The Mech Touch

Chapter 6455 We're In Trouble

Although Ves could not figure out why the supporters of this insane plan were confident that it would ultimately revive human society and increase its productive forces, they had a lot of smart people at their disposal, so they probably had a way to prevent everything from spiraling into ruin.

Ves appreciated that he received advance warning of what might be coming. The Dissolution of States Plan was bound to disrupt a lot of existing arrangements made by the Larkinson Clan and his other organizations.

While he was bound by secrecy to not leak out anything about this plan to others, he could still issue vague orders to ensure his power base suffered as little negative consequences as possible.

It helped that the Larkinson Clan held very little territorial holdings so far, so it was not as if Ves had much to lose.

In fact, he could potentially make huge gains by taking over the territories that became ripe for the picking.

Not that he would do such a thing. Competing over territory was a waste of time in his opinion.

The Red War was a much more pressing concern to him. The Red Tide Offensive needed to end first. Once red humanity was able to launch a counteroffensive and conquer a lot more alien territories, then it shouldn't be too difficult to claim the more desirable star systems for himself and his clan.

Although the territories in alien space were much more vulnerable to incursions from their prior owners, the resources available in star systems closer to the galactic core was also higher.

"Maybe it will never come to this." Ves muttered to himself.

If red humanity was unable to bounce back from the Red Tide Offensive, then there was no point in dreaming about building up a territorial domain in former alien space! Ves continued to mull over all of the secrets he learned even after the Secret Department concluded the final briefing.

"We're in deep trouble."

He needed to figure out where the Whale Ark was being built so that he could stay close to the location.

If the native aliens managed to break through the frontlines while human society was in the process of collapsing from within, then there was no way to salvage the situation anymore!

Ves needed to make sure he was close enough to the Whale Ark so that he could quickly evacuate to the only ride that could take him away from this dangerous dwarf galaxy.

The Red Ocean was a dangerous place!

Although his confidence in red humanity's ability to withstand the ongoing crises had dropped, he still preferred it if he did not have to abandon his entire foundation in the new frontier.

Fortunately for him, the confidential briefings made it very clear that the other leaders were not being complacent. They were all working on their own solutions, though the issue was that they were so strong-willed about it that they refused to coordinate their actions.

Everyone had a different vision on how red humanity should be saved!

The Evolution Witch was no exception to this rule!

"Only one more day to go before she makes her big announcement."

Ves built up a lot of anticipation for what she was about to unveil. He already received a hint that he had somehow contributed to whatever she was working on! This meant that he would also become affected by the god pilot's scheme!

The lack of information was killing him, but considering that he only had to wait for one more day, he reluctantly remained patient and hoped that the hours would pass by quickly.

During this time, Ves tried to wrap up his visit to Yernstall. The Sapphire of the Red Ocean was a resplendent location, but he wanted to go back to New Constantinople and resume his old routine.

Ves therefore proceeded to work together with Eliza Mo Ragadan and Gavin Neumann to handle various appointments and conclude various business deals.

Much of the business deals had to do with cooperation regarding the production and sale of Yellow Jackets.

The popularity of the first commercial Carmine mech models had peaked so much that the demand had broken the record!

The secrecy surrounding the Swarm Project had prevented the Living Mech Corporation from establishing a lot of different business deals with third-party manufacturers in advance.

Ves and the LMC could only make up for lost time by quickly signing agreements with

Fortunately, the insane popularity of the Yellow Jackets made it disgustingly easy to find willing partners who were willing to take up the burden of production and distribution at reasonable prices.

One of the biggest points of frustration was the fact that the production of the mysterious Carmine System was effectively controlled by the Red Association.

Only the bioproduction companies under the direct control of the mechers received the right to produce this crucial and revolutionary new control system.

While the mechers had made much better preparations for the mass production of the Carmine Systems, their production capacity was still finite at all 3 tech levels, so there was a hard ceiling on the monthly output of first-class, second-class and third-class Yellow Jackets.

Another point of frustration was the cheap market positioning of the Yellow Jackets. All three versions of the Carmine mech were catered to the lower end of the market, which meant that they did not earn a lot of profit.

For now, that problem was not yet evident as the huge mismatch between supply and demand had caused the actual prices of the Yellow Jackets to be 3 to 5 times higher

than usual.

There was a limit to how extensively people were willing to get ripped off, though. Only the most desperate rich customers who wanted to experience the pleasure of piloting a mech for the first time had paid so much cash.

In fact, a black market had already formed about delivered but still unbonded Yellow Jackets where they were being sold at even more inflated prices!

Ves expected the mech industry and the mech market to eventually normalize and return to saner prices. The Yellow Jackets may possess a revolutionary capability, but their lack of quality materials and advanced technologies limited their impact on the battlefield.

They could only make significant achievements on the battlefield if they deployed in large numbers.

In order to encourage mech forces to field thousands if not tens of thousands of Yellow Jackets at a time, Ves insisted that the sales price should be lowered until it was close to a typical budget mech model with similar performance characteristics! "Dropping the price too soon is not advisable." Gavin frowned as he advised Ves on good business. "Demand will still remain overwhelming for the first 3 months. There are still plenty of well-heeled customers who are willing to spend the amount of money it takes to equip a mech company just to obtain a genuine Yellow Jacket that is fresh from the manufacturing complex. It would be a waste of our earning potential if you prematurely reduce the price to normal budget mech ranges. The excess demand will not go away, and the supply will still not be able to keep up. The second-hand "That is true if normal market forces prevail. Ves acknowledged his assistant's point. "However, the Red Association will not let that happen. I am sure that the problems that you have mentioned will ease up. What we need to do the most is to set expectations and make sure that everyone remembers that the Yellow Jackets are fragile mechs by nature. I do not want customers to spend ten times the amount of money for them and treat them as premium mechs. They are relatively fragile and cannot keep up with the performance of more capable mech models."

This was not about profit anymore. This was about survival. Ves had learned enough secrets in the past two days to know that the Red Association was not above manipulating the market in secret in order to achieve its desired outcomes.

A perfect free market could never exist. The mech market appeared to look quite free

on the surface, but it was constantly being nudged by the mechers in secret in order to maintain stability and prevent undesirable distortions.

In any case, once Ves was done with negotiating deals and adjusting the pricing strategy of the LMC, he proceeded to take care of another noteworthy affair. He visited the shipyard that he had bought during the grand auction. Starfarer Berth was much more beautiful now that he was able to step foot on it in person. Since he already visited the orbital shipyard by remote in the past, Ves did not waste

too much time on tours. He simply completed a quick inspection of the ongoing works and gauged the capabilities of the workers.

"We have managed to hire more qualified personnel as of late" Chief Executive Eric Poderin reported to Ves in person. "Our production speed cannot be raised any further due to the limitations of this relatively small facility. What we can do is increase the speed of switching production to a new design, Upon your instructions, we have also hired numerous naval engineers and xenotechnology experts that are familiar with adapting alien tech onto human products. They have already integrated with my crew and are spending most of their hours at work on studying archetech. The samples and documentation provided by Professor Gloriana Wodin has been helpful, but not too much."

"How so? What is the problem?"

"Our technical personnel are highly qualified, but archetech is so difficult and alien

that it is a struggle to learn. I have lived for over 2 centuries, but I have never felt so pressured since my university days when I tried to study the principles of archetech. It is... not a technology base that is meant to be used by humans."

Ves knew that his wife had done him a favor by trying to give the scientists and engineers employed by Starfarer Berth a crash course in archetech. Since her time was short, she was not able to do more than give all of these

first-raters a lot of homework.

were having difficulties?"n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

"Our rate of progress is not any worse than others who have attempted to learn archetech." The leader of Starfarer Berth defended himself. "What you perceive as slow is considered relatively normal in our sector. Difficulties are to be expected. I can only promise you that most of us will master the bare minimum necessary to convert a captured archeship into a moderately human-operable starship according to our original schedule."

That would take a year or two, but it couldn't be helped. Archetech was just that difficult to master.

"We can still speed up our study of archetech if you are willing to make a large trade

off, sir" "What tradeoff?"

"If you are willing to suspend the production of first-class combat carriers for our

Premier Branch, most of our personnel can devote all of their work time on studying and maybe even experimenting with archetech. If you are willing to divert the budget used to fund the production of first-class combat carriers on expensive tutors, many samples of archetech and targeted upgrades to our facility, I am confident we can advance the schedule by at least half a year."

That... sounded awfully tempting, but Ves eventually rejected this idea.

"We still need those combat carriers. Each of them can carry 30 first-class multipurpose mechs, and we need as many of them as possible. It is unreasonable to make so many sacrifices just to convert the archeship that we have captured into a

stealth frigate. The alien vessel is good at sneaking around, but she isn't designed to carry any mechs. I think we still need to be able to carry enough hard power to win

our battles in space. Just do your best according to our current plan." "Very well, sir..."