The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

Though his previous explanation veered into the technical side, the use of two different diagrams provided a clear and intuitive visualization to many ordinary people.

These laymen clearly understood that if they had to choose between stuffing as many hyper materials as possible into a thick straw or a small lunchbox, they would always choose the latter!

Even though there were many more straws available than lunchboxes, the latter was simply a better choice. They naturally lent themselves to storing a lot more junk than usual.

This was the central design choice behind the fey of his new drone mech.

Unlike the highly competent design teams of SKL Mech Industries, Ves was not shackled to the past. He was free to choose any size of spur he liked because he was starting completely from scratch. This was how he could easily pick the most optimal dimensions for the current age and mech generation.

In contrast, the much more experienced and specialized mech designers always had to design their assigned sickle mechs with at least one hand tied behind their backs.

One of the enduring advantages and selling points of well-established mech companies such as SKL was that its product lines always remained somewhat consistent.

Its mech designers painstakingly needed to abide by design choices made twenty, fifty or even a hundred years ago!

Each time these old mainstream mech models had to be refreshed, the newer iterations had to resemble the older ones to a high degree.

The materials and parts had to be as identical as possible. The less changes made to the design, the cheaper it was to retool large-scale production lines and retain the value of old inventory of materials and loose components.

Fixed customers who utilized the previous versions of a mech line also appreciated the fact that much of the essential characteristics of an existing model remained the same.

The newly updated models only came with the most essential upgrades. Anything more was a waste of time, money and resources.

The changes had to be small enough for existing mech pilots to transition to the improved mechs while requiring only a minimal amount of retraining.

Yet they also had to be innovative enough to prevent the product lines from losing their competitiveness.

The mainstream mech models could not afford to fall behind too much!

While they were mainly attractive to mech buyers due to other factors, their technological sophistication had to be at least above average in their product categories in order to sustain their market leads.

Ves believed that the Sparrow Storm Mark XII fell short of this goal!

When he addressed this topic with Gavin in a past discussion, they both realized the amazing opportunity this represented.

"SKL Mech Industries is not in a good shape." Gavin spoke. "It is still a huge megacorporation, but losing complete contact with its headquarters in the old galaxy has disrupted many contracts, mech designers and other ongoing arrangements. The company executives and managers had to put out the immediate fires first, and that has left them with scant little attention and resources to form more comprehensive product strategies. I seriously doubt that anyone in their Red Ocean headquarters put any serious thought into the future of the Sparrow Storm line."

Ves nodded in agreement. "The impact of losing access to a lot of fixed mech designers and design teams also should have hurt the company a lot. A whole bunch of excellent mech designers became unavailable. Many of them must have worked on the Sparrow Storm line for decades if not longer. All of their considerable institutional know-how has effectively become lost on this side of the greater beyonder gate. The execs who are scrambling to restore the health of their lucrative megacorporation probably gathered whatever decent mech designers were on hand and commanded them to update their product lines in a hurry just to prove that SKL is still alive. It is not as if their design teams can do any better when the company is in such a mess."

Both Ves and Gavin grinned at each other. They both understood what this represented!

"If this is true, then the Sparrow Storm Mark XII was never meant to be their 'proper' version of a hyper mech at all." Gavin avidly concluded. "It is a stopgap model. It is made to serve as a bridge between the old Phasewater Generation and the promising new Hyper Generation. It was never meant to last more than 5 or 10 years. Once SKL has completed its reorganization and rebuilt its entire supply chain and value chain, that is when the megacorporation is in a position to design a 'proper' iteration of the Sparrow Storm."

Ves added another important development to the story.

"With the early release of a new version of the Sparrow Storm, SKL is under much less pressure to update all of its product lines so soon. The Mark XII barely meets the standards of a hyper mech, but it can still legitimately be regarded as one. In that sense, it is hardly any different from all of the other early models released in the first months of the Age of Dawn. I think that the execs at SKL likely assume that this move has satisfied the immediate needs of their existing customer base. This allows them to allocate its highly competent mech designers to other, more important product lines."

The mention of multiple product lines reminded Gavin of how many SKL had actually published over the years.

Discounting all of the variants, one-off models and lagging sellers, the megacorporation maintained hundreds of lines, of which a quarter of them had become market leaders and earned an insane amount of revenue as a result!

"The true pillars of SKL are far more important than a relatively niche second-class drone mech." Gavin noted in a solemn tone. "I have studied the releases of this company. They have released a lot of superficial updates to their existing mech lines. In order to prevent them from being stained by the label of a lastgen mech, they have to incorporate at least a small amount of hyper materials in order to keep up with the latest trend. In fact, I think that the company's mech designers are being worked to the bone in order to complete the hasty refresh of its remaining mech lines. There are just too many of them. Just the need to refresh the most popular variants alone is enough to occupy their work for years."

Ves accessed the galactic net and studied the list of mechs that SKL and its many subsidiary companies had released during the first year of the Age of Dawn.

His assistant made a good observation. The huge mech company may have enjoyed a huge advantage in the past, but these legacies also weighed it down.

Both Ves and Gavin confirmed that there was an opening that they could use to overtake SKL!

"There is a delay of at least several years between the release of the Sparrow Storm Mark XII and its more fully fleshed out Mark XIII version that will be out in a few years." Ves surmised. "The former is too inadequate and the latter will take too long to get released. It takes a lot of time for mech designers and other developers to figure out the finer applications of hyper technology."

"There is also another factor that may cause SKL to delay the release of the next version of this line and other lines. All of those early adopters and fixed customers paid good money in order to update their Mark Xi's into Mark XII's. Each of these high-priced clients are important to SKL. They are not only fantastic sources of revenue, but also bestow a lot of credibility to the mech company. SKL absolutely cannot afford to piss off its most loyal and strategic customers by releasing another revision a short time later."

It was like buying a shiny new comm model, only for the company to release a much more powerful one just 6 months later!

How would existing customers feel when they had bought an inferior model because they had been too impatient?

Even if these groups were fairly rich and powerful, that did not necessarily mean they preferred to get ripped off! There was no way that mech buyers would hold much affection for a mech company that utilized exploitative moves to treat them as money dispensers!

"What I have noticed from SKL is that they always value stability and long-term interests over immediate results." Gavin told his boss. "That works fine in a period of relative peace and stability, but it leaves a company too slow and cumbersome to respond to crises that have unfolded during unexpected periods of time. It goes straight against their existing policies to refresh its mech lines so soon."

SKL might make an exception due to the abnormal circumstances of the times, but the chance of that happening was low.

Besides, even if SKL wanted to accelerate the design and release of proper hyper mechs, it would definitely start with the top earning cash cows!

Popular models such as rifleman mechs, light skirmishers, swordsmen mechs and knight mechs were responsible for the majority of the earnings of the mech company!

A second-class drone mech such as the Sparrow Storm line might have captured a hefty market share, but only in a relatively small product category.

There was no way that SKL would put a high priority in updating it to the current era!

All of this meant that the LMC could take advantage of this transition period to release their own version of an excellent drone mech!

Gavin analyzed the conditions and estimated whether it could work.

"You may actually be able to succeed in taking over much of the market share that is currently in the hands of SKL. The start of the Age of Dawn has reset every piece of existing technology that currently exists. Every mech company has to start anew, at least when it comes to the new technologies that have become available. We have entered into a crucial period now. While the big old lumbering SKL is still stuck in trying to executive its enormous strategic shift, our LMC can slip in and capture the market for one of the minor fiefs that it previously did not prioritize!"

Several conditions had to be true at the same time.

Aside from the aforementioned ones, the targets also had to be right. The attention of the LMC had to be set on one of the secondary mainstream mech models. Their move would probably backfire if they miscalculated!"

Clearly, Ves had decided to take this gamble.

He believed he had earned the qualifications to do so. The Fey Fianna had definitely become good enough to fill this crucial gap, and Ves was confident enough that his rapidly rising reputation should be sufficient enough to counteract the existing reputation of SKL!

This fateful position had led him to this point. Now, he could feel so much attention swinging in his direction.

"There are no other drone mechs like our Fey Fianna on the market." Ves confidently boasted to his massive audience. "The use of large-sized spurs is rare, though it is admittedly growing. Yet among all of the mech designs that feature spurs of larger stature, none of them carry the distinct and unique advantages of living mechs. Each of these fey are alive, but what does that truly mean? It means that they can possess their own personality and quirks, which carry on even if the physical fey are destroyed and replaced."

As Ves continued to extol the virtues of the Fey Fianna, he believed that the executives and mech designers of SKL may have definitely drawn their attention to his product reveal.

So what?

It was far too late for them to think about issuing a response! Unless they had a superior version of the Sparrow Storm ready to go, there was no way they could interrupt the momentum of the LMC!