StarCitizen:Greycat Industrial

Greycat Industrial is a StarCitizen:human manufacturing company that produces armor, industrial equipment, and utility vehicles. Founded on StarCitizen:Mars in 2337, Greycat is one of the oldest still-operating corporations in the StarCitizen:United Empire of Earth (UEE). Its first successful product was advanced armor plating created to protect mine workers, followed by the StarCitizen:Pyro RYT Multi-Tool. Greycat's best-known product is the Personal Transport Vehicle (PTV), sometimes referred to informally as the Greycat.<ref name="galactapedia">Template:Cite RSI</ref>

Its extensive line of industrial equipment and armor has made it one of the most recognized brand names in the UEE. The company has remained a UEE staple for centuries on the strength of streamlined designs, exacting safety standards, and a diverse product line. Similar to StarCitizen:RSI, Shubin, and StarCitizen:Tarsus, its long history makes it a corporate cornerstone of the modern UEE. Greycat experienced success early on but only became a household name after releasing the Personal Transport Vehicle (PTV) centuries later. Most analysts credit Greycat's growth into a manufacturing empire to managerial decisions made by the company's founding family, the Broussards. A growing number of historians, however, believe that much of the company's success can be attributed to Ruben Pardue, the until-recently forgotten engineer responsible for designing and developing some of Greycat's most important products.<ref name="portfolio">Template:Cite RSI</ref>

History

Arrogance of Youth

Ruben Pardue first made a name for himself while attending the StarCitizen:University of Rhetor. After publishing his graduate dissertation exploring future applications of geohacking technology, he attracted the attention of StarCitizen:Titania Terraforming. The company recruited the young engineer to aid its efforts in terraforming StarCitizen:Uriel, an experimental undertaking to raise the planet's core temperature to compensate for the lack of heat generated by the Oberon system's neutron star. Pardue was undaunted by the immense task and jumped at the chance to try to crack the riddle of fixing a planet.

Pardue quickly distinguished himself as an adept problem solver with a caustic tongue. Many who worked with him bristled at his arrogance but never questioned his competence and dedication to the project. He rose through the ranks and was soon asked to lead the construction of a network of tunnels under the planet's surface to house another team's experimental thermal device. Pardue spent months in the tunnels obsessing over every detail. In his downtime, he sketched ideas for new equipment that would have been useful to his operations, including initial designs for what would eventually become the Pyro Multi-Tool. These sketches would not be realized for years, due to a tragedy that changed the trajectory of Pardue's life and career.

On May 23, 2381, a section of the underground operations hub collapsed, killing thirty-seven workers and injuring dozens more. Trapped in a connecting tunnel, Pardue was barely reached by rescuers in time to save his life. His dominant left arm required amputation above the elbow. With Titania obligated to cover medical costs, Pardue could have had the finest StarCitizen:prosthetics available at the time, but he refused, a choice his biographer Jing Fermi believes was self-imposed penance for his failure to prevent the catastrophe. Pardue quietly left the company after the accident. Titania investigated the incident but never publicly released its report. The tragedy was another setback to the plan to terraform Uriel, and the company dissolved years later after deeming its attempt to manipulate the core temperature a failure.

Upon hearing that Pardue had left Titania, former university classmate Pippa Broussard reached out and offered him a job. Her family owned a small but respected industrial goods manufacturer, and she was eager to put her stamp on the brand by infusing it with new ideas. Pardue's tarnished reputation after the accident had left him without other options, so he agreed to the comparatively low salary Broussard offered. Three months after the collapse, Pardue began his career at Greycat.

Expanding Ambition

In 2337, StarCitizen:Odis Broussard founded Greycat Industrial with the goal of producing and supplying safety equipment to miners seeking their fortune among the stars. The company's name was a nod to the family's nickname for Odis, whose hair unexpectedly turned grey when he was in his twenties. By the mid-24th century, Greycat was manufacturing a number of well-regarded and affordable products from its Mars headquarters, but its market presence was minimal.

When Odis' daughter, Pippa, took control of the company in 2380, her ascendance coincided with the creation of the United Nations of Earth (UNE) and the completion of terraforming projects in the Croshaw system. Inspired by the expansionist spirit, Pippa's first act as Greycat CEO was to open a second manufacturing facility on Angeli. Away from the watchful eye of her father, who still maintained control of the Board, Pippa hired Pardue to expand Greycat's product line.

Pardue's first design was a line of industrial armor. Incorporating new safety features and advanced alloy plating that would have been critical to helping workers in the Uriel tunnel collapse, the Aril industrial armor became a major success. Its clean, functional design came to set the standard for Greycat products going forward. Aril armor remains a bestseller for Greycat, with only minimal changes made to Pardue's original concept.

Inspired by the Aril's success, Pippa asked Pardue to head Greycat's engineering department, but he politely declined. Pardue refused promotions for the remainder of his career, avoiding managerial positions so he could focus on building. This also ensured that every one of his designs would be thoroughly vetted and implemented by others. While his vision and style are now synonymous with Greycat, his preference for the drafting table over the boardroom meant his influence was not well known until the release of Jing Fermi's biography, Hidden Design, in the early 30th century. The book became a bestseller by juxtaposing Pardue's productive but uncelebrated professional career at Greycat with a tumultuous personal life, which the events on Uriel haunted until his death in 2458.

Quick Reflexes

Pippa discovered that expanding Greycat's influence and production pipeline was not without problems. The popularity of the Pyro Multi-Tool upon its release so overwhelmed the company's supply chain that the backlog kept most customers waiting months for their order. This gave competitors time to design and sell cheap knockoffs. The ongoing battle with copycats and counterfeiters would consume significant company resources for centuries.

When profits plateaued in the early 27th century, CEO Liana Broussard implemented a controversial plan to overhaul the production chain in an attempt to fix the issues that plagued it. The goal was to have a manufacturing facility in every UEE system. Because building and managing all of these new plants would be costly and time-consuming, Liana outsourced much of the work to regional manufacturers. This proved to be a costly miscalculation. Many of the regional plants either chose to ignore or failed to meet the strict standards set by Greycat. Some of these unreliable third parties leaked or outright sold design specifications to counterfeiters. Soon, most knockoffs carried the same color scheme and design specifications as the real thing, and many even claimed to be made by Greycat Industries, not Greycat Industrial, a distinction lost on many casual consumers.

The fallout from this strategic blunder harmed Greycat's bottom line and led to a power struggle within the Broussard family for control of the company. When the dust settled, Liana became the only Greycat CEO ever to be ousted. Her brother, Marcel, became CEO and embarked on an equally ambitious plan of his own.

Bigger is Better

As CEO, Marcel Broussard enacted a two-pronged plan to keep Greycat solvent. He aggressively lobbied the UEE to clamp down on counterfeiters. Even with the eventual passage of a bill that introduced harsher penalties for those convicted, government intervention could only go so far. Documents would later reveal that Marcel also contracted private security forces to find counterfeiters and convince them "by any means necessary" to shutter their operations.

Marcel's most daring gamble came with expanding Greycat's product line. Up until the early 27th century, the company mainly made handheld tools, safety devices, and industrial armor, products that could easily be copied. To insulate the company's sales, Marcel argued that Greycat should make big-ticket items that would be harder to counterfeit. Many were skeptical and concerned about the upfront costs, but Marcel pushed the plan forward.

Marcel knew the success of the plan hinged on the products, so he dug through the company's archives and uncovered old Pardue designs that had been explored but not implemented. Among the designs Marcel moved into production were the PTV (buggy), the massive Cydnus mining bot, and a series of mining lasers and tractor beams. While most of the larger industrial devices took time to turn a profit, the buggy proved more popular than expected. Pardue had initially designed the vehicle to navigate cramped mining tunnels, but Greycat employees discovered that early test models were ideal for crossing the expansive factory floor where the buggies were being made. After a few minor changes to Pardue's design, such as removing the heavy protective roof, the purely industrial vehicle was transitioned to be more general-purpose, allowing the PTV to be marketed to a larger audience. It has since become ubiquitous across the UEE.

Marcel's controversial but inspired leadership made Greycat a household name and helped ensure that the company would remain strong for centuries. He told the Terra Gazette that "Greycat needed to reinvent itself to remain relevant." The company did so without losing its identity or alienating loyal customers by combining the Broussards' focus, dedication to quality, and willingness to try something new with the distinct design stylings of Ruben Pardue.<ref name="portfolio" />

Trivia

• The company is named after StarCitizen:Ben Lesnick's cat Gray.<ref>"Star Citizen behind-the-scenes fact--here is the actual grey cat the buggy is named for", @banditloaf, Twitter, October 6 2013</ref>

See also

• Template:Link RSI

References

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