The Mech Touch

Designing a training mech was a must. It fit the concept of growth mechs too well.

On top of that, the training mechs that Ves had designed in the past already showed that they were highly compatible with his design philosophy.

A training mech model that aligned with his new direction would definitely provide a lot of value to the market. Ves almost decided to keep it in the clan if not for its growing need for money!

However, just because Ves believed that his training mech had the potential to become a revolutionary new product didn't mean that it could achieve commercial success!

He had to overcome the inertia in the mech market in order to sell enough mechs.

"The market for training mechs is a lot harder to enter than others." Gloriana warned Ves. "There are many reasons for that. Training mechs are crucial machines that are used to train humanity's future mech pilots. They need to be extremely well-designed so that the dangers of using them are suppressed to a minimum. In other words, the soundness and optimization of their designs need to be extremely high."

She was right. Ves already understood a thing or two about training mechs. He already did a lot of research on the market for these special products back when he designed the Chiron.

"You cannot spend a few months on this project and think that it will become a bestseller." His wife continued. "Safety and reliability must be guaranteed first before other priorities come into consideration. If just a single accident occurs that can be traced back to a design flaw, the mech academies would rather pull your training mech from the lineup than to risk an incident that could completely ruin their reputations. You have to realize that mech academies live and die by their public perception."

That was also true. Mech academies were rather unique customers in the mech market. They did not buy the toughest or the most lethal mechs. They did not pay that much attention to top performance at all. Since the mech academies mostly intended to put immature mech cadets in the cockpits, the training mechs had to provide a lot of safety assurances when they were handled poorly.

This demanded a lot of attention on the solidness and the stability of the mech frame.

It didn't matter whether a mech academy was just a rural school or an elite establishment. The teenagers and young adolescents that piloted them on a regular basis were bound to screw up sooner or later.

They might trip their mechs. They might collide them against each other. They might get hit by uncontrolled attacks.

So many different accidents took place in a lot of mech academies that training mechs had to possess an excellent tolerance for abuse!

"We already designed the Chiron." Ves stated. "I haven't paid much attention to its use after our Larkinson Mech Academy put our first training mech model into service, but I have heard it is a beloved machine among our mech cadets."

His wife nodded. "It is indeed a mech that has earned a lot of fans over at the Discentibus, but don't think that its track record will be enough to convince customers to buy your new commercial training mech. The Chiron works for us because it is alive, because it is an in-house design and because we have never given our mech academy much choice about adopting it. Those favorable conditions won't apply to other customers, especially when they have never come across this kind of product. If you want to get our foot in the door, you will need to make sure our training mech meets the prevailing market standard."

In other words, it had to meet extremely high standards in terms of technical design!

Although the training mech didn't necessarily have to be expensive and too high-end in terms of performance, it had to be as unflappable as possible.

The training mech must be able to stand up and fight if it tumbled off a cliff.

The training mech had to remain in adequate working condition after enduring a year's worth of regular usage.

The training mech needed to be easy to repair and maintain.

In addition, the training mech had to be affordable in order to make it economically viable! Not every mech academy enjoyed an unlimited budget.

Most mech academies were public institutions that relied on the support of a state in order to pay the bills. It was extremely expensive to buy and maintain a collection of training mechs.

Whatever tuition that normal families could afford to pay out of their own pockets would never cover the costs of running a mech academy!

For this reason, these public mech academies were often conservative when it came to their buying behavior.

They only bought training mechs if they had to. If possible, they were willing to hang on to their machines for multiple decades if possible!

The longevity of a mech was therefore an important selling point as they directly affected the bottom line of the institution.

Although many states understood the importance of directing sufficient funding in the training and education of mech cadets, the reality was that their public spending could only cover so many priorities.

It was not unusual to see mech academies, especially the ones servicing poorer and more rural areas, train their mech cadets by relying on second-hand or even third-hand training mechs!

This was why the majority of mech academies were also incredibly brand-loyal. They only bought from renowned companies that had been operating in the training mech market for decades if not centuries!

Only a long track record of safety and user satisfaction fell into their consideration.

This meant that even if the LMC published an extremely effective new training mech design, the vast majority of mech academies would probably adopt a wait-and-see attitude!

As the couple shared their perspectives on this special market, Ves made a decision.

"If these poorer and less well-off mech academies are so stingy about their selections, then we should forget about them. We should target the upper segments of the mech market instead. Those elite and prestigious mech academies may care more about their reputations, but they are also subject to a lot more competition. If they want to improve their reputation and popularity, they need to prove that they can deliver the best possible education. Being able to provide access to a far better training mech model than the alternatives is an excellent way for them to rise in the rankings!"

Many of his previous commercial mech models hadn't been cheap. Ves always felt more comfortable with designing mechs for those who appreciated quality and cared more about distinctive features than the price-performance ratio of a product.

Gloriana still didn't possess much confidence in his chances.

"The premium segment is even harder to capture than the budget segment, Ves. You're right that customers at this level pay less attention to the cost of a mech, but their obsession for quality means that they will value the pedigree and reputation of the mech company that is selling the training mechs even more! Our LMC possesses no advantages at all in this aspect."

"Hmmm…" Ves lowered his head for a moment.

These were troubling observations. Though he didn't want to hear them, he knew that Gloriana was only helping him out by playing devil's advocate this time.

"I'm not giving up on designing a commercial training mech, Gloriana. We will just have to conduct a different marketing campaign if that's the case. The key is to approach a few institutions in the Red Ocean and earn their trust. If we can convince them to pioneer the use of our radical new training mechs, we can use their success as positive examples of how much the effectiveness of their training has improved!"

His wife crossed her arms. "Really? You think that will work? How are we able to get any education institution to take us seriously? We might be the most impressive pair of Journeymen in the Red Ocean, but that doesn't change the fact that we will still be seen as relatively young and inexperienced mech designers! It will be extremely hard to earn a mech academy's trust just by that alone!"

"That is why we should look for any opportunities to go through the back door instead of the front entrance." Ves retorted. "We have cultivated a few relationships in the Red Ocean that may help in giving us the chance we need. One of the helpers I have in mind is the Wild Fighter Association. This group pays a lot of attention to the training and welfare of mech pilots, so an excellent training mech should be of much greater interest."

Gloriana thought about it for a few seconds.

"That is a good idea… as long as the Wild Fighter Association is happy about our cooperation. Ketis only completed her Monster Slayer design a short time ago, so nobody knows whether it will become a popular seller. If it does, I admit that you may be able to convince the Wild Fighters to cooperate with us once again. It helps that the Monster Slayer already functions as a training mech of sorts, though it is mostly targeted towards graduated mech pilots."

Ketis may have designed her Monster Slayer to be relatively easy to pick up, but that assumed the mech pilot already mastered the basics!

The Monster Slayer was emphatically not a training mech targeted towards mech cadets!

Their large, sharp greatswords were much more difficult to handle at first and had a much higher chance of producing serious injuries if mishandled!

In addition to that, the Monster Slayer also failed to meet many other standards that customers sought in a good training mech.

Even so, the Monster Slayer's potential success could serve as a fantastic opening for his upcoming proposal.

There were just a few concerns.

"The teaching mechanism of the Monster Slayer will be different from mine." Ves predicted. "Ketis has her way of designing mechs and I have my way of designing mechs. Unless we collaborate on designing a training mech that excels in swordfighting, the training mech that I have in mind will probably guide and strengthen its mech pilot in different ways."

"How so?"

A few seconds passed as Ves sorted out his thoughts.

"For one, it has to be a more comprehensive tutor. I will try and transfer the skills of an excellent mech pilot into my new training mech. I have used this approach in the past when I designed my Old Soul and Young Blood. Back then, my design philosophy was much less developed, yet this pair of virtual mech designs were already effective to an extent. Now that I have become a much more powerful Journeyman, I expect that this approach will be a lot more effective than before!"

"That is not enough." Gloriana judged. "The elite second-class mech academies you are targeting already possess training mechs that can provide adaptive, personalized training to their mech cadets. While these competing products mostly rely on pedagogic AIs to do the job, don't underestimate this solution. The mech companies that have been in the business of selling training mechs have spent many years on expanding and perfecting their teaching AIs! This is what you will have to go up against. Are you certain that your own spin on a teaching mech will be able to provide superior instruction?"

This was indeed a thorny problem. Training mechs that came with AIs that provided automated instruction would become direct competitors to his own spin on this mech type.

He had to offer more benefits if wanted his living training mech to stand out from the competition.

"I need to think about this." He said. "I have several more ideas on how to add more value to my training mech design, but it will be a lot harder to implement them since I have never worked on them before."

That did not deter Ves from performing the necessary research. He wanted to make a statement this time, and to do that he needed to present a revolutionary new product!