"Well, that depends a lot on how long everything in the short and medium term takes and how much other stuff gets added in the meantime, doesn't it. Probably at least six months to a year."

"Nothing farther out than that?"

"That's long enough for a couple of Endbringer fights, I don't think it's prudent to make plans farther out than that."

Lucien sighs.

"Yeah, that makes a lot of sense."

"Do you have ideas of what more funding would get you in the next year?"

"If I could expect the funding to keep up instead of dropping off again next month I'd prioritize the assembly station overhaul - frontload making more bots and have them helping me with everything else hardware while I did software."

Lucien discusses very rough numbers with her on how much she'd need and for how long to make this worthwhile and what she'd get out of it.

"Hm, does this mean there's a good chance that if you got this amount of extra funding three months from now you'd be able to build one more of this type of bot but if you got the same amount of extra funding now you'd be able to have two of those bots in three months?"

"Those numbers aren't right, but, loosely, yes, if I expect the materials to keep coming I can change how I use them and have more robots faster, whereas if the materials may not keep coming that doesn't make sense as a way to structure how my workshop is running."

"If we can figure out some rough lower bounds that are justified I might be able to use them to argue for more investment in your early career than tinkers typically get."

"I am somewhat concerned that this would be used to try to strongarm me into committing to staying in the Protectorate when I graduate."

"Hm. That's a reasonable concern - could focus on the gains for pre-graduation. Possibly it would help if you were willing to guarantee that they could keep some bots even if you don't stay?"

"The bots are all operated centrally. It's not that I wouldn't lend them, but I don't know how they'd feel about tech that technically answers to an outside contractor buzzing around; I'm not even confident they'll let me keep maintaining my dad's suit."

"What are you planning to do after graduation?"

"Make a ludicrous fortune in private industry."

"That sounds like a very worthwhile plan!"

"Thank you, that is a more supportive response than I was expecting!"

"I wish more tinkers would make ludicrous fortunes instead of joining the Protectorate, though don't tell the PRT I said that."

"Your secret is safe with me."

"When I was starting out I wanted to be an independent providing really quick irrigation to large areas, but it's not that lucrative and the only places that would really benefit are places like Sub-Saharan Africa where the main barriers are warlords, not ease of irrigation."

"Yeah, they have way too many of those."

"Yeah, maybe one of them will manage to get things under control enough to allow things to actually improve, though I'm not optimistic."

"I don't know enough geopolitics to know if I should be optimistic or not."

Lucien knows some but it might be out of date, he's happy to chat about what he does know.

Later that night he starts figuring out how to PRT-politics up a bigger investment for Lorica. He needs two things to make this happen: the funding, and the PRT's approval of the project. Rather than try to get the PRT to invest the money itself, he can probably get Gallant's trust fund to invest the money if it will save him on his power armor upkeep in the long term - Gallant doesn't care whether someone works for the Protectorate, his girlfriend is Glory Girl afterall. Now the armor couldn't be made wholesale by Lorica probably, and this whole plan would still need the PRT's approval, but what if Lorica was providing these machines which would save Armsmaster time on the upkeep of Gallant's armor? He has all sorts of charts for Armsmaster on how this would improve efficiency.  Sure this isn't the most politically convenient thing for Armsmaster to advocate for but Armsmaster has no idea what a politics is anyways. 

By early morning Lucien has the basic structure of his budget request planned out, and Armsmaster's seal of approval. Getting the PRT politics to work out isn't easy but he manages to have an informal proposal that seems feasible ready by the time he and Lorica have patrol together.

"- so you'd be providing machines to help with upkeep of these particular components of Gallant's armor regardless of whether you stick around in return for the upfront investment. My guess is they'll ask for toy licensing of all power armor you make in the future for anyone but yourself given that's what they've asked for in the past, but I think if you turn it down when they offer it they'll cave, but maybe be more resistant to future deals."

"Oh, toy licensing they can have, I'm not going to be making my ludicrous fortune on action figures! I'll need someone to show a robot how to do the basic maintenance but after that I can just have my regular flock do it in their off-hours for the time being, most likely."

"Cool, I can chat with Gallant about this and then bring it up with the PRT and get you a deal in writing later this week? Probably for a 75% bump in your budget for the next three months."

"Nice, way to go to bat."