The Mech Touch

The long and extensive salvaging operation finally came to an end.

After ten continuous days of picking apart the battlefield, the cargo holds of the expedition vessels were all bursting with loot.

During this time, all kinds of scouts, spies, mercenary outfits and even entire salvaging fleets dropped into the star system.

While they all maintained a respectful distance from the expeditionary fleet, Ves felt the pressure to leave nonetheless.

The alliance worked faster in order to grab as many drifting treasures as possible!

All kinds of shuttles, mechs and other vehicles had frantically chased after an uncountable amount of debris and wrecks, each ranked according to their approximate value.

Despite their great size and mass, starship hull plating actually ranked pretty low on the priority list. While the hull of a complete fleet carrier could be worth trillions of hex credits, they took up way too much space.

On a volume basis, a cubic meter of mech materials was worth much more than a cubic meter of starship materials.

Mech designers and shipwrights adopted divergent approaches to their work.

A mech designer always attempted to maximize the value in the smallest possible package. A mech that was oversized and bloated was not only uncompetitive in the market, but also terribly slow and unwieldy.

To a mech designer, a cost-efficient product had to utilize the least materials possible to achieve the strongest possible effect.

It was easy to cook a good meal with excellent, fresh ingredients.

It was a lot harder to achieve the same level of satisfaction when the chef only had access to nutrient packs!

This was also one of the main strengths of Ves. His iconic glow mechs provided a considerable degree of value without raising the cost to produce them. If making mechs alive demanded the inclusion of expensive materials or components that raised their cost by 50 percent, then the LMC's sales and profit margin would only be a fraction of their current level!

Shipwrights abided by a different set of priorities.

While mech designers always had to abide by volume and mass constraints due to the difficulty of transporting mechs, shipwrights did not have to pay too much attention to these limitations as long as their budget and purpose could accommodate their visions.

Space was vast, so there was unlimited room for star-faring vessels. Whether a corvette was 80 meters long or 120 meters long didn't matter. There was a market for both. The Age of Mechs was a period of time where humanity spread across half the galaxy and beyond. Starships represented the dominant form of travel. The demand for ships was never sated!

Larger starships and especially capital ships always attempted to do as much as possible within the constraints of a given budget.

As long as a customer or client could afford a vessel, shipwrights possessed a wide latitude to configure them in a way that maximized their performance.

Oftentimes, that meant making the hull or key sections bigger. For example, hull plating was a typical area where shipwrights chose to pile up a lot of bulk materials instead of opting for higher-quality alloy formulas. The latter might be more effective, but they were too expensive when applied to the entire exterior of a starship.

As a result of all of these considerations, the expeditionary fleet prioritized mech salvage to a heavy degree.

In any case, most of the mechs fielded by both sides of the Battle of Reckoning consisted of premium or premier mechs.

The Larkinson Clan didn't even bother to pick up the pieces of its broken budget mechs. The Princess Jeckas, Vima Suns and Tamris Stellars were worth only an eighth or less than a typical Fridayman or a traitor clan mech!

It didn't matter to Ves if he filled his starships with mechs fielded by the enemy. There was no need for the Larkinsons to waste their time on trying to restore them for their own use.

The Golden Skull Alliance already contracted a mercenary organization to cover its security needs. This meant that his mech forces didn't need to worry too much about lacking enough strength to protect their fleet, at least for the duration of the contract.

In the next couple of months, Ves intended to address the greatest need of the Larkinson Clan by completing the crucial Giant Killer, Bright Warrior IB and Ferocious Piranha IB designs.

Once the new mech models entered service, the Larkinson Clan would finally gain the strength to fight against state-backed second-rate forces on a roughly equal basis!

Of course, mechs were hardly the only factor that made the previous opponents strong. The skill, teamwork and discipline exhibited by the Fridayman elite mech pilots was very impressive and brutally exposed the lack of accumulation on the part of the Larkinsons.

The harsh truth was that it took a lot more time and effort to nurture true second-class mech pilots!

So far, most of the Larkinson mech pilots just passed through the threshold. They weren't even that good at piloting the more powerful and complicated mechs at this performance level!

"This isn't an easy issue to address." Ves grimaced as he crossed his arms.

Fortunately, the Larkinsons received a lot of help on this aspect. The Penitent Sisters, Glory Seekers and Crossers generously dispatched trainers in order to instruct the eager Larkinson mech pilots.

While it was unrealistic to expect quick results, the Larkinsons would definitely be able to close the gap in a couple of years as long as this pattern continued!

In the medium term, the initial batches of mech cadets would graduate from the Larkinson Mech Academy.

Unlike the mech pilots the Larkinsons hired before, these promising graduates started off with a strong second-class foundation from the start! With the help of the Chiron model, Ves looked forward to witnessing the performance of mech pilots such as Lanie Larkinson.

"That will take some years." Ves grumbled. "For now, the best way to strengthen my troops in the shortest amount of time is to provide them with better mechs."

When the Golden Skull Alliance finally transitioned back into FTL travel, he convened the entire Design Department at the design lab.

The principal designer, the two lead designers and a small army of assistants gathered for the first time in over a week.

Ves even invited his four seeds. Maikel and Zanthar sat noticeably apart from Maisie Ann and Rennie.

Apparently, the young men hadn't made up with the young women as of yet. Considering how much the latter exuded some of the typical demeanor of Hexers, it was no mystery why the boys and girls didn't get along.

Ves dismissed the sight. This issue was beneath him. It may even be beneficial to maintain a strong sense of rivalry between the two groups.

Once the final stragglers entered the compartment, Ves began the meeting.

"Welcome back, everyone. I hope you all had a good time fixing up our broken machines. As mech designers, it is always crucial to accumulate hands-on experience with the products that you have dedicated your lives to develop. I hope that each of you recognize that this side duty is a precious learning opportunity for all of you. I'm no different. When your lives are on the line, you tend to learn much more than when you are safe."

Not every assistant saw the value in this. Their mixed expressions showed that they would rather be spending their time in a safe facility on a boring planet rather than sit in the front seats of a life-threatening event!

Ves merely smirked. They would get used to it one way or another, particularly for his Braves.

He waved his hand, causing a projection to come to life that displayed various clips of the prototypes in action.

"Anyway, the Battle of Reckoning and the aftermath has exposed all of us to how mechs fight, how they break and how they can be put back together. I won't talk about the general insights that you have gained. That is part of your own learning process. Today's meeting is centered around the performance of LMC mechs. The Battle of Reckoning has exposed the strengths and weaknesses of both our finished and unfinished designs in the most realistic test imaginable. Actual battle is always the best way to determine the true performance of any machine."

Everyone nodded. The prototypes of the Bright Warrior IB, Ferocious Piranha IB and other unfinished designs had truly taken part in the fighting.

Even though it wasn't entirely safe or responsible to field the flawed and rough mechs, the situation was too dire to leave them in the hangar bay.

Ves waved his hand, causing the projection to display selected footage of his prime mechs.

"Our prototypes aren't the only mechs that can yield useful insights on our current prototypes. The prime mechs that I have developed are all derived from our existing mech design projects. They are basically souped-up variants of our standard mechs meant to serve as a stopgap for our expert pilots. The performance of these exceptional mechs may not be comparable to the prototypes, but they provide a good preview of how our mech designs perform at their maximum potential."

Expert pilots were a lot less bothered with the various flaws and inefficiencies in the unfinished mech designs. They either performed so great that these weaknesses simply didn't come into play or they easily compensated for the quirks.

Ketis raised her hand. "What are prime mechs exactly? Are they failed expert mechs or something?"

"They don't even come close." Ves shook his head. "Expert mechs are so much more than what I've managed to cobble together in a matter of weeks. To be honest, I expected a lot more from the prime mechs that I've invented, but I am happy with what I've got. Even if I didn't hit the jackpot, they are still considerably more powerful than standard mechs. They are just right for our current roster of expert pilots while they are waiting to receive their true expert mechs."

"Do you intend to make more prime mechs, sir?" Miles Tovar asked.

"Nope. These machines are just as demanding as expert mechs. Their material requirements are very excessive and they can only be utilized by expert pilots. Since none of our expert candidates broke through recently, there is no need to make more."

"Will you redesign your existing prime mechs?" Juliet Stameros asked a very important question.

Ves had to take his time to come up with his response.

"It's not worthwhile to do so. Upgrading the prime mechs takes too much time and effort. A much more efficient way to increase our comprehensive strength is to address the demand of quality standard mechs in our clan and to start designing expert mechs as soon as possible. The prime mechs are already sufficient as they are now, so I would rather go into detail on how we must alter our existing design projects."

Some of the assistants looked surprised.

"What do you mean by that, sir?"

"I'm saying that our initial set of requirements for our mech design projects are flawed. Some of the assumptions that we have made to base our design choices do not match reality. What we must do now is to go over the performance of every prototype and prime mech and systematically identify their various shortcomings, particularly the ones that arise from their designs, and come up with solutions that hopefully lead to better results. Let's begin with the Bright Warrior Version B."

Ves honed in on the Bright Warrior IB straight away because it was already slated to become the mainstay of the Larkinson Clan. He had already identified a couple of subtle issues that he did not want to see in the final product!

He summoned a wireframe projection of the four configurations of the Bright Warrior IB design.

"Let's start with the weapon loadout." Ves began. "The battle has showed us that we need weapons with a bigger punch. The armor of the enemy mechs bounced off so many attacks from our budget mechs that the performance of our mech forces was simply embarrassing. As far as I'm concerned, we must upscale the weaponry of the Bright Warrior IB so that we will never end up in this situation again!"