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"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 Many of them were either outdated or not appropriate for the mech he envisioned.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 Which mech designer was crazy enough to buy a soon-to-be-outdated component license at this time?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.

The more he tinkered with his draft design, the more he noticed the difference of his recent upgrades. He already had a taste of it before when he designed the Sypre Helix Annihilator, but his upgraded Mechanics and Metallurgy Skills and his improved affinity of mechs both resulted in significant improvements!

Not only did he become more productive and finished his draft design faster, but he also elevated its quality to a higher level. Ves believed his current state could easily be a match to older and more experienced Journeymen who had been in the business for fifty or a hundred years!

"It’s very fortunate I upgraded the right Skills first!"

At this moment, his Mechanics, Metallurgy and Physics Skills had all reached the level of a Senior. This meant that his foundation in these broad and expansive fields had reached a very high standard.

Though they didn’t necessarily sound exotic or exciting, a good foundation was the key to designing an efficient mech that possessed as little flaws as possible. Ves could already judge from his draft design that if he refined it into a proper design, it would feature very little waste!

"This is incredibly important for a cheap mech like the Desolate Soldier! Compared to my premium mechs, I have to do more with less. I can’t afford to waste a single material I put into my design!"

Though Ves thought highly of his Desolate Soldier, its actual performance would still be average even when compared to the other budget mechs on the market. Even if he differentiated his product by applying his specialty, he still needed to set a sharp price in order to make his new mech model viable in the highly-competitive market for ballistic rifleman mechs.

In other words, the Desolate Soldier’s product margin would never be impressive. The LMC would be lucky if the margin reached twenty percent.

"That won’t last forever." Ves grimly determined. "The timing of this mech design is awful. Once the new mech generation finally arrives, the Desolate Soldier will instantly be labeled as a lastgen mech!"

Once this change occurred, his company’s profits would surely dwindle! If demand failed to take off for his new product, then retaining a five percent margin might be out of reach!

Ves considered this figure to be the minimum to make it worthwhile for the LMC to keep up production. If the company’s profits for the Desolate Soldier fell below this threshold, then it might as well go back to producing copies of a popular licensed mech!

"This is going to be my greatest challenge." He muttered.

He set his sights on a target price at 20 to 24 million bright credits for his upcoming mech. This meant that he had to keep the production cost of a Desolate Soldier at 16 million bright credits or less!

Despite his various strengths, this was still a very steep challenge to Ves!

"Even Senior Mech Designers will have to strain their capabilities to depress the cost to this extent!"

A good foundation only went so far. If Ves wanted to squeeze more efficiency out of his Desolate Soldier design, then he needed to acquire more targeted expertise!

Perhaps it was time for him to upgrade some of his Sub-Skills!

"It’s been awhile since I did that." He muttered.

The last time he upgraded his Skills was when he spent his DP on upgrading his Mechanics and Metallurgy Skills. Now that he finished their upgrade missions and digested them completely, he likely gained access to brand-new specialized Sub-Skills!

Ves considered both Mechanics and Metallurgy to be the most important fields in relations to his Desolate Soldier. It was a cheap and simple mech, which meant it did not feature any advanced or expensive gimmicks.

"The Desolate Soldier doesn’t have enough room for complexity. I have to meet all of my targets while expending as little resources as possible! Expertise in how a mech is put together and how to make the most out of the available materials is a must!"

He temporarily paused his design work and headed to his bathroom, but not before grabbing Lucky. After he set up all of his precautions, he materialized his System comm and summoned its interface.

"Status."

Nothing much changed since he last checked it. He just wanted to check how much DP he accumulated.

Design Points: 430,213

"That’s not as much as I thought." He frowned.

It made sense as soon as he thought about it. Sales of his existing mech models had collapsed. Ever since the LMC switched over to producing a licensed mech design, Ves no longer earned any DP. He couldn’t even expect to gain anything from virtual mech sales as they had already reached the limits set by the System!

There was nothing he could do about it except to finish his Desolate Soldier design as fast as possible.

After a brief moment of consideration, he decided to set his purchasing budget at 300,000 DP!

"That’s a lot of design points!"

Nonetheless, Ves believed he needed to spend extravagantly in order to make his goal of reducing the cost of his upcoming mech design a reality. The Sub-Skills he acquired today would not only be useful for his current design project, but every project that followed!

"My investment won’t be in vain." He consoled himself.

He turned to the System’s Skill Tree.

An entire tree of Skills and Sub-Skills branched out from each direction. Compared to last time, the lower branches of his Skill Tree had expanded significantly. Ves observed numerous new Sub-Skills.

Though some of them sounded very attractive, the amount of DP the System charged for them was correspondingly high!

Ves quickly frowned. "I don’t necessarily need them. I’ll just be muddling up my design philosophy if I learn too many irrelevant Skills."

He decided to focus on the basics. A Skill that was a bit more general and widely-applicable would not introduce any incompatibilities with his distinctive design style.

He aimed to select a handful of Sub-Skills that could make a small but very noticeable difference in his efforts to increase the efficiency of his mech designs.

He happily hummed while he slowly inspected his options.