should thank his lucky stars that he still retained a billion credits.

Ves only briefly enjoyed the massive sum his company accumulated. Every business had to pay taxes, and the LMC was no different. Even though it benefited from several exemptions meant to ease the burden on startups, the LMC still had to cough up money to the planet and the state at an effective tax rate of twenty percent. The company paid fifteen percent to the central government and five percent to Cloudy Curtain’s local government.

Furthermore, he also had to reserve money to pay for his other annual expenses. This included his electricity bill, which ballooned once the company gained the new production line. It also included the annual compensation for Sanyal-Ablin for its combined security, convoy shipment and insurance costs.

"I also can’t forget to add the interest payment for the old loan."

After deducting a depressing amount of expenses to his company’s account, the LMC was left with only 1.4 billion credits in liquid cash.

"It’s not the windfall I hoped for, but it’s still a huge pile of money."

Ves amply met his goal of raising a vast sum of money. While it took a short couple of months to earn this sum, he finally gained some options with regards to completing his set of licenses.

Right now, without a solid draft for his first design, he held off on shopping for component licenses.

"It’s like baking a pie. Even though I already know the type of pie I want to bake, I still don’t know if I want the filling to be apples or blueberries."

The remark startled Ves. When was the last time he put down his work and relaxed? He couldn’t even recall something as simple as that. "It’s not easy getting my company up its feet. I only got this far because of all the effort I put into my career." _{frёewebηovel.cѳm}