Chapter 1610. Fade to Darkness (1/2)
Just as Ves expected and Ansel anticipated, the bombastic release of the Dawnbreaker and its variants sucked up all of the attention for the remainder of the week!
While Ves and his design team were still in the process of finalizing the designs of the Militant Soldier and Peaceful Soldier, the entire Ansel alumni network spared no effort to promote and publicize their new standard bearers!
The power and influence of the Ansel alumni network turned out to be quite dreadful!
Not only did many Ansel mech designers leverage their close connections to the media, they also pooled a considerable amount of production capacity to output as many Breaker mechs as possible during this initial period of exposure!
It seemed that one of the reason why the LMC could no longer expand its production capacity was because Ansel already secured agreements with many third-party manufacturers.
With the formal release of the Breaker product line, those production facilities immediately went to work!
Thousands of Dawnbreakers and Duskbreakers quickly entered the market.
The highly-anticipated Sandbreaker weapon system also made a huge splash in the mech community!
The mechs soon earned a lot of praise from authoritative mech reviewers. It was hard not to fall in love with these high-performing mechs!
Not only did they offer excellent performance at their price points, they also incorporated most of the lessons of the Sand War into their designs.
Almost every mech design released earlier in the Sand War mainly assumed that the sandmen would predominantly attack the Bright Republic in their basic fleet configuration.
While this assumption wasn't entirely wrong, the latest developments at the front showed that there was still a role for more expensive and resilient mechs.
Now that Starfighters took on the role of cannon fodder, the lives of professional mech pilots had to be preserved as best as possible.
The Starfighter Corps wasn't able to resist the sandmen by itself!
Starfighter pilots lacked the fortitude to endure arduous battles while their flimsy spacecraft shattered too easily against more formidable sandman fleets!
For these reasons, the true strength of the Bright Republic always rested on its mechs!
Though Ves had earned a lot of acclaim for his Soldier product line, so far he hadn't strayed from designing a cheap, affordable and disposable mech!
Even the Militant Soldier, which was at least twice as expensive as its base model, was still a relatively affordable midrange mech design!
A significant gap in performance existed between the Militant Soldier and the Novabreaker designs. Although there was a significant cost difference as well, the Mech Corps generally did not pay attention to the price!
It would have been a slightly different story if Ves had not rejected one of the suggestions of the Ministry of Defense.
The Worthy Soldier would have been able to upstage the Novabreaker, Ves was sure. As a military variant geared towards elites, he was confident that it could surpass the Novabreaker in might due to its excellent materials!
Even if Ves wasn't as good as the Seniors in their specialties, relying on more expensive exotics was the most direct way to surpass an excellent design!
Unfortunately, Ves refused to invest his time in the Worthy Soldier. If he could turn back the clock, he still would have made the same decision.
”I don't have enough time.” He whispered.
Once he published the Militant Soldier and Peaceful Soldier designs, he had no further intentions to expand the Soldier product line.
With one base model, four commercial variants and one custom mech in the form of the Resentful Soldier, Ves was incredibly tired of working on the same concepts for the last couple of months.
Deep within his heart, his burning passion urged him to discover new ideas and innovate new solutions!
This was the heart of a true mech designer!
While Ves was very proud of what he achieved with his Soldier product line, he was not the sort of mech designer who enjoyed retreading his old successes.
Halting too long after a single success was no different from stagnating. If Ves wanted to keep his passion alive, he needed to get back in the saddle and pursue new challenges.
His overarching goal wasn't to earn a lot of money or earn a lot of acclaim from designing a single successful mech design!
No, he set his sights much higher! If he wanted to make any progress towards fulfilling his ambitions, then he had to resist as many comforts as possible!
While Ves greeted the release of the Breaker product line with confident acceptance, the LMC adopted an entirely different reaction!
Everyone in the LMC knew that the good times might not last much longer! Even though their Soldier product line was still indispensable in the battlefield, it couldn't fulfill every role!
At the very least, Ves had no good answer to the demand of an excellent midrange spaceborn rifleman mech.
During a morning meeting between Ves, Raymond, Gavin and Calsie, the four discussed the impact of the Breaker line to the LMC.
”The Ansel mech designers and their new works are in the limelight right now.” Gavin reported. ”It's incredibly difficult to insert any mention of the Desolate Soldier or Prideful Soldier in the local media.”
”This only applies to the Bright Republic, right?” Ves proposed.