The Mech Touch novel Chapter 2166

Chapter 2166 Minor Projects

Though the ambitious and novel Valkyrie Redeemer design occupied most of his attention at the moment, Ves did not wish to spend all of his time on a single project.

This wasn't the past anymore where the LMC's Design Department only possessed enough design capacity to handle two major projects at most.

With the addition of fifty fresh and eager assistant mech designers, Ves believed he could adopt an entirely new structure.

He shared his thoughts with Gloriana many times. Both of them harbored different opinions about how many projects their expanded Design Department was able to work on simultaneously.

Though Ves exhibited a lot of confidence and thought they could potentially assign a mech design project to every design team, Gloriana vehemently disagreed.

Her only other experience with design teams outside of the LMC was when she contributed to other Hexer mech design projects. The established Seniors and Masters she worked for had all been in the business for at least many decades, and they commanded an army of hundreds, if not thousands of assistants!

This skewed her perspective a bit. Perhaps in time, it was possible to reach this level, but for now the LMC was still a middle player in terms of the overall spectrum of mech companies.

Once they came to a consensus, both of them decided to announce their decisions in their first full conference meeting.

Twenty-five assistant mech designers along with Ketis filed into the conference room. They all took their seats at the long, oval table.

The newcomers only occupied half of the table. Ves already stood head on one side. Lucky didn't show any interest in the upcoming meeting at all and instead spent his time teasing Goldie, who resided in the Larkinson Mandate placed on the surface of the table.

The Larkinson Clan's ancestral heirloom and its warm glow calmed every assistant present. Even though they were excited at the thought of finally escaping the drills and starting on some projects, they all made sure to behave themselves.

The occasional glares thrown by Ketis suppressed any excessive behavior. Even the hotheads such as Rina Orion-Larkinson and Catherine Evenson-Larkinson had to bow their heads against the most barbaric mech designer in the LMC!

Soon enough, a chime sounded in the conference room. The Scarlet Rose established a remote connection to Cinach VI. The other side of the oval table suddenly shimmered as the projection of the other assistant mech designers appeared in place.

The erudite mech designers had arrived, and each of them stared curiously at the somewhat bedraggled but excited states of the brave mech designers.

Gloriana herself stood proudly at the opposite side of the table with Miles sitting closely by. Seeing the latter made Ves a bit regretful that he couldn't bring the former Tovar family member with his mission.

Unlike Ketis who was born in the frontier, Miles had been born with a silver spoon. Even if he faced a lot of internal competition within the Tovar Family, he was still part of the Bright Republic's ruling elite.

It wasn't suitable to drag such a figure to the Nyxian Gap. His various skills and inclinations turned him into a much more useful asset if he stayed by Gloriana's side and managed the erudite mech designers on her behalf.

Ves thumped the table with his fist. "Alright, everyone is here, so lets start. First, to everyone who has joined us in the last month, you might have been wondering whether you will get to design a mech at all during your time in the Larkinson Clan. Well, wonder no more, because today you will all be assigned to work on a mech design project!"

A lot of jubilation appeared on the faces of the assistants, especially the ones from his own camp!

The endless drills, the lack of sleep and the absence of any mech design had grated on all of their nerves. Even if they knew that it was necessary for them to learn how to cope with various shipboard emergencies, they still possessed the arrogance of an accomplished mech designer.

No other employer would dare to mistreat talents as if they were recruits who just joined bootcamp! If they wanted to live a regimented life, then they would have joined the military!

Gloriana, who stood on the other end of the table, took over from there. "My partner and I have deliberated on how many active projects we can sustain and how to allocate your work. In the end, we have decided to stick to a simple rule. We will work on one major design project for every Journeyman Mech Designer within our Design Department. That currently means we can tackle two major projects at most at this time."

Someone raised a hand. "What is a major project?"

"Those are mech design projects which cannot be completed without the involvement of one of our principal mech designers, which is currently my partner and I." Ves answered.

His fiancé nodded. "Perhaps it is better to explain what minor projects are as well. These are the projects that are relatively lower in priority and difficulty to the LMC. We plan to hand over most of the responsibility of completing these projects to you, our assistants."

This was what many of the assistant mech designers had been waiting to hear! Each of them longed to design a mech. What was even better was the prospect of making meaningful design choices. They all wanted their own contributions to be reflected in the end product!

Ves knew what they wanted, and he did not disappoint. "Gloriana and I plan to adopt a relatively hands-off approach towards these minor projects. While we will still be setting the framework of the projects and supervise your progress along the way, you will largely work autonomously within the limits we have set. Basically, your supervisors will be responsible for the broad strokes, while you take care of the details."

Every assistant had already gone through some lectures about confidentiality. In fact, they should have already been familiar with the rules during their student days, but it didn't hurt to remind them of the seriousness of leaking information.

Ves absolutely could not tolerate betrayal, and he wanted to make sure that every new hire knew the consequences of crossing him. Forget about being black-listed, Ves had even hinted that he would take care of them in a more permanent fashion if they stabbed him in the back!

None of the assistants showed any further curiosity towards the Valkyrie Redeemer Project despite their burning curiosity.

Gloriana raised a finger, causing the slot of the second major design project to reveal some information.

"Our second major design project isn't as confidential, so we do not mind sharing what we will be working on. The project is codenamed Cat's Paw, and it is centered around designing a heavy artillery mech exclusive to the Larkinson Clan!"

That caused a fair amount of assistants to be shocked!

Usually, only the military fielded heavy mechs. They were large, expensive, cost-inefficient and unwieldy, which meant that they never sold very well on the market.

However, they did offer some advantages to wealthy customers and states. Aside from their abysmal mobility, their firepower and defensive parameters were often several times greater than that of a medium mech. Though these boosts came at a very high price, the space these mechs took up was not that much more!

This meant that while heavy mechs were very inefficient in terms of cost, they took up comparatively less space on a carrier than a bunch more medium mechs.

This was the main rationale for employing heavy mechs. If someone wanted to transfer a certain amount of firepower to a destination, they could dispatch a single carrier loaded with heavy mechs rather than two carriers loaded with medium mechs!

Ves explained why the Larkinson Clan was finally ready to field heavy mechs. "While I cannot explain our full circumstances to you yet, our clan is in the process of acquiring a lot of lovely new ships. Many of them are built for war and feature many bunkers on their hulls. It would be a shame to fill these bunkers with regular mechs, hence why we have decided to design our own heavy mech to add some teeth to our new vessels!"

The Cat's Paw Project was just as important as the Valkyrie Redeemer Project! Ves wanted to design a mech that was vastly superior to the Bright Warrior in its rifleman mech configuration in terms of offensive power.

The new heavy artillery mechs would not only be stationed on his upcoming second-class factory ship, but also lend their firepower to his second-class combat carriers.

This was a very major project that would have a very major influence on the defensive power of his future expeditionary fleet!