The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3960

Chapter 3960 cost of Land

"So what do you think?"

"It's… pretty empty."

"That's the point." Gavin said as he waved his arm at the empty and hilly landscape. "This is a remote plot of land that is located in one of Davute VII's more remote continents. While that makes it harder to reach Kotor City quickly, we will also avoid much of the hustle and bustle that goes on in the planet's capital city. I think a location like this makes for a good compromise between accessibility and remoteness."

As Ves considered his assistant's words, their daughter was having the time of her life.

Having spent much of her first year inside a starship, the vast, green and open environment of a planet completely fascinated her. Everything on Davute was a new wonder to her and she eagerly insisted on exploring all of the strange new things that she had never come across before.

Right now, she used her little legs to run towards a small collection of trees.

"Hihihihi!"

"Miaow miaow!"

As always, Clixie always accompanied Aurelia in order to prevent the little girl from hurting herself. The Rubarthan Sentinel Cat had been busy these last few days as the energetic baby simply couldn't sit still!

As Ves studied the environment, he could see several signs that the local nature was not as authentic as it appeared.

How could the planet possibly be so friendly towards human life when people only settled on it a few years ago? This was way too little time to turn a barren, alien planet into a lush environment that was highly compatible with earth-based life forms!

The answer turned out to be rapid terraforming. This was the brute force version of terraforming when colonists lacked the patience to go through the more traditional process!

The normal mode of terraforming was to selectively manipulate the planetary environment to alter its parameters to be more friendly to human life step by step.

Terraforming entire planets was expensive business, and many colonists had already invested in so many different assets that they could not afford to spend a huge fortune on transforming their new homes.

This was why traditional terraforming plans sought to take advantage of modest changes to the natural cycles of a planet. Letting 'nature' do most of the heavy lifting was a huge money saver, though the process might take decades to complete as a result.

The initial wave of ambitious pioneers couldn't wait that long. Many of them wanted to develop their colonies and found their states as soon as possible in order to get ahead of the competition.

If any colonists tried to take it slow, it was inevitable for them to lose the initiative in the competition to found new states!

The powers that invested in a rich port system like Davute did not wish to get bogged down from the beginning.

In order to speed up the transformation of a planet, they contracted a company to conduct rapid terraforming.

This was a quick but extremely expensive process that started with removing whatever alien life or other disruptive factors. No matter what unique environmental features the untamed planet possessed before, all of it had to go as long as it posed a hindrance to the goal of making the environment more livable for humans!

Once the terraformers cleaned up the planet's surface, they rapidly transplanted the factors that were essential to regulating the temperature or providing breathable air.

Some of the steps involved transplanting huge tracts of forests and grasslands to dumping millions of animals in specially-designed regions.

The terraforming company had to make a huge amount of calculations in order to figure out the fastest and most direct measures they needed to make in order to complete the commission.

Ves happened to know all of this because he had read a few articles about the Aduc Family recently.

Since the Transhumanists really wanted the Larkinsons to get along with the Aducs, Ves felt it was prudent to learn more about the latter's business activities.

He became quite impressed by what he learned. Terraforming planets and making sure that every continent and region was able to develop sustainable ecosystems were massive engineering projects.

Their scope far exceeded that of mechs and starships!

The work involved with turning Davute VII into a planet that was already close to offering a perfect living environment to humans in a matter of years was probably worthy of a prize!

It also scared Ves away from allowing his clan to colonize a planet. The costs of doing so were so great that it was not unusual for colonists to get saddled with so much debt that it could take centuries to pay off their obligations!

While the potential payoffs were also huge, it was never his intention to build his own little kingdom.

Compared to all of the risks and expenses involved with colonizing a planet, Ves vastly preferred to stick to his fleet as his primary power base.

However, that did not stop him from forming numerous different outposts on different planets.

Right now, Ves was seriously considering whether he should allow his clan to build a large compound at this particular site.

"There aren't many other groups and companies around here, so it's a lot easier for us to guard our territory." Ves determined.

"If you want, we could also buy the surrounding plots of land while they are still available." Gavin noted. "The land prices of this planet are still fairly expensive due to its importance as a future commerce and industrial hub, but this continent is so remote and underdeveloped that the rates are relatively mild."

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