The Mech Touch novel Chapter 4070

Chapter 4070 Starting from the Bottom

Roughly 3.5 percent of the total population of humanity possessed the right genetic aptitude to pilot mechs.

Of this privileged group of potentates, not all of them chose to attend a mech academy.

Perhaps their families abhorred the prospect of sending their children off to battle.

Perhaps the potentates did not possess genetic aptitudes that were high enough to enjoy good careers as mech pilots.

Perhaps it was difficult for them to pay for the tuition that mech academies charged.

Even so, many potentates still went on to attend mech academies instead of regular schools in order to leverage their rare advantage in life.

Since mechs were so popular and so prevalent in the public consciousness, practically every teenager with at least decent genetic aptitudes chose to pursue their childhood dreams and study to become heroic mech pilots!

As a profession that was highly dependent on skill, knowledge as well as practical experience, there were a lot of ways to train and educate them. A huge amount of training mech models and teaching systems had emerged over the centuries.

Mech academies had to make a lot of important choices. Which training mechs should they acquire? Which teaching system should they adopt?

They had to make these decisions and more based on their background, their reputation, their market appeal and most importantly their budget.

In general, the greater the budget, the greater the prestige and attractiveness of the mech academy!

For example, the Larkinsons invested a lot of money into the First Star Mech Academy located in the outskirts of Kotor City.

The Larkinson Clan was loaded with money, so it had the luxury to grant a generous budget to its first land-based mech academy.

By supplying First Star with lots of funding and a sufficient amount of good mech instructors from their own ranks, the Larkinsons were hoping that it would become a top elite institution in Davute one day!

As long as it built up a good reputation and as long as its graduates went on to become elite mech pilots in large numbers, the First Star Mech Academy had the potential to not only become renowned in Davute, but also in the rest of the surrounding region!

Of course, it wasn't easy for the Larkinsons to get to this point. The First Star's oversized campus and expensive teaching facilities had become a huge money pit that could not be filled in a short amount of time.

There weren't enough mech cadets in Davute to fill up all of its classrooms and training fields. The Larkinsons still proceeded with making this huge investment knowing that it might take 20 or even 40 years for the First Star to finally become popular enough to earn its own keep.

Even then, there was no guarantee that it could defeat the competition and attract enough mech cadets that were willing to pay a hefty amount of money each year to receive premium education from this particular institution!

In short, the education market was incredibly volatile and fraught with failure and uncertainty.

The parties that chose to start their own mech academies in the new frontier consisted of many different groups.

Some were founded by long-running educational chains that not only possessed deep pockets, but also built up a stellar reputation for raising mech pilots.

Their mech academies immediately became desirable destinations for mech cadets!

Others were founded by new entrants such as the Larkinson Clan that had the money but not the reputation or experience in this business.

Business at their mech academies were slower and were not guaranteed to pick up if they turned out to be bad at fulfilling their roles.

The remaining mech academies were founded by more modest people and groups. These were usually among the smaller and more rural institutions that overwhelmingly enrolled the less talented and less well-off mech cadets from the same city or maybe province.

There was nothing wrong with them per se. Mech cadets that received better opportunities were usually willing to move to larger cities where the larger and more prestigious mech academies were based.

Those who were unable to follow suit for whatever reason could still become decent mech pilots by attending one of the many lower-tier mech academies.

When the LMC's Marketing Department drafted its initial strategy for the War Squire model, it chose to start off with putting its focus on these less impressive mech pilot schools!

"It makes perfect sense, boss." Gavin replied. "While we are all aware that the War Squire is a premium product that is aimed at the upper end of the market, it is impossible for us to enter it right away. We need to start lower down the hierarchy where there are a lot more openings that we can exploit."

"Haven't we tried to push our products onto a more reputable institution at all, Benny?"

"We have, and none of the schools we contacted has bothered to give us a reply." Gavin sighed. "These elite mech academies are mostly founded by long-running chains that not only know exactly what they are doing, but have also established long-term partnerships with the same group of mech companies that have supplied all of their training mechs for many years. Even if these chains have entered an entirely new region, their business partners have often followed suit as well. If you were in their shoes, would you take a gamble on a completely unknown training mech offered by a stranger in this sector or would you go for training mechs that are highly similar to the ones that have already worked out well in the old galaxy?"

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