The Mech Touch

It had been a while since he designed a mech all by himself.

When Ves looked back into the past, the last time he developed a mech by himself was when he designed the Devil Tiger.

The Devil Tiger Project had been the first time he completely consumed himself in his passion. He went so far out of his way to realize his ambitious vision that he did not even realize that he was working his way towards a masterwork mech.

Even without Lucky's gem, finishing the Devil Tiger would have still led to a lot of gains for him! That was one of the few times he truly felt as if he had vindicated his existence as a mech designer!

Afterwards, he rendez-vouszed with Gloriana at the Rev Indra System and that spelled the end of his habit of isolating himself in his design lab.

Now, he had someone else at his side when he developed this tendency!

Working with Gloriana was a joy. Both of them were very competent and possessed different but compatible views on mech design.

Designs such as the Soldier variants, the Bright Warrior and the Doom Guard exemplified the synergy they achieved.

As Ves and Gloriana both familiarized themselves with each other's strengths, they adjusted their work accordingly.

Gloriana invested herself in the details, having liberated herself from the need to take the big picture into account. As a mech designer who was highly sensitive towards tiny flaws and imperfections, she would much rather spend her time on resolving these issues than worry about the intangibles.

In contrast, Ves was a big picture guy. He didn't really care too much about the nitpicking that Gloriana often liked to engage in. In his perspective, what did it matter if some tiny flaw caused the acceleration of a mech to drop by 0.01 percent?

Of course, if there were too many flaws, those performance drops all added up to a meaningful difference, but Ves did not want to waste too much time in squashing them all out.

What he wanted to do instead was to come up with a fantastic vision and concept that was so powerful, that it didn't matter if his mech came riddled with flaws!

"Life isn't perfect!"

The difference between Ves and Gloriana was that the former liked to have a little chaos while the latter pursued order.

Ordinarily, both of them would never been able to reconcile their respective design outlooks with each other!

In practice, they learned to compromise with each other. They stepped on each other's toes plenty of times at the start, but over time they learned to walk around each other more carefully.

All of this caused the pair to focus on different aspects of mech design. They neglected their weaknesses and shored up their strengths, knowing that they could lean on their partner to take care of the issues they weren't good at solving!

Both of them thought that everything would be fine and all was right with the galaxy.

That was until Master Willix popped their bubble.

In her last visit, she easily ascertained the state of their collaboration. As a seasoned mech designer who had traveled the breadth of human space, she encountered numerous wonder couples.

She had also seen how developing a deep interdependence with a partner could lead to disaster.

The moment one half of a couple became indisposed, the other half became functionally useless as well!

Thanks to the early warning, both Ves and Gloriana had become aware of this potential outcome. This simple observation was enough to put both of them on guard.

Though neither of them had any intention of breaking their collaborative partnership, they still intended to spend some time on solo projects!

The design duel that Jovy pressed upon Ves turned into an unexpected opportunity for him to refresh his solo approach towards mech design.

Not only that, but with the implant limiter, Ves felt as if he regressed to his older self.

Over the year since he integrated with the Archimedes Rubal implant, he made increasingly more use of its versatile functions.

From storing lots of data to performing rapid calculations, the implant had become inseparable to his life and his work.

Now that the implant limiter interrupted the signal propagation between his natural brain and his artificial bioimplant, Ves felt as if he had regressed to an earlier version of himself.

Relying on his intrinsic brain matter to perform calculations was a lot slower and more imprecise. It was so bad that Ves had to make use of the calculating software provided by the design suite!

"How backwards!"

The lack of direct interfacing between his thoughts and the software slowed him down tremendously. He had to input numbers and formulas manually with his fingers. What used to take milliseconds now expended entire seconds or even minutes.

"Too slow!"

At the start, Ves felt very discomfited by all of the inconveniences of designing mechs the 'traditional way'.

It took hours for him to gradually get accustomed to the old school style of mech design. He already knew what to expect since this was how he originally practiced his craft.

Though Ves initially expected to default to his original approach, he unexpectedly made some alterations.

Ves was not the Apprentice or Journeyman from two or three years ago.

He had matured immensely, designed more mechs, increased his mech affinity and delved his design skills to a greater extent.

All of this and more had pushed him from a starting Journeyman to a rising Journeyman.

Many of the methods he used to employ in the past were crude, outdated or unnecessary.

In a design duel, speed was paramount.

Duels between mechs or infantry combatants only lasted for a few minutes to half an hour at most. Rarely did they stretch on all the way to an hour!

Design duels were different. There was no practical way for mech designers up to Senior to express even a fraction of their design ability in just 30 minutes. As for cobbling something up in a couple of hours, the resulting mechs hardly presented the mech designers in a good light!

A proper design duel had to take at least a day, and each additional day significantly increased the quality of the competition mechs.

Ves supposed that Master Willix wanted him to design a decent mech, otherwise the design duel didn't have to stretch on for so long.

A span of 72 hours was never enough to design a proper mech. Ves could never adopt the same approach he reserved for his serious design projects.

Simply put, designing a competition mech was basically a game of cutting corners.

He had to rush through many steps and budget his time in a way that allowed him output to remain as high as possible.

Good judgement was indispensable. He needed to make a very careful choice on which areas to neglect and which areas to invest his time in. He had to maximize his return on time investment!

There were many specific sections of the mech that took days or weeks to get it right, yet only yielded a modest performance boost.

It was a waste of time for Ves to go over them with a meticulous mindset. Knowing that he would only end up in a quagmire, he sloppily fleshed out his sketch in a matter of hours before moving on, knowing full where that he had left behind a host of flaws!

"Gloriana would probably go mad with rage if she can see my work now!"

Even though he only worked out a third of his mech design at this point, the mech already looked like a hot mess!

One of the benefits of working alongside Gloriana was that he had become familiar with the way she looked at mechs.

Right now, the mech was so sloppily put together that he would probably bash his head against his desk if he was anything like his girlfriend!

He loved it. Nothing excited him more than realizing his vision and making his mech come to life one step at a time.

The birth of any life was rife with uncertainty and chaos. With no nagging woman by his side to question all of his decisions, Ves freed himself from the shackles that caged his boundless creativity.

He implemented numerous solutions that he would have never applied when Gloriana was around. He made unconventional design choices that seemed sub-optimal but meshed much better with his vision for the mech.

Just because Ves chose to center his mech around superiority didn't mean that the mech should be superior in quality.

Gloriana might disagree, but Ves was different! A mech like the Devil Tiger proved that his own approach worked!

Some flaws weren't a big deal. Others were merely subjectively flawed to only some people. Even if Ves left behind some gaping vulnerabilities, it didn't matter as long as the overall performance of the mech was up to standard.

This was the essence of his design style! Ves always prioritized big ideas over small details!

With his current mech design, that meant designing a flamethrower-wielding striker mech that could scorch the competition before it got scorched in return!

Ves gambled everything on the application and management of heat. If Jovy happened to design a mech that expressly countered his design concept, then so be it. As long as this was not the case, his mech should have all the opportunities available to turn the tables on its opponent!

Knowing that his competition mech would face another heavily-armored mech, Ves opted to choose a special flamethrower system.

"I can't design a traditional striker mech." He murmured.

A humanoid striker mech often possessed articulating arms and made use of an external flamethrower.

However, this flamethrower was actually a huge vulnerability in a dueling environment!

At the very least, rifleman mechs had ways of keeping their distance against their opponents. The chance of their rifles getting shot was not that big at range, especially if the weapon had been reinforced.

However, no matter how much Ves beefed up the flamethrower, it would always be susceptible to attacks. If Jovy's mech happened to bring a shotgun, then it could easily blast the flamethrower apart, thereby winning the duel right then and there!

For these reasons and more, Ves decided to apply some frontline mech design principles to his competition mech.

Instead of adding hands to his mech, he instead cut them off and mounted internal flamethrowers into them. Due to the space they took up, Ves had to enlargen the rest of the arms themselves, causing his competition mech to resemble an upright gorilla!

These considerable changes altered the entire balance of the mech, but with his keen understanding of Battle Mechatronics, he easily adjusted the overall frame.

Regardless whether his competition mech would duel against a mech armed with a flamethrower or a shotgun, it was a good idea to keep all of the important parts behind a good layer of armor!

Every system had to be internal. From the flamethrower modules to the propellant, Ves could not afford to expose any of it to enemies.

His design choices automatically made his mech look fat and bloated. That said, Ves did not actually pile as much armor onto his competition mech as he could have. He wanted to retain at least some semblance of mobility.

He didn't feel confident in his mech if it was too immobile. While his weighed-down striker mech design still boasted weak mobility, at the very least it should be enough to provide more tactical options to Joshua!

After two days, the overall direction of the mech design had already been set. Despite all of the limitations, Ves managed to design a mech that was only moderately worse off than if he could still make use of his implant.

"This mech design is missing something." He hummed.

While everything went fairly smoothly, he vaguely suspected that sticking to convention wasn't enough to overcome a talent like Jovy!

Yet the problem he faced was identical to the one that plagued him while he design the Doom Guard.

His striker mech did not possess enough capacity!