The Mech Touch novel Chapter 5406

Chapter 5406 The Association's Power Plays

Ves had long grown annoyed at the Red Association's habit of requisitioning masterwork mechs.

He still had no idea what the Mech Trade Association had done with the Little Angel for example.

The only reason why he had managed to avoid this problem for years was because he invested a lot more effort into designing expert mechs!

Now that he thought about it, one of the original reasons why he had become so enthused about designing high-level mechs was exactly because he wanted to avoid his work from getting hijacked by the greedy mechers!

Exquisite machines such as the Amaranto, the Everchanger and the Phobos were absolutely irreplaceable to Ves. He expressly designed them to excel in their areas of specializations in order to bestow amazing advantages to the forces at his disposal!

He did not invest his heart and soul in each of those amazing masterwork expert mechs just to allow the mechers to leech off his hard work!

Though Ves detested their policy a lot in the past, his perspective had broadened since those years.

The mechers served many essential functions in human society. They may be greedy for masterwork mechs, but they probably had good reasons for their power.

"Alexa, I wonder if you or the Terrans know what the Association is doing with so many masterwork mechs. Why can't they rely on the ones they built themselves? I mean, the mechers must have plenty of masterwork mech designers in their ranks that can fully meet their own demand."

"It is not that simple, sir." The woman shook her head. "From what I have learned, the reason why the Mech Trade Association can never have enough masterwork mechs is because each of them are notably more effective in combating an internal threat that is difficult to fight against with mundane mechs. Not even the most luxurious first-class multipurpose mech can adequately resist this danger if they do not possess the qualities of a masterwork."

There was only one enemy in the Milky Way Galaxy that could make the mechers so spooked.

"The Compact."

Alexa nodded with a serious expression. It did not surprise Ves that a woman of her background was aware of the existence of this infamous cult.

"You are correct that the Mech Trade Association has sufficient Master Mech Designers in its ranks that can produce masterwork mechs non-stop." Alexa continued. "These Masters occasionally produce masterwork mechs of their best designs in order to meet certain quotas or earn additional MTA merits. However, they cannot dedicate all of their time to this single priority alone. Each of them must invest far more time in their core research and mech design projects. Anything that detracts from these activities will reduce their chances of advancing to Star Designer."

That made sense for the most part. Time was the most scarce and precious resource of every mech designer.

One of the most severe demands of masterwork mechs was that they could not be produced en masse with the help of the most advanced production method mastered by the first-raters.

Materialization technology was fantastic at fabricating exact carbon copies of mech designs, but they lacked the essential human touch that could elevate the products beyond their physical existences.

It took a lot of time and effort to fabricate a high-quality first-class multipurpose mech. Even the most reputable Master Mech Designers such as Master Vayro Goldstein would have to waste hours if not days to fabricate a proper mech by hand.

This was not an efficient use of their time!

As such, it became easier for the Mech Trade Association to just lay claim to random masterwork mechs built by third parties.

It was not as if the space peasants could resist the power of the mechers. At least they received handsome amounts of MTA merits in return for their 'voluntary' contributions.

"Almost none of those requisitioned masterwork mechs are up to the standards of the Association." Ves argued. "It is quite troublesome to upgrade them into first-class multipurpose mechs. The amount of work put into this effort is excessive."

"That is true, but it is important to identify who is doing all of the work. The difficulty of upgrading an existing masterwork mech is much lower than making one from scratch. The Association can delegate the former to various journeymen, Seniors and Masters who are not as important. Working on these upgrade projects also serves as excellent creative exercises for them. They can all get into contact with foreign mechs that are designed according to completely different principles than what they are accustomed to. Every masterwork mech has their own points of brilliance no matter how humble they actually perform."

That was information that Ves had not been able to obtain or deduce in the past. It was quite useful to know what happened immediately after the mechers swiped the masterwork mechs off the hands of their original makers.

A part of Ves felt a little annoyed that the MTA mech designers easily took advantage of the hard work of the space peasants they talked down upon most of the time.

"Okay, I can understand why the Mech Trade Association values masterwork mechs so much, but is there any reason for the Red Association to maintain the same stance?" Ves asked with a frown. "As far as I am concerned, the Compact's presence in this dwarf galaxy is negligible. There is no need to accumulate a large amount of masterwork mechs just to combat a special threat that is not easy to fight against through conventional means."

One of the factors that was relevant here was that Messier 87's exotic radiation created an environment where it became easier for mech pilots to break through.

Expert pilots and higher were much more effective at fighting extraordinary threats!

Besides, the main high-level threat of the Red Ocean were the phase whales and phase lords.

Their spatial manipulation abilities were quite powerful, but they were otherwise a lot more physical in their threat profile.

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