The Mech Touch novel Chapter 403

The System provided a very flattering evaluation of the Crystal Lord compared to its usual conduct. It always graded his designs in comparison with similar models which competed in the same market segment, so Ves always got a good picture on how his designs would fare in the market.

The most important take from the evaluation was that the X-Factor finally broke through the ceiling! This immediately prompted Ves to whoop in excitement.

"I did it! Hahaha! Finally!"

The moment he Superpublished the design, the spirit of the crystal golem finally left his mind and began to inhabit the abruptly improved design. This lifted a huge weight off his chest, allowing Ves to breathe easy for the first time in months. He hadn’t realized how much of a burden the crystal golem represented.

Its mental strength had actually grown by a fair margin! Ves just never realized the change because it happened gradually.

"I hope you enjoy your new home!"

While Ves had no idea what kind of difference it made, it was still a cause for celebration. He looked forward to seeing footage of the mech in battle and see whether its mech pilots drew strength from the X-Factor.

After he got over his jubilation, Ves sobered up and started to study his design from a more sober perspective. What had the Superpublish function accomplished? The System promised that the function would comprehensively improve his design by ten percent.

"What does ten percent actually mean?"

It was like claiming to improve a piece of art by ten percent. How could you quantify the improvement in an objective manner? Was it a straightforward boost in specs, or would the System work in a more indirect manner? Ves was very curious about its methods, so he quickly dove into the results.

He turned his attention back to the evaluation.

"Hm. It’s kind of a muddle, now that I see it. That’s not very great."

While a lot of criteria scored rather high, some of them fell short of his expectations. Even with the power of the Superpublish effect, the System could only do so much to boost the inadequacies that he left in his design.

His design received a lot of scores in the B range, which meant the Crystal Lord performed better than average in those criteria, but not to the extent of becoming a compelling selling point.

His design also came with two very impactful weaknesses that Ves hadn’t fully taken into account before he published his design.

First, the carrying capacity of his mech was rather dismal for its mission profile. Mechs expected to be deployed for many days or weeks needed to carry its own supplies. As big, independent war machines famous for their ability to operate under difficult conditions without excessive requirements, having a rifleman mech that could hardly carry its own supplies was a big demerit.

"It’s like a ship geared to traverse long distances but only having the fuel capacity to complete half of it. There’s a mismatch between possibility and reality."

Still, his customers should be able to get around this problem by passing the burden on mechs with greater carrying capacities. While that sounded like a excuse, it happened all the time with regards to light mechs.

Larger outfits even relied on dedicated transport shuttles or cargo mechs to carry their supplies during deployments.

So while the Crystal Lord’s carrying capacity looked disappointing, it wasn’t anything fatal.

"The cost is another matter."

Despite using up much less expensive compressed armor plating than the Blackbeak, the cost of the Crystal Lord actually surpassed the knight mech. The difficulty in reproducing the crystals embedded in the chest jacked up the price by quite a lot. Once he improved the crystal synthesizer, Ves expected to bring down the cost by a decent amount.

Still, even if he solved this issue, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be able to charge an affordable price for his rifleman mechs. Even with a hundred percent success rate in producing the crystals, the fact that it gobbled up a lot of pricy exotics added up a hefty amount to the total price tag.

"It’s not cheap to implement these gimmicks." He frowned as he looked at the breakdown of the production cost of a single copy of the Crystal Lord.

The gold label mech with a full-sized chest crystal cost 10 million credits more than a mech that left out this boondoggle.

The cost became much more generous if Ves shrank its size as he planned to do with the bronze and silver label versions of the same model. The extra costs would only amount to 4 to 5 million credits.

The total estimated production cost was hard to determine due to the constant fluctuation in the price of raw materials. For the gold label Crystal Lord, Ves carefully estimated that it cost around 45 to 50 million credits to reproduce a single copy.

Ves couldn’t help but wince when he finished his calculations. "This is already more than the Blackbeak."

Many people would scratch their heads if they saw the difference in costs. Rifleman mechs always cost less than knight mechs. Only rarely would the reverse be true, especially with models that shared so many commonalities with each other.

"Well, the Blackbeak is a basic mech that looks beautiful on its own while the Crystal Lord needs a big fat jewel in order to feel appreciated."

The Blackbeak product line competed in a fairly niche market segment. The competition wasn’t as intense, allowing Ves to focus on its fundamental attributes and rely on them to drive its sales.

The Crystal Lord faced a much more brutal environment. It was not enough to compete on an even playing field. It needed a step up in order to stand out from the dominant models in the market.