Stacia had wrote down the Juniper SE, the same mech she used the most often and was actually the least useful in a team fight due to the smaller caliber of weapons that it could only carry.
Gray shook his head and said "I think I know the answer to this, but why do you still want to use the Juniper SE?"
"Because it's fast, nimble, has excellent scouting capabilities, and… and…" Stacia struggled to finish what she was saying.
"And what?" Geoff said impatiently.
"…and it's cute…" Stacia blushed slightly after saying this.
"Well, your first points are good, but that last one… not so much…" Gray said and then noticed that the girls were about to say something completely illogical he added "…so how about this one instead?"
Gray pointed to another scout-type mech in the catalog that he hoped to convince Stacia, and inadvertently the other girls, that it would satisfy their need to be cute.
"This is the Cupid Mk 01, it has even better scouting capabilities than the Juniper although it is slightly slower. In return though you shouldn't be taken out in a single hit and can carry a single standard weapon instead of the smaller ones the Juniper has to carry."
Stacia and the other girls scrutinized its looks, it did indeed look sort of cute to them, but it was missing something. "It's just not as cute… it's missing something…" Stacia argued.
Gray pointed to the next image of the Cupid Mk 01 and added "This is what it looks like when its sensors are active, is that what it is missing?"
The girls all looked excitedly at the image as when the sensors were extended it looked like the mech had a pair of tiny angel wings on its back. "Yes! That's what it needed! Ok, you've convinced me!"
Gray heaved a sigh of relief and had to wonder if some of the designers of these mechs took into account male and female aesthetics.
The Cupid Mk 01 in the standard configuration was matte white with a body size a little smaller than the Phalanx Mk 01 and was slimmer around the waist and had longer legs making it appear more elegant. It had slightly less armor than the Phalanx, but with the longer legs its top speed was significantly higher than other mechs. The only downside was it was not very agile, but it was not meant to be fighting up close to need that agility. The head of the mech had two round passive sensor suites making it look like a pair of big blue eyes. What surprised everyone was that this was the first mech that they saw that had accessories to change its visual appearance. This Cupid Mk 01 was very obviously marketed towards female gamers.
Gray moved on to Paul as Stacia was probably now trying to figure out how to make the Cupid Mk 01 cuter with some of the visual accessories. "Ok Paul, you picked… the Armadillo Mk 01? Really?"
"Yeah! It can take a beating a dish it right back! The spikes protruding from it are intimidating too!"
"Ok, so what are you going to do when the enemy doesn't come to you?" Gray asked honestly.
"Well… that's why I'll always be next to the others to draw firepower away!"
"In certain situations that would be useful, but I think you would be better off being able to protect in a more aggressive way. What do you think of this one?" Gray pointed at the Hoplite Mk 01 and added "It's only marginally faster than the Armadillo, but it is fairly agile considering its thick limbs and the shield and spear combo would help you attack and defend."
Paul thought about it for a moment and said "It does look more like a knight to me… but what about ranged attacks… oh wait, I think I know what you're going to say as Paul noticed the alternate spear you could purchase that came with a 6 shot grenade launcher or small laser cannon option.
The Hoplite mech looked like a Phalanx Mk 01 that worked out a lot. It had thicker limbs and thicker armor all around giving it much higher survivability at the cost of speed and agility. Equipped with a shield, the armor was still the standard uncompressed composite armor, but applied more generously to the front and sides of the mech while the back was the same thickness as the average mech. The shield was basically a rectangle slab of armor with a point in the center and self-attaching mounts that allows the shield to be attached directly to the arm if desired.
"Get the enhanced shield too if you can, it's expensive, but I bet it is worth it." Gray added
Paul looked at the enhanced shield and agreed with Gray. The enhanced shield cost almost as much as the mech, but it was a slightly thinner slab of compressed alloy armor instead of the uncompressed composite armor. The compressed armor made a huge difference in terms of strength at the cost of weighing more. The cost came from the advanced manufacturing process that required more than a 3D printer to create as compressed armor required a special chemical treatment and compression forge to enhance the alloy.
"You guys, can you help me with merits then? I don't think I have enough for the mech and the shield right now."
"We'll pool all of our merits together and get the mechs in order of importance as I don't think we can afford for everyone to get a new mech and new weapons at the same time. The standard weapons we can still use should be good enough for now, but we'll want to use the more specialized weapons these mechs were designed around." Gray stated. "Yurika, I think I know which one you picked"
Everyone turned to look at her sheet of paper and saw that she had wrote "Fire Hawk Mk 01" and while it wasn't the one Gray thought she would've picked, he actually trusted her judgement knowing her expertise with weapons.
"Heck yeah! I want this bad boy!" Yurika said excitedly.
The Fire Hawk Mk 01 was aptly named this due to the integrated plasma throwers in the arms. Most of the mech was given an average layer of standard uncompressed composite armor, but the arms were given compressed alloy armor allowing it to handle the high heat of the plasma throwers as well as take more punishment in general. It was given a dark orange/red tint to go with the fire theme this mech was obviously designed to use. The upper arms had two axes mounted giving it the appearance of having small winglets coming out of the arms. Lastly, this mech was also fitted with a large utility mount meant for heavy weapon support.
The default setup showed a large gatling cannon that was fed from a backpack in the large slot, the standard slot wasn't large enough to hold enough rounds to make it worthwhile. The mech itself was a little taller than a Phalanx but was also wider than even the Hoplite due to the need to keep the heavy weapons stable while firing. Compared to the standard mech, the Fire Hawk was slow, but it was strong and agile with a very large weapon capacity and good armor. It only had a basic sensor suite so it required information to be fed from a scout. Its biggest weakness was actually mid-range as the plasma throwers could easily be dodged at the maximum range and the Gatling Cannon was too heavy to aim reliably at anything within a few dozen meters. Still, the biggest strength of this mech was melee and short range and then long range and beyond. This mech fit Yurika's personality as it could unleash torrents of firepower at long range but was also able to use melee weapons if the enemy came in close.
"It's not as fast or agile as I would like, but the amount of destruction it can rain makes me happy!" Yurika said brightly.
Gray wasn't sure if she was damaged in some way as a baby, but remembering that she seemed to genuinely love weapons and fighting instead of just killing he wasn't too worried.
"Xyra, Caleb, since you're both snipers, how about the Whisper Mk 01?"
"… Are you making… fun of me?" Xyra whispered while glaring at Gray.
"N-no! Not at all! I just think that of the 3 sniper mechs available this model suits you both best!"
Compared to the other sniper mechs, the Whisper Mk 01 was similar in proportion to the Cupid as it favored a light amount of uncompressed composite armor except it was tinted a dark matte grey in order to not stand out. The armor of the mech was meant to be as low profile as possible so it looked fairly smooth all around without any extra flare or visual enhancements. Like the Cupid, the Whisper was also fairly fast yet still lacking in agility. The waist was a little thicker and the backpack utility slot was already used up with a small sensor jamming device meant to reduce the range at which the mech could be detected by sensors as well as a mounting bracket meant to hold a sniper rifle. It was dubbed the 'Whisper' due to the noise coming from the jammer that sounded like a soft whisper when it was first activated.
"These mechs alone… let's see… damn, almost 25,000 merits, and that's just for the mechs, we still need the weapons. How much does everyone have?" Gray asked the group.
Everyone shared their merit totals, they had all initially started with 1000 merits and the original 5 members of the team even got an extra 1000 merits from the promotional video, but they soon realized how hard it was to get more merits since matchmaking rewarded based upon tier and rank it seemed. Adding everyone up, Gray got a total of 15,905 merits. This was actually a large sum of merits, but they were going for the best mechs available to them.
"Paul's mech is the cheapest, then Stacia's, then Caleb and Xyra, then Geoff and myself, and finally Yurika's the most expensive. Probably due to the compressed armor on the arms. I think everyone's mechs will be important, but let's get the ones most needed for now."
"I'm important!" Geoff said proudly.
"Of course you are sweetie" Yurika said teasingly while patting Geoff's head causing Geoff to bark like a puppy.
"Ok, in reality, I'd like to get Stacia's first, then Paul's, then Geoff's and mine, then Caleb and Xyra's, and lastly Yurika's mech" Gray suggested.
"I think mine should be first! I'm important!" Yurika said proudly this time. Geoff was about to pat her on the head like she did to him but she elbowed him in the ribs instead.
Gray tried to console Yurika and said "Well, I'm doing this based upon need, we won't need your mech until missions and the war starts, Yurika, while the rest of ours are more helpful in the present, especially true for Stacia and Paul."
"Oh fine…" Yurika said while pouting.
"Ok! Let's head to the armory and unlock these mechs then!" Gray said.