The Mech Touch novel Chapter 2540

2540 /7079

Chapter 2540: Bright Warrior Mark II

The collective efforts of the Design Department, Product Research Department and the Marketing Department yielded a lot of results.

Each day, Ves gained access to a flood of new reports and other data. It was excessive for him to go through all of this reading material, but fortunately he didn't have to. He merely had to quiz the assistants responsible for managing a specific task or order them to write a summary of their findings.

With so many people dedicating themselves to so many different tasks, Ves gained a lot more pertinent information and insights than in the past. Every additional detail lit up the darkness that was ahead of him, allowing him to stop groping in the dark.

Rather than guessing something, Ves could simply dig through the constantly-expanding database for the right proof. By backing up his decisions with solid data, he gained more confidence in his design choices.

The chances that his assumptions were wrong were much smaller, though he was careful to allow for at least some room of error.

After all, not every data was accurate. Ves also had to account for the shortcomings and biases of the people who provided, collected and interpreted the data. With each additional step in between, the data became more distorted.

It would have been a significant burden to keep track of every detail concerning the six design projects, but that was exactly why he split them up. While Ves regularly discussed the direction of every project with the other two Journeymen, he mainly focused his energies on fleshing out the concepts for the two projects that fell under his purview.

The Bright Warrior Mark II Project was the most straightforward of the two. On the surface, it was nothing more than converting a third-class mech design to a second-class mech design.

Of course, it was a lot more complicated in practice. A lot of changes took place during this conversion process. Design choices that made sense for lesser mechs became suboptimal if he attempted to apply them to greater mechs.

Before Ves specified anything else, he first had to set a budget for the mech design.

He couldn't set the budget too high because it would be a waste to invest too much in a second-class mech he only intended to field for a few years.

On the other hand, he couldn't be too stingy either. The Larkinsons needed to pilot something better than the second-class commercial mechs that were already being shipped to the Cinach System. Otherwise, what would be the point of switching mechs?

"I think aiming for a production cost of 200 million hex credits per copy is reasonable."

This was fairly generous but not too luxurious in Hexer standards. The highly-successful Blessed Squire design also cost the same amount to produce.

However, it was not appropriate to make a straight comparison between the Blessed Squire and the Bright Warrior Mark II.

Their roles were completely different.

The former was a purely supportive mech that was designed to be nothing more than a projectile sponge, a moving battery and a glow dispenser.

The latter was initially meant to become the mainstay fighting machine of the Larkinson Clan. Ves wanted as many of his mech pilots to switch to a Bright Warrior Mark II once he completed its complicated design.

This was quite easy to accomplish as the Mark II catered to many different mech pilots, just like its predecessor!

The Mark I version came in four different configurations.

The second design choice that Ves had to make was determining whether he wanted to keep the current configurations.

Gloriana happened to have an opinion about this topic. She sought him out and explained her views.

"We can do more with the Bright Warrior concept this time."

Ves raised his eyebrow at him. "Explain."

"A second-class mech isn't as limited in terms of capacity as a third-class mech. Components can be smaller as long as we invest more money into them. What I suggest is to make more room in the basic configuration of the Bright Warrior so that there is more room for customization. This way, we don't have to stick to choosing between a rifleman mech, knight mech, lancer mech and swordsman mech."

Though her argument was sound, Ves did not immediately accept her suggestion.

"Just because we can doesn't mean we should. The four configurations already cover 80 to 90 percent of every medium mech pilot. Sure, there are other mech types absent from this list, but will their inclusion truly matter to our mech pilots? I think not. Even if some of our mech pilots specialize in piloting striker mechs or auxiliary mechs, almost all of them are proficient in piloting the four basic configurations. In fact, all we really need is the rifleman mech and knight mech configurations."

Every mech pilot first learned how to pilot those two basic mech types before choosing their specialization. Even if a mech pilot didn't score well in piloting them, they should at least be decent enough.

Adding the swordsman mech and lancer mech configurations added a lot more practicality to the modular mech platform. Ves already thought it was more than sufficient to leave it at that, but Gloriana thought differently.

"You're treating the new Bright Warrior like the old one. It doesn't have to be like that, Ves. I think there is untapped potential in the concept. As long as you increase its scope, it can become a truly useful asset to the Larkinson Clan, just as you envisioned."

Ves shook his head. "It's not possible. Our mech pilots are too specialized. They don't want to switch mech types according to the situation. I still think the Bright Warrior Mark II is best suited to serve as a stopgap mech and a reference for upgrading the Quint."

"You don't understand! As long as we free up enough capacity, we don't have to spend a lot of effort in adding at least four more configurations. We can turn the Bright Warrior Mark II into a platform that can become a striker mech, a cannoneer mech, a construction mech or even a stealth mech!"