cp1

But, well, the planet was decidedly a backwater. A ramshackle port was how spaceships, and they were all giant ugly balls in his opinion, landed, unloaded, loaded, and departed. No triple gun turrets, no wave motion guns, no giant needles of death. Just... giant balls. Giant balls that came in every few weeks to anemically unload a few thousand tons of goods. Shocking really, when just on Earth, the planet Huu had been born on, millions were unloaded every day by millions of workers on thousands of ships.

But he was diverting from the topic at hand, the planet was boring and the only real excitement was the entertainment brought in every few weeks. The reason anyone came at all was to deliver potential students to the Blackjack School of Conflict and pick up some of the fish caught on Blackjack's rivers. A school for anyone who could pay the money to learn how to be a mechwarrior.

Oh, and there were giant mechs. All of them were angular and blocky things of course, nothing that roared his metaphorical engine. No RK-92 Savages, no OZ-06MS Leos, just... squares and rectangles on legs of squares and rectangles. That wasn't to say the Stinger was a bad design, it looked like the Gerwalk fighters of Macross which was always welcome. Huu just needed a little curve in his life, like any real teen on the cusp of being a man. Deluded and full of hormones, able to see the figure of potential girlfriends in any inanimate object he had laid his eyes upon.

Even the net boards were full of simpletons debating the different ways that squares and rectangles could beat each other into smaller squares and rectangles. Clearly they were wired different from himself. Except the Locust and the Maurader. Big balls with stubby arms and guns. Cuteness personified.

Other than prodding the mechwarrior wannabes on the local net, life was incredibly dull, Huu waiting to either be conscripted on his 16th birthday, or to be handed a bigger role in the family's business enterprise... running a World War 2 museum.

As the only child he had avoided conscription and thus did nothing but putter around a museum located several hours out of the biggest town on the planet, dedicated to weapons so archaic and ancient the Draconis Combine hadn't bothered to even shoot at it in passing during their raids. That was just how primitive the technology was. Filled with the machinery to produce equipment from the era, it was available for school tours and tram tours for the low low price of 15 kroner per trip, bulk discounts available.

Boring.

Incredibly boring. The novelty had worn off quickly as 5 year old Huu had discovered upon slamming his fingers into the breech of an 88mm cannon.

In any case, his family had been enobled as barons and earned a small stipend for their cultural contribution to the Commonwealth, the Lyran Commonwealth. By Steven Steiner who... wasn't fondly remembered, but a noble was a noble and a stipend was a stipend. It didn't stop the incredible same-ness of each day of course, but it was better than dying of exposure.

Not that that kind of thing happened in the Commonwealth where shelter and food was a right... but it was the thought that counted. Being incredibly pessimistic was part and parcel for any teenager.

Still, thoughts coming to a head, Huu was happy.

A system!

A chance to not be mediocre!?

Wait, no, self-respect, he had to have self-respect. If he did not respect himself, then there would be no-one capable of respecting him.

Right.

He was capable and great, but he could be even more with a system!

But first, enough gloating, time to actually look at this new system he had been gifted by whatever or whoever had sent him here.

++ System acknowledges user's attention. Losing Money Like a Tycoon System initiated. Standby. ++

Huu paused as the words sunk into his eyeballs, hopefully not in a literal sense.

A loss making system?

This was going to be easy. Most businesses lost money, most businesses closed down within a few years.

Losing money was the easiest thing ever!

Huu had to stop himself from getting too excited however, what were the gains here? Was he going to be gain the power of a mechwarrior of legend, or gain the ability to craft anything from imagination itself? Perhaps even be able to punch mechs in half with just a fist!?

Thinking too much and too fast was a problem, keep it calm, keep it cool he told himself.

++ All tycoons lose money to make money. Like with Amazon, Uber, AirBnB, DoorDash, Deliveroo, WeWork, Theranos and more. All tycoons become billionaires while their businesses lose money. Reach for the stars and achieve the same success by losing system funds. ++

Huu paused.

What the hell was AirBnB, DoorDash, Deliveroo and WeWork? He had heard of Amazon and Uber, but what the hell were the other two? Did they emerge after he had transfered across or something?

What did the system mean become a billionaire while losing money, how does that even work? Huu paused and considered that he might have gotten scammed by this new system.

No, it couldn't be, there wouldn't be something so lame right?

++ System initiating. Profit Making Loss sub-system activation complete. For every 10,000 System Kroner lost in a cycle, 1,000 Kroner will be deposited in the hosts' accounts. Each cycle lasts a preset period of time. Each cycle will be subject to optional objectives for rewards. Host will have system funds to spend. System funds it will be topped up at the beginning of each cycle. For every 100,000 in profit that the Host earns, 100 Kroner will be deposited in the hosts' accounts. ++

Huu paused again. That was a lot of money.

He was to lose money to earn money... but the scale of the money involved was insane. He wasn't a Landgrave or something like that, he wasn't earning millions of Kroner a month. His parents had a baron's title which came with it a fortnightly 15,000-ish Kroner stipend.

If he was getting enough money to earn billions... just how much in the way of system funds would be lost, moreover, just where was this money coming from?

But!

But there was a system and it was going to make him money!

++ First cycle initiated. Cycle length; 6 months. Starting funds, 200,000 Kroner. Optional objective, start a physical business. Please accept System Funds extractor. ++

A small rectangular box appeared within Huu's hands. Coloured lightly silver, it resembled a personal computer as many in the Lyran Commonwealth possessed. Useful for many different tasks from safety programs to more complicated tasks revolving around monetary and taxation expenditures.

It was special in how not-special it was.

It was also useful as a way to spend money from an account held in the Commonwealth Reserve Bank, the most reliable bank in the entirety of the Commonwealth, possibly the Inner Sphere.

Which then implied that whatever was behind this sytem was able to get past the eagle eyes of the auditors of the Reserve Bank, tasked with ensuring the monetary health of the entire Commonwealth. Something rather terrifying to consider in all honesty. They had eyes on every world, buying and selling Kroner to guarantee a base value of the house currency regardless of the world it was used on (in the Commonwealth).

For Huu, it didn't matter all that much, so long as he could spend money safely and freely, he could make as many losses as possible!

+_+

Sitting in his cottage, itself located a five minute walk away from the museum, Huu considered the system's stringent requirements. In the traditional home of the heirs to the baron Eggers. Where one could think on their coming responsibilities away from the all pervasive considerations of their parents.

As he thought, Huu pondered his new system. The system funds could not be used on his own personal benefits, only on that relating directly to business. Money had to be spent on business, one could not just withdraw the money and burn it to create a loss. No living lavishly with... uh... hookers? That was basically what Blackjack for expensive entertainment right? Yeah, no spending solely on that thing.

Most importantly of all, he could not do anything that might lead to anyone suspecting that he had a system. Or in this case, a system that was driving him to make losses.

Having his only knowledge of the universe from an outside perspective being that of the HBS Battletech game. Itself set on the other side of the Inner Sphere from his location, Huu pondered just what it was really he could do that would lose money. Funding an expedition out would cost a lot of money to be sure, but the starting capital needed was much greater than what he had now.

The fact that lostech could be rediscovered in the Helm Core, at least according to the Comstar News in-game was one thing, whatever the hell a Helm core was/is? That was another question.

That there was a new mech sometime in the future known as the Hatchetman was also interesting, it still kicked though instead of using its axe in the game which was interesting. Maybe the axe helped it do damage somehow? What it implied was that technology would be developing instead of regressing. An issue to keep an eye on with his new priorities in life.

And a few more miscellaneous pieces of information that weren't exactly relevant. Like the Bullshark or whatever that was. And Natasha Kerensky was in charge of the Black Widows... who were part of a DLC? He wasn't sure why she was so prominent but whatever. It was the tech that was important right now.

Why? Because with lostech, it meant there was a great many different ways that he could spend money to make money. But since lostech was coming back. It might not be effective right now... but in the future it would make him billions as the tech became available. Something guaranteed to lose money no matter the progress of technology?

Much harder.

Huu pondered the matter for a while before remembering a snippet he had read on the forums in the leadup to the game's release. That modern weapons could only be counted as rifles. Heavy Rifles being the equivalent to a modern 120mm cannon. Light Rifles in the 40mm range.

Worse still, rifles had a negative 3 damage modifier... so a light rifle effectively did 0 damage against BAR 10 armour.

And... well... his parents had a museum that also included all the different weapons of World War 2... and the tooling to manufacture them.

Tooling that could easily be replicated due to their simple nature in comparison to the Inner Sphere's level of technological sophistication.

Weapons that would do no damage at all to standard armour being produced en-mass? Marketed to the planetary militia, that would naturally then reject the design!? Leaving him with mountains of unsold inventory!?!?

Losses! All of it would make losses!

Huu slapped a fist into his palm, he had the start of his loss making plan, now was the time to put it into action!