The Mech Touch novel Chapter 2055

Chapter 2055 Specialty Premium

The LMC went into overdrive to prepare for the upcoming product reveal. The Doom Guard was a mech that put a new spin on striker mechs.

Though its nature as a double-edged sword was rather troublesome, Ves hoped that his audience would clearly determine that the benefits outweighed the costs.

Due to time constraints, Ves spent most of his time after fabricating the first production model back in the design lab to drag the Hexer mech design project to the finish line.

After spending so much time in the Cinach System, Ves felt a little restless! Staying too long in a single place didn't satisfy his itch for exploration at all. How was he supposed to gain inspiration for new mech designs if he didn't experience new sights?

His MTA merit account also hadn't moved for a while. That was really bad for his ambitions.

Due to the stronger-than-anticipated glow of the Doom Guard, Ves suggested a number of alterations and additions to the upcoming product reveal.

"We have reached out to more outfits and specific individuals. So far, the majority has accepted our invitation." Gavin dutifully reported as he glanced at his data pad. "We have also contacted the authorities of Cinach VI and received permission to hold our expanded demonstration in space. We have to hold it further away from the planet, though."

"That's fine. Are there any costs?"

"Nothing beyond the usual. While we are paying the outfits a nominal fee for their cooperation, they haven't demanded anything else except for the right to buy the first batch of our new product at a slight discount."

"That's a reasonable demand. I don't really care who gets to buy my mech first. As long as they get sold at all, I'm happy." Ves smiled.

These kinds of arrangements aren't unusual. The more successful mercenary commanders like Commander Cinnabar tended to be rather business savvy. Mechs and starships were expensive to procure and maintain. Regular work barely made ends meet for most of them, so the leaders of private outfits often had to find whatever bargains they could uncover.

A rather common business activity was to cooperate with a mech company in order to obtain privileged access to new mechs.

If the new product turned out to be excellent, then the outfit would be eager to make use of it, especially when they paid a bit less for it than the recommended market price!

Of course, there was also the risk that the new product received a lukewarm welcome or outright flopped on the market. The outfit essentially obtained an overpriced and underperforming mech!

This was why outfits always exhibited a lot of care in selecting who they cooperated with. The greater the reputation of the mech company and mech designer, the easier it was for them to find willing participants for their product reveal!

In that, Ves and the LMC possessed an immense advantage! Not only was he backed by the Hexers, his modest mech catalog was already filled with remarkable mech designs!

With the LMC already hyping up their upcoming product as its next big mech model, a lot of mech insiders began to pay attention.

The combination of Ves Larkinson and Gloriana Wodin had already made a name for itself in the mech community!

"By the way, Benny, what is the price the Marketing Department has set for the bronze label Doom Guard?"

"2 million hex credits. In the Sentinel Kingdom, the model will be priced at 22 million sents."

These price levels were roughly equivalent to 70 million pre-inflation bright credits. Of course, this figure was many times bigger if Ves didn't add the word 'pre-inflation'. These days, the currency was pretty much worthless.

The point was that the Doom Guard was priced significantly higher than his older premium mechs such as the Blackbeak and the Crystal Lord. Ves also noted that its price level also exceeded the price tags of comparable striker mech models!

"We're taking quite a risk." He asked with concern.

Gavin smiled. "It makes too much sense to hike the price. Just like your other mechs, their technical performance might not exceed that of the competition, but the unique value that you have added to them is unrivaled! Every mech designer's specialty deserves to receive a premium. Isn't that the custom in the mech market? Yours happens to be rather difficult to price. There are a lot of arguments in favor of hiking it further or tamping it down. Right now, we believe the potential utility of the Doom Guard is worthy of being priced at 2.2 million hex credits, but.."

"It will be an even more difficult sell to the market." Ves concluded.

The greater the premium of his product, the harder it was to justify its purchase. Mech buyers would have to be really sure to spend 2.2 million hex credits on a Doom Guard as opposed to 1.8 million hex credits on a competing model!

This was especially relevant to bulk buyers as the price differences could easily mean that they would obtain more mechs for the same amount of money!

Even so, Ves quickly came around at the price his company had settled upon. He didn't need to read the elaborate market research reports that justified this decision.

"How many states will we sell the Doom Guard at launch?"

"Over twenty, with dozens to follow quickly after." Gavin replied. "It's not easy to begin product immediately. In order to ensure there aren't any leaks, we haven't dared to expose the existence of the Doom Guard outside of our clan. The most we have been able to do was to order our foreign partners and subsidiaries to stock up on materials and prepare a lot of production capacity starting from the date of the product reveal. After that, the production facilities in some states can begin production immediately while the other sites have to wait for administrative or legal reasons."

There wasn't any way to change this. Some states were just more difficult to conduct business than others. There was no point for Ves to get angry about something uncontrollable.

"What are the initial sales projections?"

His girlfriend snorted. "They are still apes pounding their fists at buttons in my eyes!"

To Ves, the performance of the assistants wasn't as bad as Gloriana described. Sure, they lost a bit of control every now and then, but at least they didn't outright spark a calamity or something. The amount of rejected parts they produced hadn't exceeded to the level where he needed to show concern.

"The Doom Guard is a fairly easy mech to produce, all considered." Ves noted. "It is large and contains a lot of parts, but most of them are fairly simple in nature. The only piece of equipment that is truly challenging to fabricate is the Enison Spreader. The flamethrower is the most sophisticated aspect of our mech, and it isn't even that bad compared to some of the other components I've added to my mechs."

"The mech may not be hard to produce, but its glow is proving to be a real challenge to work around with! Just look at how much they are quivering!" Gloriana swept her arm at the assistant!

Nothing was wrong when the mech designers were just churning out parts. It was the assembly process that proved to be a challenge.

The more the mech reached completion, the greater its glow! Even in a dormant state, the mech always exuded a sense of intimidation and terror that was very difficult for anyone to endure!

Mech pilots trained to endure stress and the threat of death already exhibited a lot of difficulties with the Doom Guard's glow. Pure civilians such as mech technicians and mech designers fared much worse in comparison!

What was even worse was that the off switch didn't work until the assembly of the mech had already reached an advanced stage!

"I see that the assistants have already found ways to mitigate the damage." Ves noted.

Mech designers were not only creators, but also problem solvers.

When the design teams discovered that the glow became less intense over a distance, they largely switched to operating the machinery from a very healthy distance. The further, the better! They also increased their reliance on bots and automation as a consequence.

On top of that, they also maintained a rotation schedule, ensuring that no one worked on the mechs long enough!

While all of these solutions looked reasonable to Ves, he nonetheless disapproved of some of the practices.

"Every mech deserves to be worked on by humans." He remarked. "I dislike relying too much on automation. You can already tell the glow of this copy is weaker than the one we made with our own hands."

"That's not a bad thing, Ves. I think this level is already adequate for bronze label mechs."

That was true. The glow of the first copy was still a bit too intense for most people! Toning it down even further was not necessarily bad!