The Mech Touch

Every mech academy possessed mechs to allow their pupils to experience what it was like to pilot actual machines.

A mech pilot that trained exclusively with virtual mechs would never perform well on the battlefield. There were simply too many lessons that could only be learned while piloting a physical mech!

For this reason, mech academies demanded special mechs that specifically accommodated their desire to educate mech cadets.

This was the origin of teaching mechs. They differed from normal combat mechs in several ways.

First, their lethality came under heavy restraints. Whether permanently or conditional, the firepower and damage potential of these mechs had to be reined in and kept under control.

A single ordinary mech was easily capable of wiping out an entire city block in an instant! Putting so much destructive potential in the hands of partially-trained teenagers was a disaster in the making!

Therefore, teaching mechs had to be designed from the ground up with many safeguards. Remote kill switches along with hard limits on performance allowed mech academies to field mechs that weren't capable of killing hundreds of students or wiping out entire schools.

The second requirement of teaching mechs was that they should offer a realistic learning experience to mech cadets. This meant that teaching mechs had to resemble combat mechs to a sufficient degree so that the people that piloted them could easily transition to piloting full-strength mechs in the future.

Obviously, the second requirement partially contradicted the first requirement. In many cases, mech academies tended to favor safety over providing a more realistic piloting experience.

Cheaper teaching mechs were only capable of fulfilling one of these priorities. Mech academies had to spend much more to obtain teaching mechs that were both safe and effective!

The third requirement was that they needed to provide as much protection as possible to its current pilot. If the mech cadet improperly handled the mech or suffered some sort of accident, the young student could easily put his own life at risk!

Teaching mechs needed to be robust enough to keep the pilot alive in the event of an accident. Basic mistakes such as the mech losing its footing and tripping on its feet could easily damage the cockpit of a fragile mech. Such incidents happened quite a lot in the early years. If a mech couldn't protect its mech pilot upon falling, it wasn't suitable teaching mech!

The fourth and last requirement of a teaching mech was that it had to be cost-effective. It not only needed to come at an affordable price, it also had to be resilient enough to withstand daily abuse for a very long time.

The longer the teaching mech lasted, the less money the mech academy had to spend on servicing, repairing and replacing it. These activities just happened to be the primary reasons why mech academies went bankrupt!

When Merrill calmly explained these requirements, she finally revealed how her mech design proposal tied into them. "The Chiron is an adjustable mech design that aims to provide an individualized teaching experience to any mech cadet that uses it for practice."

The projection of the Chiron displayed the proposed design in several different ways. Sometimes, the mech wielded a sword. Other times, it held a rifle. Some of the Chirons were taller and others were shorter. Half of the mechs featured a flight system and the rest could only walk on land.

The assistants observing the projection still recognized the same underlying DNA, but they were confused why the mech came in so many versions.

"The main emphasis of the Chiron is its adaptability. It is a humanoid mech that is designed to match the mech cadet's physique as best as possible. As everyone knows, people are always the best at controlling their own bodies. The Chiron takes advantage of this fact by incorporating several shape-changing mechanisms that can adjust its physical proportions."

There was more to the adaptability trait than just changing the length of its limbs.

"In addition, the Chiron is not specifically reserved to a single mech type. Just like the Bright Warrior, its overall configuration is partially modular. With the right configuration and loadout, it can function as a knight mech, a swordsman mech, a lancer mech, a rifleman mech and so on to a realistic degree. While the combat effectiveness of each configuration isn't very strong, a teaching mech doesn't need to be powerful."

Miles Tovar interrupted her presentation. "All of this sounds good, but adaptable and adjustable teaching mechs aren't foreign concepts. The more exclusive and well-funded mech academies often possess a number of them to train some of their elite mech cadets."

"That's a fair point." Merill nodded in acknowledgement. "What I have mentioned up to this point is not strictly new. What makes the Chiron stand out from adaptable teaching mechs is the added value of its glow."

She manipulated the projection again, causing the Young Blood and the Old Soul to appear alongside the Chiron.

"The Young Blood is a spear-wielding knight mech that teaches mech cadets how to pilot melee mechs. According to user feedback, its mech pilots always feel as if there is something inside the mech that helps them in battle and points out the areas they need to work on. The Old Soul performs a similar function in the form of a marksman mech. Both of these mechs are products of Mr. Larkinson in the beginning of his career when he was just an Apprentice."

Her hand gestured towards the Chiron. "Now that our clan patriarch has grown in strength and developed his design philosophy, what would it be like to design a new teaching mech that reflects his current ability? If we look back at his most recent mech designs such as the Doom Guard, it is easy to imagine that the effectiveness of a teaching mech like the Chiron will be at least an order of magnitude greater than the Young Blood and Old Soul!"

Those who were aware of the two virtual mechs understood the potential of the Chiron better. However, even the assistants who became exposed to the virtual mechs for the first time understood the implication of a teaching mech with a complimentary glow.

If it was truly possible to design such a mech, then any mech cadet who piloted such a machine would essentially be able to receive instruction on a transcendental level!

Though such an amazing teaching mech did not replace the role of mech instructors and other teaching methods, it was a very fantastic complement that could make mech cadets become more outstanding.

Ves had instantly fallen in love with the mech concept when he first glimpsed it. The Chiron was simply too useful for him to pass up. He was also confident he could bestow it with a glow that facilitated the learning process!

He grinned. "The Chiron is an excellent example of a mech concept that takes a familiar and established premise but puts an entirely new spin on it with the help of a distinctive design philosophy. In fact, this is how several successful mech designers are able to stand out in the market. It is not enough to design a mech that is merely a retread of what the competition has already offered. You need to leverage your strengths and make the most out of your specialty."

He turned his attention to the projection and caused it to display some of his products that best reflected his point. The Desolate Soldier, the Deliverer and the Doom Guard each made a mark on the mech market due to their unique and distinctive strengths. This was despite their less ostentatious technical parameters.

"The Desolate Soldier is just a budget spaceborn rifleman mech. Yet because I imparted it with a glow that is based on duty, it has become a pivotal mech that successfully bolstered the morale of millions of mech pilots and starfighter pilots during the Sand War."

Ves shifted to the Deliverer.

"While my Deliverer mech was only relevant for a couple months, its impact in the later stages of the Sand War was only slightly less than the Desolate Soldier. In the hands of many mech pilots, it is merely a very unwieldy and clumsy spaceborn marksman mech. Yet as long as a devout Ylvainan mech pilot enters the cockpit, the mech's glow will finally settle in, allowing the Deliverer to gain an uncanny ability to snipe out sandman admirals in an immense swarm!"

He turned to the Doom Guard last.

"As for the Doom Guard, I'm sure that all of you need no introduction. Stripped of its glow, it is merely a well-designed spaceborn striker mech. Yet the glow that has caused it to become known as a fear machine not only adds another facet to this machine, but also compliments its role. Hardly any other striker mech is as good in area denial than our latest commercial product!"

The assistant mech designers weren't stupid. They all understood the underlying point that Ves was trying to make. It wasn't enough to design ordinary mechs. To make a proposal worthwhile for the LMC to pursue, it had to take advantage of the company's unique design strengths!

Right now, two Journeymen presided over the LMC's Design Department. Gloriana's especially was very strong in the right circumstances, but it wasn't easy to work with. In most mass-production models, her design philosophy mainly worked in the background.

This meant that the glows that Ves could bestow with his design philosophy should play a prominent role in any mech design proposal! The right glow could achieve a transformative effect on the value and utility of a mech design. The LMC would be stupid to neglect this unique advantage!

"Do you understand, now?" Ves asked.

Everyone nodded their heads. They looked like chicks as realization dawned upon most of them. Aside from a few clever assistants who formed this conclusion on their own, the rest only realized until now what they missed!

Ketis still raised her hand, though. "I get what you are trying to say, but I think it's not good if everyone here obsesses too much about glows. This is something that belongs to you, not us. We can only borrow your strength, but we can never own it ourselves."

As expected of his student. As amazing as his design philosophy appeared to be, she was determined to follow her own path! The temptation of other specialties never swayed her from her own goals!

"You are right." He replied with a smile. "All of you can learn something from her. That said, right now, you are all employed by the LMC. As assistant mech designers, your primary role is to assist the lead designers. Part of that job entails learning about the specialties of your superiors so that you can take them into account in your work."

This was one of the unfortunate realities of their low positions. Assistants did not have the right to impart all of their own ideas and preferences in a mech design. They had to abide by the ideas and preferences of the lead designers instead!

Ves decided to give them a bit of hope. "It's a different story if you become a contributing designer or lead designer. As long as you work hard and develop your design philosophy, you might advance to Journeyman one day. At that point, you no longer have to withhold your own ideas. Within the LMC, Journeymen are qualified enough to make their own mark in our mech designs!"

It would take years or decades for those with spiritual potential to reach this point. As for the assistants who lacked this quality, they might have work on other people's behalf for their entire careers.

He found it a pity to let so much talent to waste. The presence or absence of spiritual potential decided the lives of many ambitious people without their knowing.

Perhaps he could do something about this. He managed to force William Urbesh into an expert candidate. He might be able to do the same with some of his assistant mech designers.