[Valkyrie Brunhild - VR-B-01]
If the Valkyrie Avenger was the luxury version of the base model, then the Valkyrie Brunhild was the limited edition version!
It was clad with an armor system that Ves found extravagant in a standard mech design. If his estimates were correct, then the production cost of the Valkyrie Brunhild amounted to around 1.6 billion hex credits!
"That's half the price of a serviceable second-class combat carrier!"
Not only that, the Brunhild's armor system also incorporated a modest amount of Rorach's Bone!
It had been quite some time since Ves found traces of this strategic material again. It had been a long time ago since Ves took part in the Glowing Planet Campaign. Back then, he was just a trivial low-ranking mech designer.
He remembered that the Fridaymen and Hexers fought quite vigorously to break open the Glowing Planet and claim as many chunks for themselves as possible.
It was impossible for both sides to forget about all of the Rorach's Bone and other valuable exotic minerals they harvested. This was the first time he directly came in touch with a design that explicitly drew on the bounty of the Glowing Planet.
"This means the Hex Army is already becoming a lot more serious."
The Hex Army specifically ordered the development of the Valkyrie Brunhild for a single purpose. They wanted to use it to nurture compatible expert candidates.
"Are the Hexers trying to take advantage with this extravagant variant?" Ves frowned.
This was a very real possibility in his opinion. A month ago, he held a bombastic press conference where he published the breakthroughs of numerous mech pilots.
How could the public not be interested in the means in which so many of them advanced at once?
One of the consequences was that the Larkinson Clan received an insane amount of applications from mech pilots eager to become a hero.
Ves suspected that the Hegemony was trying to see if they could benefit from whatever he did to produce so many expert pilots. After all, the Friday Coalition performed a brilliant diplomatic move by borrowing a lot of expert pilots from the surrounding lesser states. For various reasons, the Hexadric Hegemony wasn't capable of keeping up, so the Hexers had to obtain additional expert pilots from another source.
"Tough luck. I'm not doing anything special to this design."
There was no way he was going to play along!
First, recklessly releasing a variant that was guaranteed to help mech pilots surpass their limits would only paint a bigger target on his back.
Second, there was no way to enhance the spiritual foundation of each copy of the Valkyrie Brunhild without the active cooperation of the design spirit.
The Superior Mother was still in slumber, so even if Ves wanted to give the Hexer mech pilots some opportunities, his hands were tied.
In the end, Ves only did the minimum of what was expected of him. He cleaned up the spiritual design of the Valkyrie Brunhild. Due to the fairly radical changes to its armor system, its glow efficiency had dropped by 20 percent.
"This time the tradeoff is worth it. Losing a bit of glow intensity is not a big deal if the survival rate of the expert candidate is doubled."
Ves envied the treatment the Hex Army provided to its expert candidates. Perhaps the Larkinson Clan should begin to issue upgraded mechs to its own expert candidates as well.
After dealing with these expensive variants, Ves moved on to working on the next three variants.
[Valkyrie Interceptor - VR-I-01]
The Intercepter variant excelled a lot more in space combat than the multi-environmental base model. It lost the capability to fly and fight efficiently in gravity wells in order to gain a substantial boost in mobility. It accelerated considerably faster and it was also a bit more maneuverable to boot.
Ves could have easily imagined designing this kind of variant himself if he wasn't so swamped with work. Of course, since a Master Mech Designer who excelled at mobility had developed this variant, the Interceptor's speed boost was much more considerable than if it came from his own hands.
Since the scope of the changes was relatively smaller, its glow efficiency dropped by only 12 percent when Ves had done what he could. This was very acceptable to him. Hardly anyone would notice the difference.
[Valkyrie Huntress - VR-H-01]
The Huntress variant altered the fighting style of the base model. It eschewed melee combat entirely and completely dedicated itself towards ranged combat. Armed with a powerful rifle, it was designed to leverage its Marked For Death Ability to debilitate an enemy at range.
As long as it worked, the mech pilot of the Valkyrie Huntress could easily shoot down its target and gain an advantage in ranged duels!
"What a clever application!"
Ves was very inspired by this variant. He even felt he should borrow this concept so that his Larkinson mech pilots enjoyed the same advantage.