The Mech Touch

The proposed collaboration between the LMC and Voiken Industries affected a lot of interests. Profits involving hundreds of thousands if not millions of MTA credits were at stake!

The potential business deal also had the power to define Voiken Industries entry into the mech market.

It didn't matter whether Professor Taigen Herman Voiken achieved a lot of success in the Uplifting Note Star Sector where the Voikens were based.

Hardly few if any of his reputation and brand awareness carried over to the Red Ocean!

The vast majority of mech designers and mech companies had to start from scratch once they passed through the greater beyonder gate.

The level of competition in the new frontier was vastly greater due to the high density of people active in the small slice of the dwarf galaxy that human civilization succeeded in occupying.

Unless the Big Two managed to push back the alien opposition and opened up a lot of new colonial zones, the level of competition in the existing occupied regions would only grow worse over time!

Under these difficult situations, the first mech companies to capture the early mech markets enjoyed an incomparable advantage!

They had already established their brands the earliest and built up enough ties in the industry to control much of the supply of raw materials.

Voiken Industries only recently entered the Red Ocean, which meant it was in the same difficult position as the Living Mech Corporation!

Both mech companies possessed plenty of differences that determined their chances to establish themselves in the new environment.

Voiken Industries possessed a lot of experience and expertise in the law enforcement sector. Professor Taigen's ability to design different law enforcement mechs was actually pretty good, but it was a pity that there was no shortage of talented and capable competitors in the Red Ocean!

The Living Mech Corporation happened to be in the opposite position. Ves and his lead designers had never designed a proper peacekeeping mech in their lives! They had no experience in this specific sub-market and were not familiar with the intricate rules of the complicated business sector.

Yet despite all of these shortcomings, Ves was confident that he could single-handedly force his way into this lucrative market if he designed a single law enforcement mech that was paired with Lufa's glow!

This was his source of confidence as well as his implicit threat towards the Voiken Family.

If the Voikens weren't willing to offer a more equitable and honest business offer, then Ves might just decide to upend the law enforcement sector on his own or in partnership with a competing mech company!

"Negotiations will drag on for months if we adopt such a tough and uncompromising stance." Gloriana noted. "There is a large chance that our high demands will disgust the Voikens to the point where they deem it is more profitable for them to chart their own course than to pursue cooperation with us. If this happens, we will miss out on obtaining a lucrative new source of revenue for our clan."

"It doesn't matter too much. We are not the ones who are under pressure to act quickly or enter this specific market. We can afford to take a gamble. We don't actually lose anything if our bet has failed since we didn't have any plans to sell law enforcement mechs to begin with. If the Voikens don't want to get in bed with us, then we will just look for a different partner."

With this matter done for the time being, Ves finally wrapped up this important meeting.

"Alright. I've heard a lot of interesting mech proposals for today. Overall, I'm happy with the diversity and quantity of mech design projects that we will be working on for this design round. My only regret is that we are still short on manpower and that our workloads are vastly different. If you have time, consider lending a hand to the busier mech designers. We will have to organize our time better in the future, but there is no need for too much formality for the time being."

There were mech designers who were involved in over half-a-dozen different design projects like Ves and Sara Voiken.

There were also mech designers that only committed to working on one or two design projects like Dulo Voiken.

All of this was terribly unbalanced, but Ves couldn't help it for the time being. He hoped that hiring another batch of Journeyman would alleviate the worst of this issue. It was a pity that the desired changes would only fully come into effect in the next design round.

"How would you rank the different projects in terms of sales potential, Ves?" Gloriana asked.

"That's an interesting question. I think that each of us will have different opinions on the profitability of each potential end product. In my opinion, the Buzzy Bee Project probably ranks at the top. It is a unique market product that offers unbeatable communication features that cannot be found in other mechs. The Pacifier Project should also be a highly promising offer if we are able to establish a deal with the Voiken Family. Other than that, I am also optimistic about the Voribug Nemesis Project and the Huntmaster Project."

Gloriana expected Ves to voice a lot of confidence in his own projects, but she was sharp enough to notice that he conspicuously left one out of his response.

"What about your Tutor Project?"

"That's a more complicated story." Ves replied. "The market for training mechs is just as difficult and complicated as the market for law enforcement mechs. The main customers are big and established institutions who never make any radical spending decisions. It will be difficult for us to make the Tutor Project successful right away, especially if we do not collaborate with a mech company that is already involved in this sub-market."

"You don't sound eager to collaborate with a third party when it comes to the Tutor Project." Ketis observed.

"The circumstances sound similar, but they are not. I think it is easier for us to enter the market for training mechs as the barriers of entry are considerably lower. We also have prior experience in designing a successful training mech in the form of the Chiron. We have already gathered plenty of feedback on its strengths and weaknesses which we can use to develop a more polished training mech this time. Furthermore, the amount of effort I intend to put into the Tutor Project goes beyond slapping a glow onto the mech design. I will attempt to introduce a lot of new innovations that will hopefully be able to reinvent the public's cognition of training machines."

He did not elaborate any further about the Tutor Project after that. It was pointless for him to explain his ambition to develop a more active training mech that was able to pull its mech pilots into spiritual simulations that offered an unprecedented degree of realism and substitution!

If Ves was able to get any of this to work, then he was a hundred percent confident that the Tutor Project would be able to build up a commanding market share without additional support!

"What about our bestial mechs, sir?" Janassa Pellier inquired. "The Steelwing Project and the Mauler Project may not have as much immediate appeal as your projects, but I am hopeful they can generate enough profit when they are both paired with useful glows."

"I am not familiar with the market environment for beast mechs, so I can't make any predictions. If I have to make a guess, then I would say that it will probably be a bit slower for your pair of bestial mech models to build up a modest amount of momentum. Whether they can go any further is still questionable."

"...That's fair. We will do our best to make them popular regardless of what you think. We both believe that the combination that we have come up with will find a good use in the Red Ocean."

Ves was not pessimistic about the two bestial mech design projects. He merely thought that their value propositions were inferior compared to the other projects they had discussed today.

No mech design was set in stone. There was still a lot of time for Janassa and Tifi to expand on their original concepts and introduce new and innovative features that boosted the appeal of their products.

Before Ves concluded this meeting, he decided to make one more remark.

"My recent talk with Professor Taigen Voiken has reminded me of an element that our mech company is still lacking in. We have yet to develop our own synergistic mech ecosystem for the market. All of the commercial mechs we have designed in the past along with the ones we will be working on in this design round are mostly one-off machines that have few inherent relations with each other. Aside from the obvious synergy between the Steelwing Project and the Mauler Project, there are no obvious intersections between our other projects."

Gloriana, Ketis, Juliet and several other mech designers frowned when they heard that. This was indeed a major shortcoming.

"We are still young and our mech company hasn't been operating for many years either." Sara Voiken said. "There are much higher requirements for mech ecosystems than standalone mech designs. Many mech designers usually wait until they have advanced to Senior before they embark on this massive design challenge. It usually isn't worth it for Journeymen such as us to develop a brand new mech ecosystem from scratch as we are still experimenting and improving on our design solutions at a rapid pace."

Ves could see why this was the case. A mech ecosystem had to consist of multiple mech lines that were internally consistent with each other. It was not always a good idea to introduce a new mech model in the ecosystem that introduced a lot of radical changes compared to the established lineup.

"I am not saying we need to change our current design concepts or introduce a mech ecosystem right away. I just want each of you to think about how to best set it up in the future. While we are known for our living mechs and our glows, this is not enough. We need to figure out how we can best leverage our advantages in a mech ecosystem that is good enough to truly propel the LMC into prominence."

If his mech company was truly able to reach this point, then it had truly settled into the Red Ocean's mech market!

The meeting finally ended after he gave them this reminder. Numerous Journeymen eagerly left the office in order to get started on their respective projects right away.

Juliet did not leave immediately, though.

"Ves?"

"Yes, Juliet?"

"When we discussed our expert mech design projects, you did not say much about the miniaturized warp drives that we could equip on them. Are you still willing to go through with granting warp capabilities to our next batch of expert mechs?"

"This is not an easy matter for us to handle." Ves frowned. "I'm aware that you are about to begin your studies on them, but there is no way you can design minidrives for our expert mech design projects in time. We will have to approach an external company that specializes in the development and production of these expensive devices. That is something that we should explore later. The cost will not be light, but this is the only way for us to get our hands on minidrives without developing them ourselves."

Juliet slowly nodded. "I am glad to hear that you are still open to equipping our next expert mechs with them. What of our existing roster of expert mechs? Do you want to equip mechs such as the Dark Zephyr and Shield of Samar with minidrives as well?"

"There is no need to hurry on that. We still have to make a lot of targeted changes to our existing expert mechs in order to support the inclusion of a back-mounted minidrive module. I want to wait for a few years and gain more familiarity with this tech before applying the upgrades."

"I see. It is probably a better idea to observe how minidrives interact with the C-Man Project and the Blade Chaser Mark II before attempting to do the same for our older expert mechs."