Chapter 6178 Frontier Warlords

Chapter 6178 Frontier Warlords

Ketis shared a few more ideas on future upgrade directions for the First Sword.

Many of them did not sound as dramatic as pairing up the First Sword with living fey, but Ves did not mind. He was glad that his former student possessed an adventurous spirit and kept trying to think up ways to give her mechs an edge over the competition.

If Ketis did not possess a strong enough enterprising spirit, then she would never be able to excel in this industry. n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

A mech designer who only sought to keep up with the competition had already lost from the beginning, because such a loser only needed to suffer a single setback to fall behind!

In contrast, a much more innovative mech designer like Ves who managed to gain market dominance in several product categories managed to build up a lot of strategic depth. If he ever fell into a disadvantage, he could continually cede market share in order to buy enough time to make a comeback.

Products like the most recent Fey Fianna and Ultimatum lines still managed to preserve an invincible lead in their respective niches.

The competition was not letting the LMC get away with completely dominating those markets, though.

At the very least, most rivals who hadn't given up on the markets for second-class drone mechs or heavy artillery mechs managed to readjust their positioning and appeal to more budget-conscious customers.

This was not a market segment to be underestimated. The demand for cheap mechs had skyrocketed as many of the colonies situated in or just behind the border regions invested massively in their defensive forces!

The expansion of so many planetary garrison units happened on an enormous scale. This meant that it cost a huge amount of money to fund these expenditures. The cheaper the product, the more mechs a customer was able to buy!

Aside from outfitting elite forces, it made little to no sense to invest in the infamously expensive products of the LMC.

The Ultimatum, though undeniably powerful and incredibly accurate, was extravagantly priced at 30 MTA credits!

Typical heavy artillery mechs could already be bought at around 4 to 8 MTA credits.

Sure, the customer would get an objectively worse performing mech in return, but when space and logistics were of no concern, it was better to field 6 generic heavy artillery mechs in a defensive stronghold than a single Ultimatum!

This was not a long-term solution to undermine the Ultimatumm's absolute dominance in the upper end of the heavy artillery mech market, but it gave the rival mech companies hope of regaining much of their market share.

They did not necessarily have to design a mech that performed better than the Ultimatum.

The competitors just had to design a more attractive product.

There was a difference between the two. Ves already read reports that the dominant mech companies were already in the process of designing low-to-mid end hyper heavy artillery mechs that performed well enough and were much more affordable to buy and maintain in bulk.

The Red War was not just a war between high-end elite forces. The rabble that did not appear as heroic and barely managed to reach the top of the news portals also played an important role in territorial struggles!

In any case, in order for Ves to achieve success and maintain his market leadership, he had to be competent enough to navigate these market dynamics.

Ketis already made a good start by releasing her early Monster Slayer model, but she needed to do more in order to become a serious force onto the market.

The good news was that she was making progress.

The innovations that Ketis sought to apply to the next iteration of the First Sword may very well serve as a prototype to innovative new commercial mech models!

Whether she would succeed in the end or not was never certain, but Ves did not think she would fail. She had access to excellent support and infrastructure within the Larkinson Clan. The advantages of working as a mech designer in the Design Department continued to grow over time.

"I can feel it." The physical projection of Ketis spoke in a serious tone as she hugged the black gem cat tighter against her chest. "A dark cloud is about to engulf the Red Ocean. The coming war will not end soon. It will encroach upon our society and slowly drive everyone to desperation. I do not want my children and your children to grow up in this period, but there is little we can do about it. I don't expect my work to save red humanity, but I will do whatever it takes to make my children's childhood a little brighter."

"Sister."

"It's my turn now, hehe!" Andraste exclaimed. "Papa, I want to make a trade."

"What is it that you want, pumpkin?"

"I will try to save your fleet in exchange for becoming my vassal. You will transfer half of the profits you make to my account and do whatever I say."

Ves' expression looked ugly. "Are you blackmailing your own father?"

"I am not~ I am merely asking for fair compensation. Isn't this what you taught me, papa? Hihihi~"

"I also taught you that everyone has a bottom line. I will take my chances with Aurelia's mech force if you stick to your excessive demands. Let's do this. My puelmer force will relinquish 30 percent of the profits to your phase whale, and it will also obey 3 reasonable requests, but no more. Once my puelmers have completed their last request, you will free them from their vassalage. Is that agreeable to you? I will not accept anything worse."

His second daughter struggled to make up her mind. In the end, she did not want to risk this deal.

"Fine, papa. I will take action now. I am letting my phase whale Jenny initiate a cross-system teleport to the E3 System and team up with the puelmer raiding fleet to beat back Aurelia's human mech force."

"Sister! No fair! Your phase whale is too strong!"

"I only have one, and her actions are so expensive that I hardly managed to do anything in the previous turns! Did you know how long I waited for someone like papa to get into trouble?"

"Quiet down, children. No arguing, please." Gloriana sternly admonished her girls. "Lucky, you are next."

"Meow." Lucky yawned as he woke up from his shallow nap.

The gem cat raised his paw and began to press a series of projected buttons and levers.

Lucky's secretive cosmopolitan cell that had remained dormant in the past few turns suddenly exploded into action!

Icons that previously remained hidden from view to every participant aside from Lucky became visible!

That was not everything they did. The cosmopolitans were blowing up space stations, sabotaging starships and detonating bombs inside various settlements in the star systems surrounding E3.

It became clear that Lucky's wanted to generate enough disruption to slow down and hinder any additional human reinforcements to the star system in the center of his action range!

"What?!" Aurelia looked shocked. "How many sleeper agents have you trained, Lucky, and how come you managed to predict that a fight would erupt in E3?"

The gem cat arrogantly lifted his head. "Meow."

Another cat began to make her turn. The elegant-looking Clixie used her paw to manipulate the interface of the digital board game according to her own plan.

"Clixie has invested her resources into furthering the development of her human colony yet again. She has completed the construction of an industrial spaceport and has begun the construction of 3 light industry and 1 heavy industry factories."

The Rubarthan Sentinel Cat completely chose to avoid any form of conflict by setting up a colony in a relatively resource-poor star system in the rear of human-occupied space.

This extremely steady development strategy was incredibly safe, but also incredibly boring and slow, which was why most players rejected this approach.

Clixie was different. She unflinching kept reinvesting her resources into colony development, not even bothering to raise a token mech force for defense.

"Miaow." The cat declared once she was done with her turn.