[1-200] THE MECH TOUCH

Chapter 48: 2-star Designs

Ves considered hiring a fabricator in order to ease the pressure on his time. If he wanted to advance his skills, he had to kept pumping out designs. If he wanted to earn lots of money, then he had to fabricate lots of mechs for Marcella to sell. He lacked the time to invest in both activities if his sales volume grew to more than three mechs a month.

The only problem with hiring someone was that keeping the System secret might be difficult. As much as the System appeared harmless, it was actually a miraculous invention that straight-up defied the laws of reality as Ves knew it. Such a precious treasure attracted covetous intentions, many of whom had the power to squash him like a bug. Letting the System's existence leak to anyone else was just asking for trouble.

Another problem which concerned Ves was that hiring someone else to do his fabrication would lead to sub-standard products. A full-time fabricator might be a wizard when it came to working with the 3D printer and assembler, but if he was ignorant of the X-Factor then the mechs he made would be devoid of life. Selling cheap products under his name only dragged him down just when he wanted to build up his brand.

As Ves couldn't figure out the solution to this dilemma, he called up Marcella.

"Heya Ves, I'm kind of busy right now, so keep it short."

"I'm having a bit of an issue here." Ves said, then explained his thoughts regarding his potential hire.

Marcella smiled at him as if the problem was trivial. "Well, it's too early to hire a mech technician, so you have plenty of time to think it over. If you want my opinion, why not do both? You can sell the mechs produced by your personnel at the standard price and charge a premium if the client wants a mech handmade by the designer. Just set the price point high enough so you don't get too burdened."

That was actually a great idea. It kept Ves busy without leaving the fabricator with nothing to do. He'd essentially leave the grunt work to his employee and only come out and fabricate in person if the money was worth it. Still, it depended on whether the clients were willing to fork out the extra cash.

"Don't worry about generating sales for your premium variant. I'll take care to pace you with such requests so you don't spend too much time on it. There are always at least some clients who make some requests to modify the design a bit. Sometimes they want the mech to be flashier. Other times they want the mech to bear a customized emblem in its armor pattern. I think the going rate for such customizations is 2 million credits."

Earning an additional two million credits per sale was a generous amount. Naturally he'd charge more if the client requested more drastic changes.

Marcella hung up in order to get back to her work. Before she left, she warned him to expect another prospective sale in about four weeks or so. That was enough time for their first client to provide feedback on the Phoenix Cry's performance in the field.

Ves considered the issue of hiring a fabricator later when he got a good idea of how many sales Marcella achieved. Instead, he turned to a much more interesting activity.

He was ready to go back to designing virtual mechs. He recalled the experience of designing different variants of the Fantasia and the Caesar Augustus and how much experience he gained in applying his growing skills. If Ves wanted to grow to the point of designing a viable original mech, then he'd have to become as good as the seasoned mech producers with a couple of successful designs under their belt.

With 2.8 million credits in his spending account, his scope had widened. Though he could easily login to Iron Spirit's market and purchase a huge amount of 1-star designs, what would be the point? He'd earn only scraps of DP with each successful design and sale.