Ves already worked with gimmicks before. Back when he designed the 3-star virtual variant of the Hoplite, he adapted one of the spear-wielding knight’s gimmicks to the Young Blood.


    The gimmick consisted of various enhancements to the shield of the Young Blood so that it would be able to bash its shield with greater speed and momentum.


    The implementation came with a number of ws. The Young Blood could only enhance its shield bash for a limited number of times, because the batteries embedded into the shield carried only so much charge. In addition, theponentscked sufficient sturdiness and could easily be rendered inoperable.


    "Still, it doesn’t matter if the actual implementation is disappointing. It’s an attention grabber."


    The mere existence of the gimmick attracted a lot of attention. The Young Blood became known as the ultimate shield-bashing knight mech and its existence had been imprinted on countless Iron Spirit yers.


    The best gimmicks bestowed otherwise normal mechs with seemingly inconceivable superpowers. Meanwhile, the worst gimmicks actually turned out to be a detriment on the battlefield.


    No matter the case, a gimmick always attracted a lot of attention, thereby making them the perfect marketing material.


    Ves knew that purist mech designers disdained the use of gimmicks. They would rather focus their efforts on maximizing the core performance of a mech. The more a mech designer emphasizes a gimmick, the worse the overall performance of the design in question.


    Adding a gimmick to a mech always came at the cost of weight, space, power or heat management. It also raised the price of the mech and disproportionately increased the maintenance burden.


    "A good gimmick justifies its existence. A bad gimmick bes a weight that drags down the design."


    Ves did not even have to browse the gctic toe across countless failed implementations.


    For example, one iconic example often bandied about in the mech industry was the Grenadier. Nominally, the designer designed the Grenadier as a Skirmisher. However, it carried a bandolier of high-explosive shells on its torso.


    The purpose of the Grenadier was to sneak behind enemy lines and inflict severe disruption with minimal footprint. Compared to missiles, grenades took up a lot less space and weight, and didn’t require anyunchers either. The grenades also didn’t cost a lot of time and money to produce.


    s, the actual implementation fared much worse than the designer had intended. Almost every Grenadier that got caught got blown up when its opponents focused their fire on the bandolier. The Grenadier might be carrying around a lot of explosive might, butpared to missiles, theycked much of the preventive measures against premature detonations.


    "I also can’t forget about the Adaptris."


    The Adaptris was a so-called multi-environmental mech. It was a heavy mech that was simultaneously an aquatic mech, andbound mech, an aerial mech and a spaceborn mech.


    The mech designer of the Adaptris piled his mech up with so many systems that it could adapt in almost every circumstance. The logic of the Adatris was that since it could be fielded in almost every situation, it could be produced and fielded en masse. The advantages of scale would eventually outweigh the inherent inefficiencies in the design.


    Heavy mechs always strained the resources and industrial capacity of a state. If the Adaptris could be produced in enough numbers, then the heavy mechponent of its military force would be ten times deadlier.


    Sadly, the designer had a few screws loose in his head. He somehow seeded in pitching the idea to a handful of third-rate states, which allocated a huge portion of their limited industrial capacity in producing these gimmicky heavy mechs.


    For all their adaptability and theoretical performance, the mech designer hadn’t actually designed a good mech. The heavy mechs cameden with ws due to the excess of different systems stuffed inside their frames. The most fatal w was that they ran out of power up to seventy percent faster than a normal heavy mech!


    With countless more examples just like this, the mech industry adopted a wary stance towards gimmicks. If a mech designer wanted to add something special to their mechs, they should better restrain themselves and keep their implementation modest.


    Ves did not intend to unt that rule. "The only mech designers who resort to gimmicks are those who can’tpete the normal way."


    Why did crazy designs like the Grenadier and the Adaptrise into existence in the first ce? It was because their mech designers faced too muchpetition!


    They couldn’tpete against the market with their normal capabilities!


    "It’s too difficult topete directly against mainstream mechs!"


    The dominant trans-gctic corporations ruled over the gctic mech industry from their headquarters in the gctic center. Design teams numbering dozens Masters and hundreds of Seniors focused all of their immense expertise into perfecting a single standard design at a time.


    How could any average mech designerpete against the best that humanity had to offer? Even though the gctic center was tens of thousands of light years away from the gctic rim, any newly published design from the center would instantly reach the rim through the gctic.


    Within a single week, mech manufacturers around the gxy would instantly produce at least a billion copies of the new design. Within a single month, the number of copies might surpass a trillion.


    The amount of demand for thetest mainstream mechs from the most reputable trans-gctic corporation could make any single mech designer die from envy!


    Fortunately, many states wouldn’t allow these trans-gctic corporations unrestricted ess to their mech markets. They adopted a variety of measures, from tariffs to quotas to give their domestic mech industry a chance to survive.


    States had to be careful in implementing these trade policies.


    If they acted against foreign mechs with a heavy hand, they risked coddling their mech industry intocency. Without the pressure of outsidepetition, the state’s domestic mech designers faced little incentive to exert their full efforts into maximizing the performance of their mechs.


    The difference might not be evident in a couple of years, but this sort of change always took its time to seep into the vitality of a state. After twenty years or more of continued decline, the strength of the domestic mech industry would be a shadow of its former self.


    The mechs that proliferated in this state that closed its market to outsiders wouldn’t be able to measure up against the mechs of their rivals. Many states ended up grinded beneath the feet of their neighboring states because they disregarded outside advancements.


    On the other hand, if a state treated foreign mechs too leniently, then their domestic mech industry would eventually atrophy, crippling its ability to design purpose-built mechs for their mech forces.


    This indirectly weakened the state’s ability to wage war, because mainstream mechs would always be analyzed to death by the entire gxy. Their strengths and weaknesses would quickly be clear to all, including any possible opponents. It would be trivially easy to exploit these traits if an entire mech force consisted of the same handful of mainstream mech models.


    "The Bright Republic is in a difficult spot. I can’t me them for opening up their market to mainstream mechs."


    The Bright Republic had to square off against the Vesia Kingdom, arger and more populous third-rate state. It couldn’t afford to put too many restrictions on the high-performing mainstream designs that constantly proliferated from the gctic center.


    These extremely well-designed mechs provided the Mech Corps and the various private forces that operated within its borders with a readily avable supply of high-quality mechs.


    Naturally, the Vesians often exploited the well-known weaknesses of these mainstream mechs, but that couldn’t be helped. Much more importantly, the pressure of gcticpetition separated the wheat from the chaff. Ipetent mech designers had no ce in the Republic. Only the best and most resilient mech designers continued to survive under these circumstances.


    "Still, I’m far away frompeting against the mainstream mechs in an upright sh. I can only resort to tricks."


    Ves already had something interesting in mind. Before histest trip to the Joe System, he agonized over the problem, but after he explored the crystal ruins, he quietly formed some ideas.


    The key to his gimmicky in theposition of the crystal structures. Even if he didn’t understand the circuits embedded into the crystals, he would still be able to attempt to reproduce a copy of the naked crystals.


    All of this became possible due to his timely purchase of the Vulcaneye. The crystals bared all of its secrets against the powerful multiscanner.


    As Ves studied a projection of the crystal’sposition, he put his formidable knowledge and enhanced mind to use. Could he fabricate the crystals by himself?


    "It’s not possible." He shook his head. "It’s too costly."


    Coincidence or not, theposition of the crystals from the crystal city utilized exotics avable in the Komodo Star Sector. Perhaps that might be why the crystal builders left behind a presence in the Joe System.


    However, an unimaginable amount of time had passed since the passing of the tiny alien species. The Komodo Star Sector back then looked a lot different than today. Several of the core ingredients could only be found in the center of the star sector, smack dab in the middle of the Friday Coalition.


    "Now that the Friday Coalition is shing directly against the Hexadric Hegemony over the Glowing, they’ll keep all of their high-value exotics to themselves."


    Ves also couldn’t forget about the drying imports. The surrounding star sectors also became engulfed in war. Few shipments of rare exotics made it all the way to the Komodo Star Sector these days.


    "If I can’t use the originalposition, what about using substitutes?"


    Substituting an expensive or scarce material for a more readily avable one happened all the time. Ves was no Master Katzenberg, but his breadth and depth of Skills and Sub-Skills gave him the basic qualifications to figure something out.


    "Ifbs contain samples of pretty much every exotic avable in the Republic. As long as Lucky hasn’t emptied them all, I’ll have a good chance of creating an inferior copy."


    Ves fixated on the crystals because they formed the key to lowering the bulk of hisser rifle. He already applied some of the insights he learned from the crystal ruins into cutting down the bulk of the Tainted Sun. However, he could have done a much better job if he had some actual crystals to work with. The gammaser rifle eventually failed to live up to its potential.


    "My nextser rifle will be a far cry from the Tainted Sun."


    He already gained a lot of experience designing theser rifle’s big brother. Graser rifles demanded the utmost in terms of integrity, tolerance, power supply and heat management. Ves faced a lot less pressure if he designed a regrser rifle.


    "The first gimmick will be to implement as much crystals as possible in theser rifle."


    Ves already envisioned theser rifle being smaller and slimmer than a standard model. Combined with the reduced weight of his rifleman mech design, the entire package would allow mech pilots to move faster and nimbler on the battlefield. At the very least, its mobility couldpete head-on against the swiftest mainstream mechs in the same weight ss.


    "Still, this isn’t enough."


    A betterser rifle only scratched the surface. Ves intended to embed a crystal in the frame of his design as well.


    A bold idea surfaced in his mind. He imagined arge crystal embedded in the head or the chest of a mech. It would umte energy over time, perhaps even absorbing enemyser beams to charge itself faster. Once its energy umted up to a critical point, it disgorged its entire charge in a single powerful light beam.


    The idea sounded very fanciful and unrealistic. At the very least, Ves couldn’t recall any mech that had used such a gimmick. While many designs did in fact embedser projectors directly onto the frame of a mech, only the most expensive second-ss or first-ss mechs employed such a gimmick.


    "Laser projectors are vulnerable and present potential weak points. I’ll have to find a way to reproduce a crystal that’s both resilient and affordable enough."


    Ves turned to hisb and eyed the handful of high quality equipment. This would be the first time he put the capabilities of hisb to test.