The Mech Touch novel Chapter 4157

Everything was slowly heading in the right direction. The announcement of the Trailblazer Expedition generated a lot of support and invigorated all of the parties involved.

The unveiling of the tentative new plan also invited a lot of feedback from many people. A lot of Larkinsons, Crossers and Glory Seekers met together and shared their insights and suggestions.

Many of them were not particularly relevant, but with so many people available, a few ideas were bound to raise good points!

With several years to go before the kickoff of the Trailblazer Expedition, all of the parties involved had plenty of time to prepare beforehand.

One of the factors that Ves cared the most was the amount of mechs that they could bring along the journey.

The latest estimates that Ves received was that the Larkinson Clan was aiming to field 10,000 mechs from the main fleet.

The Glory Seekers promised to do their best to bring 5,000 mechs to the expedition while the Cross Clan was confident it could meet its target of 12,000 mechs.

In total, the expeditionary fleet would therefore be able to field 27,000 mechs at once, which was much greater than before but still rather insufficient considering the potential opposition that they might face!

"If we can't bring anymore mechs, then we have to make sure to strengthen the ones we have as much as possible!" Ves concluded.

This resulted in a revised design strategy that called for designing new Larkinson-exclusive mechs and upgrading existing mech models at much higher performance standards than before!

The amount of design work required to accomplish all of this was considerate. The Design Department had to allocate more mech designers away from commercial mech design projects in order to meet the internal needs of the clan.

In order to prevent the LMC from sinking into stagnation again by slowing down the release of new commercial mech models, Ves and Gloriana paid extra attention to hiring additional batches of mech designers.

It was easy enough to hire low-ranking mech designers. If there was one type of professional that would never run out, it was Novice Mech Designers and Apprentice Mech Designers who were struggling to build their careers!

Just because they managed to move to the Red Ocean did not mean that their fortunes suddenly turned. The competition was higher and the standards were higher as well.

The different market and industry conditions ruined a lot of hopes. The painful truth was that mech designers who originally came from poorer states from the galactic rim possessed the least chances to get a good job.

Few people wanted them because these mech designers were not as qualified to work with heartland-level materials and equipment that had become the norm in the new frontier!

Though Gloriana was extremely picky about the mech designers that applied to join the Design Department, Ves was not as discerning. He paid attention to a lot of other traits such as loyalty, humility and obedience.

"Look, you can put forth all of the demands you want when it comes to hiring Journeymen, but our assistant mech designers don't need to be as good." Ves pushed back against her when recruiting had slowed down. "All of the good ones would rather work for the Cross Clan since rumors that Professor Benedict Cortez is close to realizing his design philosophy have already spread out. A lot of mech designers are eager to work for Master Mech Designers even if they can only speak to such an impressive person only once a year. We on the other hand aren't attractive enough because a lot of colleagues think they can do better than us, as absurd as that sounds."

Gloriana grimaced as she held a sleeping Andraste against her chest. "Those fools. Just because we are still Journeymen does not mean we are in the same league anymore. Can't those mech designers pay more attention to our accomplishments?"

Ves shrugged. "It's hard for them to take us seriously. The newcomers who are still fresh off the boat are particularly ignorant of our true strength. The genuine talents will all be snapped up by more reputable and established mech designers anyway. Just give up on hiring the best prospects and try to look among the group of people that are not as desirable at first glance. I'm confident that you'll be able to find a couple of hidden gems."

His wife did not look impressed.

"So what you are telling me is that I should go dumpster diving in the job market, is that it? I have to sift through tons of garbage in order to find a single relatively clean and relatively nice gem, is that it? Are you crazy?!"

If Gloriana wasn't holding one of their sleeping daughters right now, she would have certainly expressed her feelings louder!

"Hey, if you are feeling so stressed out about hiring the right personnel, you can leave the job to me. I have a good eye for talent." Ves boasted.

"No! I won't let you botch this job or bring in any weirdos into our Design Department! I will do this myself because that is the only way I ensure we do it properly!"

In the end, they decided to split their responsibilities.

Ves mainly concerned himself with recruiting low-ranking mech designers. The amount of applicants was rather abundant, but it was still a challenge to identify those that were the most honest, productive and suitable to work in large design teams.

In the interest of recruiting as many potential Journeymen as possible, Ves tried his best to recruit mech designers with spiritual potential.

Unfortunately, they were quite rare!

If Ves wanted to maximize the chances of breakthroughs among his own people, then he would have to string out his recruitment campaigns across several years, all the while rejecting the majority of applicants.

This was not sustainable. If word spread about how the Larkinson Clan turned away most applicants including those with excellent qualifications, then less and less mech designers would make the attempt.

In addition, there were lots of talents among those with no spiritual potential. Just because they were unlikely to advance to Journeyman and higher did not mean they had no uses in the Larkinson Clan.

Plenty of the more senior assistants had gone on to become team leaders. As the amount of projects the Larkinsons needed to complete had skyrocketed as of late, more senior leadership positions had come into existence as well in order to keep everything organized.

As such, Ves no longer paid as much attention to spiritual potential and kept to a more reasonable set of recruitment criteria.

Since his goal was to expand the amount of assistant mech designers at his disposal to 1000 individuals, the Design Department quickly experienced a lot of changes!

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