[1-200] THE MECH TOUCH

Chapter 5: Investment

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—Status—

Name: Ves Larkinson

Profession: Novice Mech Designer

Specializations: None

Design Points: 1012

Attributes

Strength: 0.6

Dexterity: 0.7

Endurance: 0.6

Intelligence: 1.2

Creativity: 0.3

Concentration: 1

Neural Aptitude: F

—Skills—

[Assembly]: Novice

[Business]: Apprentice

[Computer Science]: Incompetent

[Mathematics]: Incompetent

[Mechanics]: Apprentice

[Metallurgy]: Apprentice

[Physics]: Novice

Evaluation: A loser on the right track.

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His status hardly changed since the last time he viewed it. Only his concentration had improved by 0.1. While he could work hard to raise his attributes and skills on his own, the System could do the same.

While he could have bought more equipment or pets from the System, what he really needed right now was to improve his own capabilities. Ves had enough sense not to rely too much on external help.

After browsing the Shop and the Skill Tree for a couple of hours, Ves formed a spending strategy based on the prices set by the System.

Attributes formed the basics. Not all of them were useful, but intelligence, concentration and creativity had a pretty big influence in Ves' future limits.

His creativity especially appeared deficient, something he could confirm first hand as any casual drawing he sketched would draw looks of disgust.

Ves wanted to raise his three core attributes substantially, but if he did that, he might not get an immediate benefit for the amount he spent. They were just too big and vague.

Developing his skill tree provided immediate results. He could improve practical sub-skills like increasing his proficiency when working with the 3d printer or become more proficient in balancing a mech's weight distribution. A lot of the fancier and impressive skills cost millions of DP to unlock and required the acquisition of other skills first. Those goodies were still too far away for the moment. Ves spotted plenty of low-hanging fruit that could improve the value of his designs for a modest amount of DP.

Frankly, Ves was spoiled for choice. But if he wanted to accomplish a hundred sales within a month and earn enough credits to meet his interest payment, he needed to ignore the extras and focus on the money makers. Spreading himself out in too many areas of interest would dilute his gains, resulting in a marginal increase in the value of his designs. An improvement of 1% in every category was not as eye catching as a jump in 10% in a single criteria.

"I need to think deep about this. My choices here will affect the rest of my career."

Many star designers gained their fame from standing out in a particular aspect. Raul 'The Armorer' Mendoza was a genius in the area of developing new armor alloys and employing them in ingenious ways in his mech designs. The mechs his company manufactured supposedly boasted the highest survival rate.