The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3159

Chapter 3159: Untapped Manpower

Ves never thought that something as simple as the currency used to make transactions could have such a profound effect on the clan.

Since he was primarily a mech designer who frequently brushed with danger, Ves mostly paid attention to the military and production aspects of his clan. As a result, the way it developed up to this point was disproportionately slanted towards productivity and military force.

Was this a bad development? Ves didn't think so. In the early days, the Larkinson Clan urgently needed to grow stronger. The best and most direct way to do that was to focus on increasing the clan's income, bolstering the internal production capabilities of the clan and most importantly expanding its military might.

The downside to this constant focus on production, business, self-sufficiency and defense was that a lot of other priorities never really gained the attention they deserved. There were other leaders and decision makers in the clan, but their authority was not high enough and their expertise was not always remarkable.

The reforms that were still in the process of transforming the Larkinson Clan changed all of that. The addition of a lot of newly-appointed officials meant that there were finally people in the clan who could address all of those issues that Ves never thought about.

Since Raymond wanted to do it right, he was far from ready to establish a central bank, let alone have it issue the clan's new legal tender. It would take many months before the right people were put in place to set up a good structure for the new currency.

"Our currency can even become something more in the future." The oldest man in the room revealed one of his ambitions. "While there are risks involved, if we can make it circulate among the other states and organizations in the Red Ocean, we can derive an immense amount of economic benefits from this circumstance."

Ves looked incredibly skeptical. "What reason would others adopt our currency? Won't they be looking to do the same thing as us? I seriously doubt that our currency will become relevant to outsiders unless we engage in transactions or something, but even then we'll probably pay in Terran or Rubarthan coins."

"That is why we need to anchor our currency in something unique and valuable. We happen to have both in spades. For example, if you have become good in designing powerful and unique mechs that can only be produced in our fleet, we can demand our customers pay in our money rather than other currencies."

"Won't our customers simply change their foreign currencies into our own before transacting as normal? It sounds like we haven't gained much except for an opportunity to rip off our customers through manipulating fees and exchange rates."

"The actual implications of this change are far more than that, Ves, but I suppose I am getting ahead of myself. We should revisit this topic in a decade once we have managed to find our footing in the Red Ocean."

Raymond Billingsley-Larkinson came up with other ideas, some of which had to do with the LMC and others which affected other parts of the clan. They were less impactful than introducing a new currency, so Ves quickly lost interest.

Soon, Ves directed his attention to Magdalena Larkinson. She had developed a couple of ideas as well, but none of them were extreme. One proposal was to allow the older mech cadets to intern in various different mech legions. This not only allowed the future mech pilots to know what to expect, but also helped them with deciding which elite mech troop suited them best.

"We should also be setting up a proper military reserve." The former commander of the Living Sentinels proposed. "There have been numerous incidents in the past where we have suffered heavy losses and couldn't get back up to strength fast enough. Since it is a lot more dangerous to remain understrength in regions such as the Red Ocean, we need to make preparations beforehand so that we will be able to bounce back in the event we have suffered significant losses."

Now this was a good suggestion! In a frontier region like the Red Oceans, friends were hard to come by and order was still nonexistent in many zones. Any fleet that roamed the dwarf galaxy had to maintain their strength at all cost or risk getting swamped by other rivals!

"Where will we find the additional manpower?" Ves asked.

"Well, we have a growing pool of retired and partially-disabled veterans." She said. "I've talked with the Lifer biotech experts over at the Dragon's Den, and they told me that they can apply many treatments and augments that can mitigate a lot of common injury and age-related ailments. As long as we invest in our retired mech pilots, they can regain enough fighting capability to fight once more if necessary."

Ves was not completely ignorant about this topic. As a mech designer, it was mandatory for him to know what kind of people were suitable to pilot certain kinds of mechs.

"The ability for older and severely injured mech pilots to interface with a mech once again is quite difficult to restore, at least from what I have learned. The act of mech piloting is not only a mental but also a physical burden. The reason why so many older and badly-injured mech pilots are forced to retire is because their brains have sustained a lot of wear and tear, either through decades worth of piloting mechs or undergoing a traumatic experience where they felt the deaths of their own machines."

He should know, as his own grandfather was among this group. Benjamin Larkinson used to hold the title of Venerable, but after suffering a defeat during one of the battles of the Bright-Vesia Wars, he had lost virtually all of his extraordinary capabilities.

It was a rather sad outcome for a once-promising expert pilot. The fact that Benjamin was unable to maintain his force of will to this day signified that this crippling had likely collapsed his will for battle.

Ves crossed his arms and thought about it. In many second-rate states, young potentates who received a score of D or lower weren't even allowed to attend a mech academy. While there were a lot of them, they simply weren't worth the effort to train and bring into service. _{freeweɓnovel.cøm}

Verify captcha to read the contentVerify