The Big Four
Other than GMS, there are four other major mech manufacturers: IPS-Northstar (IPS-N), Smith-Shimano Corpro (SSC), HORUS, and Harrison Armory (HA). The licenses offered by these manufacturers are more advanced and specialized. Each manufacturer also offers unique core bonuses that become available when you have taken three license ranks from their catalog, rewarding you for your loyalty.
Harrison Armory is the premier manufacturer of weapons and weapon platforms in the galaxy. It is one of the three largest corpro-states that dictate the consumption habits of the Diaspora and Cosmopolita; unlike the others, the Armory is a major and overt participant in galactic politics, pursuing an expansive imperial project that is reined in by only Union and the Karrakin Trade Baronies.
HORUS is unlike any other galactic supplier. Neither a state nor a corporation, HORUS is best described as a decentralized agglomeration of omninet personalities, memes, codices, cells, and entities working as a horizontally-organized publisher of schematics and software. When attempting to discuss HORUS’s motivations or institutional ideology, it is safest only to assume that HORUS has little motivating ideology other than an insistence on open access to the omninet.
IPS-Northstar
The oldest of the three iconic corpro-states is Interplanetary Shipping-Northstar, better known as IPSN, a shipping and transport conglomerate that has existed since the invention of nearlight drives and stasis protocols first made interstellar commerce possible.
Smith-Shimano Corpro
Smith-Shimano Corpro is the second most powerful corpro-state in the galaxy. Unlike Harrison Armory and IPS-N, it holds little physical territory and doesn’t practice colonial missions in the traditional sense. SSC’s physical holdings are dwarfed by its omninet presence and its ubiquity across the Cosmopolita and Diaspora.