Mecha Design Quest

After tentatively selecting Gregory's hexapod design, your team got to work. Skeletally, the system was going to use a relatively old-fashioned ring arrangement to control the legs, with a forward engine compartment and transmission. The transmission system itself, while nominally a stock part, would probably have to be modified however. Since most mechs these days were bipedal, that in turn meant the transmission had two main power outlets: a bit of a problem when you needed seven! This wasn't a huge hangup, but it would however mean finding an out-of-company shop to make sure that you either had a further power splitter, or a modification to the transmission to split the power locally.

The engine, meanwhile, was an underpowered piece of shit. With a listed 610 horsepower, in reality you had to push the thing to the bare bloody edge of operability in order to get enough power downshaft to throw the transmission wide open. While you couldn't get rid of it, unfortunately, there were options to improve the engine with a supercharger. This would be hideously expensive, however, and the general consensus was that unless you wanted to be the most expensive mecha coming to the floor, you would have to go unsupercharged and just try to push as much weight savings as possible to make up for it.

The gyro, thank God, was just a gyro and very temperate. Making 2.5 thousand RPM, it would be flatly overkill to stabilize a hexapod, and you could probably set up a way to under-drive it if you needed to find a way to scavenge up more horsepower to run the legs.

While all this was going on, you had a far more important job to get on with: scoping out potential contractors. While it wasn't an ironclad order like your engines and related, you did work for Hotchkiss. It was assumed you'd use company guns. Since you weren't planning on getting anything bigger than a Hotchkiss Portative, this was a good plan, and you'd stick with it. Everything else, though? It was like driving off gadflys.

For cockpit manufacture, you really only had one option outside doing it in-house, and that was Guilmont & Sons. Their involvement would shave a good bit of time and money out of cockpit construction, and also get you better radio integration, but came with the very real risk that they'd be overpromissing themselves. Guilmont & Sons wasn't a moniker- it was literally a workshop operation out of Chantilly by some guy and his nine children.

Actuators was far more of a mess of bids. The Societie du Charleville, who produced the original Araignée actuators, was trying to sell you their latest and greatest models. Rated for a theoretical 50 kilometer top speed, they were cheap and lightweight: their rep quoted you nearly 25% off per actuator compared to the in-house estimate. On the other hand, the OSEN group was offering an excellent actuator as well. While not as much a cost reduction versus in-house, somewhere around 15% per actuator, the OSEN actuators were very heavy-duty, and rated for 35kph top speeds without any reduction in lifespan. In addition, for private sale these actuators were warrantied for 60,000 km of road use, even if said warranty wouldn't apply to your contract.

Feet were probably going to be in-house, unless you wanted to go to the Compagnie du Siens and buy from them. They were offering an excellent 20-ton foot, which would meet your terrain requirements, but would also be a solid 5% cost hike over your in-house 25-ton foot. The problem was, that cost hike covered a massively lighter foot, with more elegant actuation systems, better automatic load balancing, and a much better wet terrain handling. If you want to push quality, this would be the place to go.

On the off chance you, for some reason, don't want to buy Hotchkiss for the armament, there's always Fabrique Nationale. They were offering a licence-built Colt MG-52 if you were so interested, and the increase in striking power from a 7.5mm to a 12.7mm round was tempting, if nothing else. The weight increase would be pretty notable and firepower wasn't a goal… but you know, it would be nice to have.

With the contractors identified, the only question was now deciding whether or not to take them up, as well as whether to switch horses to a different design. Since you haven't started work on a physical prototype yet, the amount of lost time will be fairly nominal. If you want to push forwards, though, everything is lined up, ready and waiting.

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VOTES
(one vote per category, please vote on all categories. No plan votes, those break the vote counter.)

Engine
[] Supercharge it. Cost will go up pretty notably, but you need that power back.
[] Don't supercharge it. You can make do with lightening the mecha.

Transmission
[] Send the transmission out to be modified to supply the needed power outlets
[] Have a transmission adaptor built to direct the power from the stock outlets to the needed number of outlets

Cockpit
[] Send construction out to Guilmont & Sons. Lowers cost.
[] [Cockpit] Use in-house construction

Actuators
[] Buy from the Societie du Charleville. Lowers cost drastically, works at high speeds
[] Buy from the OSEN group. Lowers cost, is very reliable.
[] [Actuators] Use in-house construction

Feet
[] Buy from Compagnie du Siens. Raises cost, better terrain handling, lower weight.
[] [Feet] Use in-house construction

Weapons
[] Buy new Hotchkiss mle. 1914 guns in-house.
[] Buy new MG-52 Colt machine guns, liscence-built by Fabrique Nationale.

OR (exclusive to any other vote option)

[] Abandon the hexapodal mecha, continue with another concept
-[] Matthew's Concept
-[] Yves' Concept
-[] Previous Write-in Concept