The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

Master Aulaus Kreshnik made a lot of odd and risky choices when he took over Pritchard & Terse.

Though the company built up a modest presence in the Rubarthan mech market over the years, The Great Severing affected P&T much more than other companies!

Due to the company's relatively light footprint in the Red Ocean, the branch headquarters found itself unable to bear the burden of updating its entire first-class mech catalog.

The competitive pressure was too high. Whereas other mech companies transferred plenty of Master Mech Designers and a lot of other supporting infrastructure to the new frontier, P&T only had Master Kreshnik, a bunch of contributing mech designers and a lot of low-ranking mech designers not worth mentioning!

This put P&T far behind its other competitors in the Rubarthan Pact!

Since the start of the Hyper Generation, every existing client and customer clamored for hyper mechs.

The performance boost was too great. If mech designers and mech companies did not update their existing mech lines soon, then they would inevitably get dumped by the vast majority of their customer base!

This put Master Kreshnik in an awful position. As the most capable mech designer left in P&T's branch headquarters, he was unable to update all of the existing product lines by himself.

Every competitive first-class multipurpose mech design represented the culmination of the collaborative efforts by 5 Master Mech Designers over months if not years of dedicated work.

The difficulty became compounded by the fact that Master Kreshnik did not lead any of the design projects that resulted in the creation of the old mainstays of P&T!

Most of them had been birthed from the visions of the founders and lead designers of Pritchard & Terse that comfortably remained in their old haunts in the Milky Way!

There was no way that Master Kreshnik could inherit these old mech designs and do them justice. He also did not have the prestige and connections to convince other Master Mech Designers to replace the design philosophies that allowed P&T's products to carve out their own niches in the Rubarthan Mech Market.

P&T was not the only company that suffered from this problem. Many other mech companies found themselves incapable of supporting the bestsellers and mainstays that used to channel steady profits into their coffers in a bygone age.

Most of these companies that had fallen into trouble chose to give up. They put up their brands, their fixed assets, their personnel, their intellectual property, their existing business contracts and sometimes even their high-level design talent up for auction!

A large round of consolidation ensued during the first year of the Age of Dawn as large megacorporations eagerly snapped up a bunch of smaller competitors. This enabled the big players to quickly fill up their own gaps, putting them in a much better position to update their own outdated mech lines!

It would have been completely normal for P&T to give up and allow itself to be absorbed by a larger company.

Master Kreshnik was different, though. He went against the grain and argued hard that the company still had a future as an independent company in the Age of Dawn.

"I spent weeks arguing with the remaining upper management of P&T." Master Kreshnik spoke to Ves as both of them waited for their respective mechs to complete their final inspections. "In my 200 years of life, I have worked for one organization after another. P&T is but the latest employer that has accepted my services. I am tired of letting others dictate my work. Now that I have a chance to take over our former branch headquarters, I needed to take the plunge."

"Bold choice." Ves responded. "Being in charge is always better in my book. I would have thought that Masters such as yourselves are more than capable of starting off on your own. Why did you not go independent sooner?"

"It is not as easy as you may think, professor. The first-class mech market is much more brutal than the other markets. No single Master can expect to do business by designing and publishing first-class multipurpose mech designs by themselves. Every customer expects to obtain the best of what their budget can afford them, so it is essential for a team of five Masters as well as an entire support network of high-tech development companies to unite all of their efforts to produce a single mech design that can possibly outperform the prevailing competition and sell enough units to recoup the massive expenditures."

Ves pressed his lips when he heard that. Master Kreshnik did not mince any words when he described the extreme difficulty of developing a profitable first-class mech.

While it was true that first-raters had so much money at their disposal, they were much more knowledgeable and discerning as well.

Many first-class organizations were already capable of raising their own in-house design teams.

Mech companies that catered to the open market had to exceed the standards of all of those in-house mech designers in order to sell their products, and that was not an easy task!

"So you decided that P&T should give up on the first-class mech market?"

"It was not an easy decision to make." Master Kreshnik spoke with narrowed eyes. "Many executives in my company have become attached to the status and prestige of working with an established brand in Rubarthan society. It is considered to be a great shame and a mark of failure for a first-class mech company to retreat from its native market and go 'down' into the second-class mech market."

"Yet you managed to ram this decision through anyway."

"The data supported my arguments. Our chances of developing even a single profitable first-class hyper mech model were virtually zero. Since no one else has been able to offer any alternatives that could give us a viable pathway to remain in the first-class mech market, we had to choose between two different options. We could either sell our company to a larger conglomerate, or we could temporarily retreat to the second-class mech market while steadily rebuilding our capital to return to our original market in the future."

"If I was in the shoes of those executives, I think that transferring to a bigger, more prestigious and more secure mech company sounds like a good deal."

"That is true, but much of the value of a mech company is concentrated in its high-level design talent. If I choose to depart from P&T, the company becomes an abandoned shell that is burdened down by outdated mech designs and other marginal assets. I have every justification to leave on the spot considering that a force majeure has occurred that unreasonably damaged my own interests."

"So you used the threat of your departure to browbeat the remaining executives into keeping P&T independent."

"Correct. Once I found out that they are primarily driven by profit and status, it is not difficult to formulate strategies that target their proclivities and vulnerabilities. I presented a workable business plan that calls for building up a foundation in the second-class mech market first. Once we have stabilized our new positions, we can gather the necessary capital and design talent to make a fresh start in the first-class mech market. It does not matter if we abandon our old mech lines, as none of them are designed with hyper mechs in mind. Their individual brands also aren't valuable enough to keep them alive. It is better if I design my own hyper mechs based on my own vision from the beginning."

"You will be giving up the first mover advantage if you start out later."

"That is a necessary sacrifice. If you want to survive in this business, then you need to possess an objective understanding of your own situation. I have made the decision that it is better to retreat and wait until our collective understanding of hyper technology has advanced much further before I design serious first-class multipurpose mechs once again. There is so much we have to learn before we can properly utilize the properties of hyper materials."

"I agree. It is not a bad idea to be a little more patient and try to find ways to differentiate yourself from the competition."

The two continued to chat as if they were friends and colleagues rather than bitter rivals.

As much as Master Kreshnik issued a challenge to Ves, the two did not have a strong basis for conflict.

The Fey Fianna and the Nelerat Mark I did not compete directly against each other. They occupied their own corners of the second-class mech market and addressed different needs.

Ves and Master Kreshnik were also completely different from each other. They did not compete for the same opportunities, so why should they hold any personal animosity for each other?

The only complication was that Ves suspected that the Smokestack Prince had induced Master Kreshnik to issue this challenge.

No matter what, losing the challenge match definitely damaged Ves' interests. This made it a lot more difficult for Ves to befriend the Rubarthan Master.

That did not stop him from pumping Master Kreshnik of every scrap of information related to the current situation of the first-class mech market.

Originally, Ves intended to put his products up for sale in this market as well.

Yet the more he learned, the less he was willing to go through with this plan.

Considering how even a 200-year old Master Mech Designer lacked the confidence to compete at this level, it appeared that it was way too premature for him to think about designing commercially viable first-class mechs at this stage!

"Compared to the Terran mech market, the Rubarthan mech market is not as difficult to enter as an independent." Master Kreshnik freely shared. "The former is largely captured by old and established brands. Terran customers are much more accustomed to work with a selection of trusted mech companies over the long term. There are Rubarthan customers that adopt the same approach, but since our mech market is more dynamic, there is much more acceptance to purchasing standalone mechs to adapt to changing circumstances or address an immediate shortcoming. However, the level of competition in the market is so high that you need to be the best in your field to sell more than a handful of copies."

If that was the case, then Ves could forget about selling any of his mechs onto the Rubarthan mech market in the next decade or two. He did not think he could meet all of the harsh requirements that would allow his first-class mechs to reach the necessary level of performance, especially when he had to implement all kinds of powerful and extremely advanced high technologies.

"What would you advise if I want to enter the Rubarthan mech market?" Ves asked. "lam studying hard to become a first-class mech designer. What do you suggest I do once I have learned the necessary tech?"

Master Kreshnik gave the younger man a pointed glance. "I suggest that you take a step back and collaborate with more established Rubarthan mech designers. You already have a history of collaborating with numerous other mech designers and mech companies. You can use this existing model and apply it in other cases. It isn't necessary for you to retain any ownership of the mech designs that you have contributed to. The lessons you learn and the experience you gain when working as a contractor are the greatest rewards that you can earn. When it comes to designing first-class mechs, it is vital for you to build up a network of high-level talent that you can rely upon for collaborations and technical support."

Ves nodded in understanding. He was incredibly deficient in this area. It couldn't be helped since he was an outsider to the first-class mech industry.

"I guess this is why most second-class mech designers hardly ever succeed in entering the first-class mech market. It isn't enough to possess the requisite knowledge and skills. You also need to find a lot of willing partners to support your goals."