William immediately dismissed the idea, "No way, this’ll make us targets for others, and the gang won’t agree to it."
Building an exoskeleton by taking over a steel plant and rolling mill is like buying an entire garden just to cook a meal.
Lin Miao’s three thousand cost is based on players dismantling scrap yards for steel recycling and Gloria acting as a smuggling insider from the hospital.
Now Lin Miao has even signed Gloria and plans to promote her, so there’s no need to even pay for prosthetics. ERO, the hospital warehouse that’s been around for sixty years, has so many discarded prosthetics waiting to be scrapped that trucks have to come in and haul them away.
As for the steel, Lin Miao pays the players 600 Eurogold for every 3.5 tons of materials hauled in by small trucks, with a 75% recycling rate, and the cost comes down to about 250 Eurogold per ton, without considering technical expenses and equipment wear and tear.
The biggest reliance for cost control is not the low technical content of the exoskeleton itself, but the scrap recycling furnace and prosthetic channels.
Now two more have been added, and even if the original one breaks, it’s not a big deal. Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s just a furnace for recycling and smelting metals; what’s inside is practically indistinguishable from black technology.
Lin Miao has now established a small-scale complete production line: raw material extraction (scrap recycling) → smelting (recycling furnace) → rough processing (compressing machine) → fine processing (CNC machine).
Even the motors and neural pathways that cannot be produced are supplemented by Gloria, to achieve low cost.
And why do gangs rarely engage in legitimate industrial production? Because the profit margins in physical industries are low, and a lack of any production process can lead to soaring costs.
So they usually engage in black industries like smuggling, drug dealing, extortion, kidnapping, and prostitution, with profit margins of at least five times.
Why do people engaged in these industries often have no patience left for physical production? Because the money comes too fast and too easily, so much that they can’t stand business ventures with a cash return cycle exceeding half a year.
They engage in high-risk black industries for short-term high profits, and can’t bear the high initial investment and slow earning model.
So upon hearing the costs, William immediately gave up on the idea of self-production.
What a joke, he didn’t even have the authority to push things forward.
The last thing is the software usage fee, which is the most expensive.
The external control system isn’t the problem; it doesn’t cause neural loads as the manual says, but to explore the software source code, the firewall needs to be breached.
After Dalek discovered that the computer couldn’t break through the software firewall, he began hooking up the gang’s hacker to the deep dive equipment, lying on the hacker chair to do it himself.
However, less than two minutes after connecting, all the computer screens in the underground warehouse began to flicker and shake, with mainframes overloading and spewing electric sparks. The data stream was chaotically surging, with the flashing scarlet threatening to leak into the real world in a terrifying way.
Even the hacker’s forehead started to smoke.
"William! You son of a bitch, what the hell did you bring back?"
Dalek didn’t dare let his hacker continue, hastily injected him with new coolant, and forcibly disconnected him once his consciousness returned.
William was still confused.
"What the hell is going on?"
"How should I know!" Dalek shouted in his raspy voice with great volume.
He now wished he could cook William in a pressure cooker with added salt.
The hacker only woke up groggily after a long while, his face red like a boiled shrimp, clearly having burned part of his nerves from the overload, which made him stammer when speaking.
He looked like a drooling idiot when he spoke.
"They... they... put... a... firewall... in... the software... very... very—powerful..."
"I... I feel... it’s more troublesome... than... the Kangtao... Kangtao database... from two years ago... I... I can’t handle it... alone."
"Damn! This is the small company you mentioned?"
"You really don’t fear troublesome matters, William."
Dalek was so furious his hair was almost popping out of his scalp.
"This is a shell company; those company bastards love to play this way, using a new shell, testing new drugs on us, testing new gear and prosthetics!"
"Even if someone dies, getting product liability, by the time the shell company closes, the song continues! The dance continues! If successful, they acquire and merge, that’s how they play!"
Spit splattered across William’s face, and he could only wipe it clean with a tissue, since it was indeed shady of him to have trapped his brother.
"Then just forget it, I’ll cancel the order."
Dalek stopped William.
"It’s best not to cancel the order."
It’s common to try hacking a proprietary control program only to be counterattacked by ICE, but giving up on a relatively cost-effective weapon because of this is somewhat stupid.
"Even if we don’t buy, other gangs will, and if it’s sold to Valentino or the Tiger Claw Gang, we’ll be in trouble."
William glanced at the hacker, thinking if everyone in the Sixth Street Gang ended up stammering, they’d be laughed at before any fight starts.
After checking the recent system data, Dalek said, "We also verified the control system, it really only has the function of reading and copying body motion electrical signals, it doesn’t collect data, nor does it have a reporting function, overall it’s still safe."
"You can first take these two pieces of equipment to the streets, try a few fights to test the results, and if they do work."
William smacked his lips, feeling regretful.
If this stuff were deemed worthless by the higher-ups, he could claim ’Captain America’ for his own stash.
So what if it’s risky to use?