The Mech Touch novel Chapter 551

Chapter 551

A hatch slid open, allowing Ves entry into the dinghy compartment . Compared to the clean and relatively tidy interior of the rest of the Shield of Hispania, Ves had entered what should have formerly been a backup storage area .

A large closet, in other words .

Now, the compartment had been turned into a lounge of some sorts . A couple of sofas, some pots with alien plants and a simple table surrounded by chairs took up much of the room while muted projection of archival mech duels played in the background .

Chief Technician Carletta Haine, Chief Engineer Morgan Avanaeon and Lieutenant Command Lisea Soapstone already sat on three of the four chairs . They all greeted Ves as he took the final seat .

"Good to see you Larkinson . "

"Been working hard today, eh?"

"You still owe me three tons of platinum!"

"I'll make it up to you, Soapstone . " Ves said somewhat tiredly . "I hadn't anticipated using it as a substitute material for my repairs . "

Chief Haine who set up this compartment in the first place pressed her finger against the table, causing a projection of a sophisticated board game to appear on the table . The game featured miniature mech and ship models, only a couple of which the players started out . The space above the table turned into a three-dimensional star map where the game would be played out .

"Pirate Empires again?" Chief Morgan whined as he whipped out a bottle and glass from somewhere and poured himself a drink . "This game is over a century old . No offense, but you see the same strategies play out over and over again . "

"That's the beauty of this game . " Soapstone said with a smile . She gripped the projection of a random assortment of identically scaled mechs and ships and rolled them around like they were dice . "If we're all familiar with the same strategies, the game becomes a contest of mind games . Why do you think chess is still the same after several millennia after its inception?"

"I'm running this game with all the latest expansions . " The chief technician added . "The threat of a major alien invasion will spice things up if you want to deal with an extra challenge . What do you think, head designer?"

Ves yawned a bit . "I'm not very familiar with the last couple of expansions, but I'm aware of the rules . The game developers have added even more randomization in the game, I hear . That's going to be annoying to deal with . This game is pretty much ninety percent about luck and ten percent about skill . "

"You're wrong, Larkinson . " The chief engineer replied . "That ninety percent luck you're talking about really refers to your ability to manage fortune and risks . Good and bad things happen in every game . It's your ability to mitigate the bad outcomes and benefit from the good outcomes that determines whether you are winning . "

Pirate Empires was a game of exploration, conquest and profiteering . Having been developed in the galactic rim, it proved to be a breakout hit and became a rim-wide phenomenon . Riding on its success, the developer actively published countless of expansion packs, add-ons and star sector-specific flavor packages over the years .

The premise of the game was that players took on the role of an outfit leader . The only choice provided by the base game used to be a pirate captain, but later expansions added the option of playing as a legitimate mercenary commander or the leader of a treasure hunting expedition .

Whatever the case, the goal of the game was to amass a set amount of wealth in money or assets through killing, plundering, cheating, or hundreds of other ways allowed by the rules . All of this took place in the frontier beyond the border of human space .

Ves never paid too much attention to this game in his youth, but he played a few matches here and there . Recently, he gained a lot more appreciation of the game because it served as a somewhat accurate depiction of what the owner of an outfit had to deal with . The game treated the frontier as a region where opportunity and danger coexisted .

"Let's begin . I've waited long enough to get this session started!"

The four players chose their roles and began to make their first moves into the untamed stars . Each of them picked the exact same roles as last time . Everyone's choices appeared to reflect their personalities .

As a chief technician, Haine always leaned towards playing a pirate . The key to running a successful pirate operation was to keep your unruly subordinates under your thumb . Haine had a lot of experience knocking some sense into the skulls of mech technicians .

"What's the difference between a pirate and a mech technician?" She asked one day . "A pirate is led by a lawless maniac while a mech technician is led by a lawful maniac!"

Haine's usual strategy leveraged her skill in managing all kinds of bastards and scum to amass a pirate fleet in the early phases of the game . If the other three players let her build up a veritable armada, then it was too late to stop her from steamrolling them one by one .

The chief engineer pursued the opposite strategy . Avanaeon pursued quality over quantity, and therefore opted to play as a mercenary commander . His outfit always stayed small, but through a steady accumulation of wealth through low and medium-risk ventures, he amassed a collection of elite mechs and ships, all crewed by some of the skilled and deadliest subordinates available in the game .

"The best hardware paired with the best people trumps anything you can throw in my way . "

Avanaeon knew his ships well, and invested in them very early . This allowed him to pick and choose his battles and avoid any attacks directed against him in the first half of the game . He would never be the first player to fall in every match .