Bluemage Wrote:CD: Why that particular list of products? Who is that rival company, and why are they rivals? Why would they be pro-space?In order: The product list basically grows out of starting as an automobile manufacturer, then extending into building industrial robots rather than hiring someone else to build their production lines, then to construction equipment and other kinds of vehicles, then as cybernetics and mecha developed from earlier robotics technology expanding that to suit, medical equipment having been the stock in trade of a company acquired to facilitate entering the cybernetics market. Wyvvern Armory was a more recent merger, done mainly for vertical integration with the combat mecha/cyber business and on the other side for Motodyne optics and high-energy technology, with the name kept for brand recognition purposes.
Are they ideologically driven? Financially linked to Zeon/Zeon-affiliated companies/other pro-space powers? Out for revenge against Sovereign Earth for some sort of legal slight?
The rival company is pretty much just a name to be attached to similar products on the other side of whatever dividing line ends up getting drawn, with their headquarters in South Africa instead of on a colony cylinder. It can be ignored if something more interesting develops in its place.
They're pro-space because they build a lot of the equipment used in space, from actual ships to the extraction equipment used on Luna, Mars, and asteroid mining, and zero-g construction/maintenance robots - cutting lasers and plasma torches make up a lot more of their high-energy product line than weapons sales. Microgravity and a manufactured environment with no foreign contaminants are also good for producing the ultra-high-quality optics and components they need.
So, yeah, while they have groundside interests in automobiles, aircraft, and robotics, and the factories they and others use to produce them for that matter, the high-end stuff is mostly space-based and promoting it is in their interests. I'm not sure what political faction the corporate culture tending toward minimal backstabbing even in their shady dealings (to foster the idea "Like them or loathe them, you can do business with Motodyne") would lean toward, as I'm not all that up on Gundam lore, but that very reputation would make it possible that they could remain at least nominally neutral unless forced to take a side.
Actually, I like that as an unofficial/shadowrunner's version corporate motto - the official one being "The Engine that Drives the Future".
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"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows