Chapter 2632: New Generation of Larkinson Mechs (1/2)

As the Golden Skull Alliance neared the border between Komodo and Vicious Mountain, the Larkinson Clan started to field some brand-new mechs.

Some of them were relatively mundane, though remarkable in their own way. The LMC had begun to test some of their spaceborn mechs whenever the allied fleet emerged out of FTL and rested at least six hours in realspace.

Out of the six ongoing mech design projects of the Design Department, half of them were exclusive to the Larkinson Clan.

The three upcoming Larkinson mech designs were all multi-environmental machines with flexible deployment characteristics. They fared best in space, which was ideal for a spaceborn fleet, but they could also operate in the air under standard gravity conditions.

The prototypes derived from the three designs each looked remarkable. The Glory Seekers and the Crossers observing from the side immediately recognized that two of them were derived from the LMC's existing mech designs.

The Bright Warrior IB and the Ferocious Piranha IB straightforwardly copied the mech concepts of their third-class counterparts. If the old and the newer versions flew side by side, then laymen would probably find more similarities than differences.

Of course, looks could be deceiving.

Despite their close resemblance, the Ferocious Piranha Version B was at least a hundred times more expensive than the Version C of the light skirmisher!

The comparison was a bit difficult to make for the two different Bright Warrior models. The new Bright Warrior Version B utilized regular second-class armor plating, which was actually worse than the Breyer alloy utilized in the original!

Regardless, the Larkinson Clan would definitely be able to exhibit greater strength once the Bright Warrior IB and the Ferocious Piranha IB entered service. This was especially because Ves and Gloriana decided to double their design budgets at some point!

By raising their respective budgets to 400 million hex credits, their quality became on par with the Valkyrie Redeemer, which had long conquered the hearts of many Hexer military mech pilots.

A single Bright Warrior IB was around 8 times more expensive than the commercial second-class mechs the Larkinson Clan were fielding at the moment!

Naturally, that didn't mean the new Bright Warriors and Ferocious Piranhas performed 8 times better than the Princess Jeckas and the Vima Suns. The actual performance improvement was 'only' 2 to 4 times better depending on the calculation method.

Despite making the new clan-exclusive mechs as expensive as a mainline military mech model, the Larkinson Clan could easily afford the expenditure.

With the explosive success of the new Ferocious Piranha Mark I Version C model, the LMC's earnings finally surpassed 1 trillion hex credits!

This was an astounding sum, and one the Larkinsons had long anticipated! Although the rapidly-growing Larkinson Clan immediately spent much of it on its growing expenses and a warchest reserved for the acquisition of capital ships, it shouldn't be a problem to splurge on a couple of thousand expensive mechs.

Ves knew that the Larkinson Clan would be relying heavily on the Bright Warrior IB and the Ferocious Piranha IB for the coming decade or so. It was better to invest more in the mech design upfront so that they wouldn't become obsolete by the time the clan reached the Red Ocean.

With the increase in budget, the two second-class mech designs incorporated better armor, higher capacity energy cells, higher-performing core components, hardened sensor and communication systems, more powerful flight systems and so on. They even incorporated much tougher cockpits so that the mech pilots had a higher chance of preserving their lives!

”Fielding thousands of these mechs will cost as much as a capital ship.” Ves muttered as he observed the prototypes going through their paces in an observation room aboard the Spirit of Bentheim. ”These mechs are great, no doubt about it, but our accounts will definitely cry when they see how much money they drain.”

Expensive mechs not only cost more upfront, but also came with higher maintenance cost. The burden of maintaining thousands of second-class Bright Warriors and Ferocious Piranhas would bankrupt any normal organization!

This was why Ves and the LMC played such a crucial role in the Larkinson Clan. Greater strength did not come for free. Without earning more, Ves would have never dared to double the budgets of his mech design projects.

So far, the test sessions already proved the potency of the two upcoming mech designs.

The four different configurations of the Bright Warrior Version B were not eye-catching. Ves deliberately conceived of them as the new backbone fighting machines of the Larkinson Clan.

This meant that the rifleman mech, swordsman mech, lancer mech and space knight configurations fought like their normal equivalents. They did not possess any pronounced strengths and weaknesses and were quite boring aside from their Larkinson glows.

Though Ves normally thought ill of balanced mech designs, the Bright Warrior product line was not designed to be strongest. Instead, it had to be as universal and adaptable as possible in order to ensure that many different mech pilots would be able to harness at least one of its four configurations.

”Normally, I try to do the opposite in my mech designs.” Gloriana noted as she stood by his side while she manipulated her workstation. ”Working on the Bright Warrior has been an interesting exercise for me. I worked hard to figure out new ways to increase the compatibility of this mech platform. I dare say that at least 90 percent of our mech pilots will find what they like in our new Bright Warrior.”

”That's a bold claim.” Ves raised his eyebrow. ”With the increase in performance, this mech has become more difficult to pilot. Don't forget that most of our mech pilots originally started off as third-raters. It will take more time before they are on par with genuine second-class mech pilots. Until then, they won't be able to draw out all of the potential of these mechs.”

They essentially designed the Bright Warrior B and the Ferocious Piranha B with future proofing in mind. They aimed to achieve specifications with their mech designs than their pilots could currently handle. While that was bad and wasteful in the short term, it would definitely pay off in spades in the medium and long term.

This was especially important when Ves considered the higher strength levels of the new frontier. In a place where the best pioneers across the Milky Way concentrated in a smaller dwarf galaxy, a premium mech in the galactic rim would probably be considered a budget mech in the Red Ocean!

Therefore, even if both Ves and Gloriana were considerably impressed by the performance of the Bright Warrior B and the Ferocious Piranha B right now, they knew that their future rivals and competitors would likely look down on them a bit in a couple of years!