Ti flowed by as Ves fully imrsed himself into designing the rifleman ch.
The crystal golem in his mind frequently added its own input on the design as well, leading to frequent changes that turned the design’s appearance into sothing unique.
The most drastic change entailed hunching over the posture of his design. Ves went short of imitating the extre angle of the crystal golem’s original race, but even then the change looked obvious.
Ves even figured that the hunch would make his ch more distinctive, although it also made it harder for the ch to turn its head to the rear.
The change in posture shifted the balance of his design and forced him to perform a lot of extra calculations in order to prevent his ch from tipping over.
He spent most of the first month into fleshing out his design’s internal architecture. While the crystal propagator installed in the center of the chest introduced a lot of complications, Ves possessed enough competence to adapt to the situation at hand.
This wasn’t his first rodeo, and nothing could top the internal complexity of the Caesar Augustus design. After working extensively with Jason Kozlowski’s debut design, Ves ceased to be impressed with chs that only hosted two different weapon systems.
"It’s not that hard to accommodate another weapon system on a rifleman ch design."
Ves rely had to ration his weight and space allowances carefully. The internal architecture that he ca up with for his rifleman ch design reflected his earlier priorities. He added as much compartntalization as possible, but cut short the level of redundancy.
In any case, Ves put his faith on the armor to prevent the worst from coming to pass. It would still take a decent amount of effort to get past his design’s compressed armor.
Since Ves recycled most of the component licenses he acquired for the Blackbeak design, Ves did not have to puzzle over how to integrate them into his second design. He already knew how all of the parts perford and what kind of conditions they demanded.
The power reactor, the Trailblazer engine, the cockpit and a lot of other components that Ves previously implented in the Blackbeak design smoothly integrated in his rifleman ch design. Ves only faced so challenges when he attempted to slim down the components in order to free up a bit more weight and space.
Modifying third-party components ca with a lot of risks, and almost no Apprentice ch Designer would attempt such an action. Ves only went through with this move because he possessed enough knowledge to understand so of the inner workings of these components.
Still, most of the components already went through countless optimizations, so Ves did not free up that much capacity. So of his modifications ca paired with minor losses in performance.
Ves already took into account that a lighter ch had to sacrifice so capability in order to increase its mobility. Even if he used the sa components as the Blackbeak, his first and second designs fulfilled different roles, thereby necessitating a lot of adjustnts.
He finished up the work in three weeks, which was fairly fast by his reckoning. Ves spent the next two weeks on simulating the performance of the internal structure and tweaking it to eliminate any faults.
The tests and simulations revealed a lot of sub-standard implentations that unnecessarily lowered the performance of his ch. Ves spent a lot of ti to correct these mistakes and smoothed over the performance of his ch’s internal design.
"That should wrap it up." Ves said at the end of the first part of the design phase. "The hardest part is over now."
Ves accomplished a lot of work, including getting the central laser propagator to work. Still, Ves only ca up with an untested application. It remained to be seen if the gimmick perford as expected.
Starting from the second month, Ves worked on the exterior of his ch, including the armor system and the laser rifle.
Before he started work on them both, Ves took the ti to take a day off and check in with his company. He left his private workshop floor with Lucky in tow and visited the different departnts.
Everything appeared to go on trock, although the sales of bronze label Blackbeaks had dropped to its lowest level.
"Demand for the bronze label Blackbeaks are stagnating because the third-party manufacturers have t the imdiate demand for this specific design." Gavin answered Ves when he visited the marketing departnt. "Elental ch Engineering is particularly worse off since it primarily serves the dostic market. You have to understand that the Blackbeak, while fairly popular, is a premium offensive knight."
"I understand." Ves nodded. "Both its type and price segnt limit the popularity of the Blackbeak. It’s never ant to take over the market for knights."
By now, E only devoted a single production line to producing the Blackbeak. While they still sold so Blackbeaks every week, the sales volu was a far cry from when the design still enjoyed a lot of hype.
"What about Vaun? How are they faring trying to push the Blackbeak across the border?"
"It’s the sa as E, but multiplied a couple of tis. While they’ve never been able to conquer a lot of market share in any of the foreign markets, they’re making plenty of sales when you add up the modest demands of more than a dozen different states. They’re currently exporting the Blackbeak to twelve states and counting. All of that adds up."
This benefited the LMC as well, since Vaun Industrial payed 3.5 million credits per ch. Currently, it was difficult to predict how many Blackbeaks Vaun would be able to sell each month, but Gavin spent a lot of ti on analyzing the foreign markets.
"Right now, Vaun is in a good place. They’re easily able to export more than a hundred Blackbeaks a month. It will be tough to push more chs than that. This ans that at a minimum, the LMC can expect to receive at least 350 million credits in licensing fees."
Naturally, like any inco stream, these earnings didn’t take into account the various overhead costs and other expenses of the company. In particular, the loan the company took to finance the Benson production lines significantly increased the company’s interest burden.
Still, the LMC’s financials looked good enough to Ves. "We’re making far more money than we spend, even with all of our recent expansions."
"That’s true, but there’s still a war going on." Jake replied after he went over the financials with Ves. "There’s a recent spate of destructive going on in the Bentheim region. It’s only a matter of ti before the Bentheim System itself will get hit, and Cloudy Curtain might get swept up in the chaos as well."
"What are you saying?"
"I’m saying we should prepare for the worst."
Ves turned serious at those words. "I know there’s a possibility the Vesians decide to raid our planet, but we’ve already made as much preparations as possible. We’ve upgraded our contract with Sanyal-Ablin Security Services and I’ve even set up the Avatars of Myth, although they’re still in infancy. However, our main source of security is our relationship with Walter’s Whalers."
If the Vesians decided to raid Cloudy Curtain, the Whalers couldn’t sit by and let the Vesians run amok on their ho planet. Gangs enjoyed a complicated relationship with states. Any gang that claid a planet but failed to defend it against foreign aggression would be pushed from their position of power.
Even though such a asure would be costly, the ch Corps had swept up these kinds of cowardly gangs enough tis to demonstrate their point. Every citizen of the Bright Republic must defend their hos if able.
Still, just because the Whalers possessed the obligation to defend Cloudy Curtain didn’t an it had to defend every location. In practice, gangs mainly held on to their core territories while letting the invaders lay waste to infrastructure that no one except the Republic cared about.
"The Whalers are our friends, and they know how much benefits the LMC brings to this planet. They’ll definitely lend a hand if the Vesians wants to raid the ch Nursery."
Jake looked a bit skeptical at Ves. As a forr retainer of the Larkinsons, he was no stranger to partnering up with the less respectable parts of society. Still, the gang culture in Rittersburg was nowhere nearly as intense as the gang culture of the Bentheim region.
"If you say so, I’ll believe you, but it’s better to prepare too much than prepare too little."
"What is your suggestion?"
His COO put forth a bold proposal. "I suggest we hire a rcenary corps for a couple of months. We need a lot more chs to fend off even a minor Vesian raiding party. I don’t know if you haven’t heard yet, but there’s word that the 3rd Imodris Legion is circling around the ch Corps in order to reach the Bentheim region. All hell will break loose if they succeed."
Ves frowned deeply at that information. Even Ves hadn’t heard anything about the Vesians sending an entire legion deep into Republican space. However, if Jake ntioned it to Ves, then the news must be true. The Larkinson Estate must have inford the man.
"I see. In that case, the risk of hiring a couple of bad apples don’t look so bad." He replied after considering the matter. "You have my permission to hire a rcenary corps. Just one. I don’t want any complications. Make sure they’re trustworthy. I don’t mind paying above the market rate in order to ensure their quality. Just don’t set a lengthy contract term."
A defense contract under these circumstances cost a lot of money, although they charged a lot less than dedicated security companies such as Sanyal-Ablin. The costs still added up to an unreasonable burden after a year.
By then, the Avatars of Myth could take over the duties previously perford by the rcenaries. Even though it cost a lot of money to set up his own personal force, the running costs looked a lot more reasonable than paying rcenaries to do the sa job.
rcenaries existed and thrived on fulfilling temporary needs for wealthy clients. Ves personally did not think much about them even as he sold his products to them, but he did not dismiss their worth entirely.
In these dangerous tis, he could use all the help he could get.
After taking care of impactful decisions like that, Ves returned to his private workshop floor and resud his design work.
"All that’s left is the exterior and a round of simulations before I can fabricate the first prototype."
The most important part about the exterior was that Ves had to apply the Veltrex armor system without overburdening his ch. As an armor system optimized for knights, it functioned perfectly when the three layers were thick enough to express their unique strengths.
Ves knew that he perford a misdeanor by applying the sa system to a skinny dium rifleman ch, but the nature of the compressed armor still ensured the armor remained strong. Although the thin plates of armor did not live up to their potential, they enormously improved the survivability of his second original design.
"It’s not a knight, but it doesn’t have to be."
Sotis, Ves had to thin out the armor plating so much that their effective defense barely exceeded the standard of uncompressed armor. In those cases, Ves substituted the expensive materials with the much cheaper HRF armor system that Ves had last applied to the Marc Antony line of chs.
He laughed to himself when he drew on the old license he obtained from the System as a reward for completing an early mission. "I never thought I would go back to using this low-quality formula."
If it worked, it worked. Ves ensured that the Veltrex armor system covered most of the essential sections of his design while covering so of the joints and other tricky areas with the much less demanding HRF armor system.
"It’s not what I envisioned, but it mostly gets the job done."
The use of two different armor systems led to a slightly unique appearance for his rifleman ch.
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