Everything was slowly heading in the right direction. The announcent of the Trailblazer Expedition generated a lot of support and invigorated all of the parties involved.
The unveiling of the tentative new plan also invited a lot of feedback from many people. A lot of Larkinsons, Crossers and Glory Seekers t together and shared their insights and suggestions.
Many of them were not particularly relevant, but with so many people available, a few ideas were bound to raise good points!
With several years to go before the kickoff of the Trailblazer Expedition, all of the parties involved had plenty of ti to prepare beforehand.
One of the factors that Ves cared the most was the amount of chs that they could bring along the journey.
The latest estimates that Ves received was that the Larkinson Clan was aiming to field 10,000 chs from the main fleet.
The Glory Seekers promised to do their best to bring 5,000 chs to the expedition while the Cross Clan was confident it could et its target of 12,000 chs.
In total, the expeditionary fleet would therefore be able to field 27,000 chs at once, which was much greater than before but still rather insufficient considering the potential opposition that they might face!
"If we can't bring anymore chs, then we have to make sure to strengthen the ones we have as much as possible!" Ves concluded.
This resulted in a revised design strategy that called for designing new Larkinson-exclusive chs and upgrading existing ch models at much higher performance standards than before!
The amount of design work required to accomplish all of this was considerate. The Design Departnt had to allocate more ch designers away from comrcial ch design projects in order to et the internal needs of the clan.
In order to prevent the LMC from sinking into stagnation again by slowing down the release of new comrcial ch models, Ves and Gloriana paid extra attention to hiring additional batches of ch designers.
It was easy enough to hire low-ranking ch designers. If there was one type of professional that would never run out, it was Novice ch Designers and Apprentice ch Designers who were struggling to build their careers!
Just because they managed to move to the Red Ocean did not an that their fortunes suddenly turned. The competition was higher and the standards were higher as well.
The different market and industry conditions ruined a lot of hopes. The painful truth was that ch designers who originally ca from poorer states from the galactic rim possessed the least chances to get a good job.
Few people wanted them because these ch designers were not as qualified to work with heartland-level materials and equipnt that had beco the norm in the new frontier!
Though Gloriana was extrely picky about the ch designers that applied to join the Design Departnt, Ves was not as discerning. He paid attention to a lot of other traits such as loyalty, humility and obedience.
"Look, you can put forth all of the demands you want when it cos to hiring Journeyn, but our assistant ch designers don't need to be as good." Ves pushed back against her when recruiting had slowed down. "All of the good ones would rather work for the Cross Clan since rumors that Professor Benedict Cortez is close to realizing his design philosophy have already spread out. A lot of ch designers are eager to work for Master ch Designers even if they can only speak to such an impressive person only once a year. We on the other hand aren't attractive enough because a lot of colleagues think they can do better than us, as absurd as that sounds."
Gloriana grimaced as she held a sleeping Andraste against her chest. "Those fools. Just because we are still Journeyn does not an we are in the sa league anymore. Can't those ch designers pay more attention to our accomplishnts?"
Ves shrugged. "It's hard for them to take us seriously. The newcors who are still fresh off the boat are particularly ignorant of our true strength. The genuine talents will all be snapped up by more reputable and established ch designers anyway. Just give up on hiring the best prospects and try to look among the group of people that are not as desirable at first glance. I'm confident that you'll be able to find a couple of hidden gems."
His wife did not look impressed.
"So what you are telling is that I should go dumpster diving in the job market, is that it? I have to sift through tons of garbage in order to find a single relatively clean and relatively nice gem, is that it? Are you crazy?!"
If Gloriana wasn't holding one of their sleeping daughters right now, she would have certainly expressed her feelings louder!
"Hey, if you are feeling so stressed out about hiring the right personnel, you can leave the job to . I have a good eye for talent." Ves boasted.
"No! I won't let you botch this job or bring in any weirdos into our Design Departnt! I will do this myself because that is the only way I ensure we do it properly!"
In the end, they decided to split their responsibilities.
Ves mainly concerned himself with recruiting low-ranking ch designers. The amount of applicants was rather abundant, but it was still a challenge to identify those that were the most honest, productive and suitable to work in large design teams.
In the interest of recruiting as many potential Journeyn as possible, Ves tried his best to recruit ch designers with spiritual potential.
Unfortunately, they were quite rare!
If Ves wanted to maximize the chances of breakthroughs among his own people, then he would have to string out his recruitnt campaigns across several years, all the while rejecting the majority of applicants.
This was not sustainable. If word spread about how the Larkinson Clan turned away most applicants including those with excellent qualifications, then less and less ch designers would make the attempt.
In addition, there were lots of talents among those with no spiritual potential. Just because they were unlikely to advance to Journeyman and higher did not an they had no uses in the Larkinson Clan.
Plenty of the more senior assistants had gone on to beco team leaders. As the amount of projects the Larkinsons needed to complete had skyrocketed as of late, more senior leadership positions had co into existence as well in order to keep everything organized.
As such, Ves no longer paid as much attention to spiritual potential and kept to a more reasonable set of recruitnt criteria.
Since his goal was to expand the amount of assistant ch designers at his disposal to 1000 individuals, the Design Departnt quickly experienced a lot of changes!
The Genesis Lab at the Cat Nest beca a lot busier as more and more bodies moved back and forth.
A lot of new faces showed up and newcors were being introduced to old hands every week.
Though the frequent changes disrupted the schedules and routines of every ch designer, the amount of design work that got done nonetheless increased by a massive degree, which made everyone happy in the end!
"We can complete more parallel variant design projects per design round!"
As bestsellers such as the Pacifier, the War Squire and the ever-popular Ferocious Piranha continued to be sold in massive numbers, the demand for official first-party variants that excelled in different areas rose as well.
"One size never fits all in the ch industry. There are many different ch forces that all work under different circumstances. As much as their leaders would like to adopt our chs, if it doesn't fit into their system, it's no use adopting our products."
The massive increase in assistant ch designers proved to be essential to getting a lot of work done on the variant designs.
The difficulty of designing the alterations was nowhere near comparable to designing a completely new ch model from scratch, so Ves and the lead designers readily entrusted most of the work to the ordinary design teams.
What was interesting was that many of the first generation of assistant ch designers that had worked for Ves and Gloriana from the start all took up managent and leadership positions in order to herd all of the cats.
Ves could already tell that many of these ch designers were probably planning to dedicate all of their attention to leading other ch designers as opposed to continuing to expand their own design capabilities.
He sighed. "Not everyone has the sa opportunities as others. Life isn't fair sotis."
Just like genetic aptitude, there were intrinsic factors that prevented ch designers from fulfilling their dreams.
So people found out their true situation fairly soon. That, or they just gave up too easily.
Other people were rather late in their willingness to admit defeat. There were even stubborn fools that insisted that they still possessed the chance of advancing to Journeyn!
Though Ves could clearly tell whether a person possessed spiritual potential or not, he did not intervene or say anything to anyone.
This was a journey that every ch designer had to go through. He also believed that even the most talentless person still had a chance of developing and activating spiritual potential later in their lives.
As ti went by, an increasing number of ch designers cut their teeth in many different design projects.
The more ambitious individuals among the assistant ch designers also spent much of their free ti on designing their own chs.
Though their work was in no way comparable to the primary output of the Design Departnt, the Living ch Corporation still offered to sell the hobrew chs through its own sales channels.
Of course, there was no way that Ves wanted to sell these ssy and inconsistent chs under his main business brand, so he specifically ordered the LMC to set up an alternate brand that specialized in selling low quantities of these products.
The Hamrworks possessed such great production capacity that there was still room to produce small batches of relatively low-quality chs.
"Let's call our new brand the Ergent Boutique." Ves proposed. "The chs that will be sold under this label might represent the future of our clan one day."
From a comrcial standpoint, the Ergent Boutique was an abject failure.
In a market environnt where there were an abundance of good chs that were designed by highly-skilled Masters, it was extrely hard for the works of Novices and Apprentices to get taken seriously!
The only way for any of these chs to get sold was by competing in terms of price, and that was a lot more difficult in the Red Ocean due to the high cost of raw materials.
No matter how much the assistant ch designers cut back on the design budgets of their projects, the painful truth was that their machines were unlikely to get sold unless they charged a price that was significantly below the cost of production.
In other words, the Larkinson Clan lost money for every Ergent Boutique ch that got sold!
This was an insane business model and would most certainly get shut down if this went on without any signs of improvents.
However, Ves never set out to make a profit with the Ergent Boutique. He accepted the losses it incurred because its existence kept his assistant ch designers content.
It only took a single sale of a ch of their own design to make them happy! The satisfaction and fulfillnt they gained at the realization that soone actually saw value in their work was precious to every ch designer.
As a large proportion of the roughly 1000 assistants of the Design Departnt took advantage of the Ergent Boutique, they improved significantly faster than before.
Being able to work outside of their narrow responsibilities on other people's design projects provided many more challenges and rewards!
Each independent design project they completed brought them closer to a critical turning point.
Soon enough, the Design Departnt welcod its first batch of assistant ch designers that managed to break through to the rank of Journeyman ch Designer!
"Finally!"
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