Ves studied Lord Richard Brownstone's work in greater detail. He manipulated the projected interface and took a close look at his past mech designs, paying close attention to the ranged kinetic armaments. From what he could tell, Lord Richard did not try to reinvent the wheel when it came to his mechs and weapon designs. They were serviceable for the most part if he designed them by himself, and quite good if he collaborated with others. The grandson of the Brownstone Prince did not grow too conceited despite his imperial background. The scion of the Imperial Rubarthan Household figured out his specialization pretty early and focused all of his efforts into improving his ability to develop more powerful and useful kinetic rounds. By focusing on imparting his projectiles with unusual effects such as generating EMP bursts or starting up fires, Lord Richard occupied a useful niche that not a lot of competitors explored to the same extent. As far as specializations were concerned, Lord Richard had picked the right one for his background and income level. A high pace of development of new and experimental rounds not only required expanded access to a lot of valuable strategic materials, but also gained the support of both research institutions and development companies. By shamelessly utilizing the sizable industrial empire owned or managed by his parents and grandparents, Lord Richard was able to make faster progress by quickly discovering and implementing powerful new formulas and applied technologies. However, just because Richard did not have any qualms about using a large existing support network to fuel his progress did not mean he was incompetent. He was around 52 years old, which made him a bit older than Ves and Jovy, but for a man like him to reach the rank of Senior Mech Designer proved that he was on the right track. Any mech designer that thought they could make most of their progress by leeching off the work of others would never be able to make Senior, let alone Journeyman! As Ves skimmed through the Rubarthan scion's product catalog in order to gain an overall impression, he noticed that Lord Richard's approach towards his mech designs was fairly focused. That meant that Lord Richard did not invest an excessive amount of time on designing the parts of his mechs that fell outside of his specialization. From his perspective, his mechs were merely the carriers of weapons that utilized his special ammunition products. In the years that Lord Richard plied his business, he mostly assisted other mech companies in enhancing the kinetic armaments of certain first-class mech models. As long as the customers were willing to pay a premium, the mech companies were glad to provide solutions that relied on exotic ammunition to gain additional advantages in combat. "Hm. That's interesting." Ves said as he looked at the timeline of mechs designed by Lord Richard Brownstone. "There is a clear shift in style and approach after the Great Severing. In the months after the start of the Age of Dawn, Lord Richard not only set aside most of his expensive exotics in favor of cheaper and more widely available hypers, but also started to develop a lot of experimental new weapons that incorporate the new materials. Although the quality and the performance of these experimental ammunition products are mixed, I can tell he is really eager about playing with the new materials." Jovy nodded and smiled. "That is part of the reason why we view him with greater favor. Lord Richard Brownstone is successful not just because he possesses a good background, but also because he is serious about his craft and is not afraid of being met with failure after investing his time and attention on different projects. That said, the Age of Dawn has produced new conditions that happen to facilitate his design philosophy exceptionally well. By playing around with hyper materials, Lord Richard has not only find ways to improve much of his existing works, but also developed brand new high-attribute ammunition that can produce even more uncommon effects." "How costly are his products?" "It depends on who he is marketing his products to. As you can see, Lord Richard Brownstone's mech and weapon designs are mostly targeted to the upper segments of the Rubarthan mech market, but that is because they are the easiest clients and customers that he can reach. The lower segment of the Rubarthan mech market cannot afford to make use of his more expensive ammunition products. The absolute cost of a single high-attribute round may sound reasonable at first, but when people start to fire them on a regular basis, the cost of purchasing a large amount of new rounds will quickly add up. In fact, the main reason why Lord Richard's mech company is able to maintain a positive balance sheet is due to his growing clientele who have grown dependent on his proprietary ammunition." Hardly anyone put serious thought in the cost and effort required to feed the kinetic armaments of a mech on a regular basis. This was actually a big deal and a serious money earner for the companies that mass produced all of these kinetic projectiles. "How easy is it for other companies or even the clients themselves to produce additional ammunition in-house?" Ves inquired. "Unless we are speaking about his most high-end ammunition choices, Lord Richard's products are not too technologically complex. Most clients have the means to produce the special ammunition in their own factories. However, many of them do not bother to do so because it is considerably cheaper and less burdensome to purchase large orders of finished ammunition. Lord Richard has invested a considerable amount of attention into retooling factories so that they are able to produce his most popular ammunition types on a wider scale at a considerably lower unit cost. Since he has a lock on the market for his own special ammunition products, his mech company is earning a steady stream of revenue in normal times. Now that the Red Tide Offensive has begun, consumption of all supplies has skyrocketed, so Lord Richard is experiencing a surge in business." Jovy continued to give a briefing on Lord Richard Brownstone's works. The man became increasingly more enthused about working hyper materials into his characteristic rounds. The reasons for that were quite clear as hypers added a powerful boost to his products without excessively raising their cost. After Ves gained enough of an impression of Lord Richard, he began to think seriously about the implications of inviting him into the design team for the Swarm Project. "Let's get the obvious part out of the way first." Ves proposed. "If we pull Lord Richard into our design team, then it is pretty much mandatory to emphasize the use of ranged kinetic weapons for our Swarm Project. The modular nature of the subordinate mechs still opens up the possibility of mounting energy weapons to their slots, but their performance will not stand out. I think most customers will opt to stick with kinetic weapons if that is the case. Is this truly a pattern that we should set for the subordinate mechs? I originally envisioned that we would equip them with energy weapons. That is a choice that the designers of human starfighters and alien phasefighters have also made." From an economic perspective, it was clearly a lot more frugal to rely on energy weapons as opposed to kinetic weapons. Energy weapons might or might not need to rely on a bit of matter in order to inflict damage, but they were mostly able to do just fine after being fed with enough energy from any valid source. So long as the energy weapons remained intact and decently maintained, they could be used for long stretches of time without fearing that they would break down. The lack of reliance on specialized ammunition or any physical ammunition for that matter made a huge difference in logistics. The groups that fielded small craft that relied on energy weapons to inflict damage only had to worry about replenishing the energy cells or recharging the craft themselves. A lot of different mechs or starfighters could operate seamlessly alongside each other as they were replenished in approximately the same way. All of that might change once Ves released a Carmine mech that predominantly relied on kinetic weapons to inflict damage. Not only were mechs in the field constrained by their ammunition counters, their bases or motherships regularly had to be supplied with shipments of high-attribute rounds. This was a persistent burden to the parties responsible with shipping supplies to the border regions. It made life more difficult to the mech forces that fielded the Carmine mechs. They had to reserve additional cargo space to hold lots of containers filled with sometimes dangerous and volatile high-attribute rounds. They also had to cover an additional expense that could quickly run up during a period of intensive battle. Even if mech forces were able to compensate for their losses by earning lots of war merits, it was still a struggle to maintain a positive balance sheet. It cost a lot of money to purchase replacement mechs for machines that got lost in battle. It also cost a lot to hire new mech pilots as they usually demanded additional danger pay and other bonuses if they took part in real action. What Ves worried about was whether the inclusion of Lord Richard Brownstone contradicted the budget-conscious approach for the Swarm Project. "We have made the calculations." Jovy said as he had not failed to investigate this issue further in order to ensure that the Swarm Project would not get dragged down for being too expensive to use. "Lord Richard Brownstone is most known for his most powerful high-attribute ammunition products, but he has also proven to be able to develop effective kinetic projectiles that can be sold at much lower price points. The key is that many different hyper materials have become available that possess effects that are not inferior to low-grade exotics. They can even deliver superior performance under special circumstances. By only making use of low to mid-grade hyper materials, neither cost or supply are significant obstacles. There are so many of them in many different star systems that they are anything but scarce." Ves looked a little more accepting after hearing that. "I see. The subordinate mechs of the Swarm Projects are not meant to be high-end, so their ammunition must remain affordable at their respective tech levels in order for this to make sense. What about the performance of his weapon systems? Would equipping our Swarm Project mechs with Lord Richard's kinetic armaments deliver superior performance in comparison to equipping the subordinate mechs with energy weapons?" "Energy weapons are always easier to use and sustain." Jovy responded. "However, under the most equal circumstances that we can set up, a kinetic weapon of the same cost, dimensions and so on will always be able to inflict more damage than an equivalent energy weapon. Our subordinate mechs will be able to inflict considerably greater damage in battle, which is very important whenever they are expected to confront enemies in a single decisive engagement." "The subordinate mechs are all light, so they don't have much capacity to store all of those rounds. What happens when they run out of kinetic cannons to fire?" "Then they should return to base in order to refuel and resupply. We cannot design a Carmine mech that can last on the battlefield for many hours while satisfying other requirements. We needed to be strict about which criteria we should apply, and we believe that the relatively short operation time of the upcoming Carmine mechs is not an insurmountable problem." Ves felt a little more reluctant about including Lord Richard into the design team after hearing this. It was incredibly annoying for mechs to fight a short amount of time, only to get warned that they ran out of projectiles to press their attacks. However, power had a price. In exchange for making use of kinetic weapon systems that hit harder than equivalent energy weapons, the Carmine mechs should be able to accomplish more in their first sorties!