The Mech Touch

Just after Ves presented his bold proposal, Blinky directed his shining eyes at Joshua and Ketis.

Mrow?

The couple looked quite confused. They never expected that Ves would propose a third option, and one that sounded a lot different from what they were accustomed to. They didn't have a good idea of what this proposal entailed.

Ves only just came up with this plan, but he already became invested in it. The more he thought about it, the more he felt this was a great way to design a powerful expert mech!

Of course, there were a number of issues as well, but he was confident he could deal with them. His goal was to turn the Chimera Project into an expert mech that was capable of achieving greater impact at the start of any major engagement. He did so by moving beyond the traditional framework of mechs.

Seeing that the two lovers failed to follow his train of thought, he activated a design suite and began to sketch extra modules around the projection of Venerable Joshua's possible expert mech.

The expert mech still retained its hero mech configuration, but it looked like it just took on a half-suit of heavy combat armor.

In order to illustrate his point in the clearest terms possible, he chose to make a dramatic adaptation by mounting artillery cannons on the sides and rear of the hero mech.

The entire ensemble looked so different from that of a normal medium mech that it shared a closer resemblance to a heavy artillery mech like the Transcendent Punisher!

"What is this?" Joshua asked in a befuddling tone. "You can do this?"

"Yes." Ves smiled. "It's technically feasible, though it entails a lot of work. The reason why you don't see this kind of solution in the galactic rim is because it's not efficient. The general approach to serving expert pilots is to identify their greatest strengths and design a single powerful expert mech that accommodates them as best as possible. This model works well for specialists such as Venerable Jannzi and Venerable Tusa, but you're not a part of them. You're simply good at everything, though there are still gaps when we compare your performance to the expert pilots I've just mentioned."

This was something that troubled Ves quite a lot when he started to think on how to approach the Chimera Project. Venerable Joshua was his favorite expert pilot and he wanted to do something more for him. From the current direction of this project, Ves didn't feel as if he would be doing him any justice.

He needed to turn Venerable Joshua into the most defining hero of the Larkinson Clan. This would not only inspire his clansmen, but also make other parties pause whenever they felt tempted to attack the expeditionary fleet.

How could he grant more power to Venerable Joshua without muddling up his expert mech design?

How could he turn Venerable Joshua and his expert mech into the centerpiece of the Larkinson Clan's mech forces?

It was very hard for bland and balanced mechs to attract attention. Ves had always been an advocate of the idea that it was better to go for extremes than to do your best to shore up your weaknesses.

Typical machines such as rifleman mechs and knight mechs possessed very clear strengths and weaknesses. They were good at some aspects and horrible at other aspects. Humanity found a way to cope with the latter while making the best of the former. Mixing and matching different mech types was the best way to draw out the strength of specialized mechs.

This is why he came up with the concept of add-ons.

Ves became inspired to adopt this solution after recalling his experiences back on Prosperous Hill VI.

The most memorable event was witnessing the biojuggernaut's rampage. The way Uranus devastated an entire city and slaughtered thousands of mechs, including instantly killing several expert mechs, was an incredibly dreadful sight.

It was an inspiring one as well. As a mech designer, Ves was able to appreciate the rogue biomonster's combat effectiveness at a much greater level.

Though a single squad of MTA mechs finally managed to take Uranus down, that was mostly because the tech disparity was too big.

The fundamental lesson that Ves drew from this incredibly impactful event was that size mattered a lot. A bigger mech could carry more stuff that allowed it to wield greater power.

However, there were good reasons why mechs never got too big. It was more economical and efficient to adopt the standard sizes that the mech community had settled with after hundreds of years of continuous development.

Yet did that mean it was useless to deviate from these norms? No. It was just a lot more wasteful to go off the beaten path.

It just so happened that Ves didn't care too much about the cost. He wanted to do Venerable Joshua justice and he felt that making stuff bigger was a good idea.

It was not practical to design a larger expert mech. That would turn it into a heavy mech or beyond, and that entailed a critical reduction in mobility. In expert mech duels, this could become a critical weakness that could lead to Venerable Joshua's doom.

Instead, Ves chose to retain the regular hero mech form, but decided to mount temporary add-ons to it. When he researched this topic prior to his meeting with Joshua and Ketis, he found out that it was already an approach that existed for a long time, though it was not that common in the galactic rim.

"I understand now." Ketis said with appreciation in her tone. "Ves wants to do something special for you. I highly suggest you take it. As long as this works out, your expert mech will be able to achieve a far greater impact in battle than our other expert mechs!"

Joshua scratched his head. "I still don't understand. I get what you're trying to do. It's like the mech version of donning a suit of combat armor with integrated armaments. I am just trying to figure out what the point of this is and whether it will actually help me in battle. All of this sounds so outside of what passes off as normal in mechs that I'm afraid I won't find my groove. I would rather pilot a hero mech and be done with it if that is better."

"You're right that this feature can be a burden, but it is not as complicated as you think. The Larkinson Clan needs greater strength than what an ordinary expert mech can provide, and I think this is a viable if a bit extravagant solution for that. The goal of providing your expert mech with powerful mounted wargear is to increase the power of our clan in a dramatic fashion. Every survivor from Prosperous Hill VI can tell you that a bigger mech is a lot scarier than a smaller mech. The sight of your expert mech equipped with add-ons that increase its bulk by two to three times is so eye-catching that the morale of our own troops will soar while the morale of the enemy will sink."

In other words, this solution fell in line with the psychological warfare doctrine of the Larkinson Clan. Some decisions that didn't make sense on the surface became a lot more understandable when taking other factors into account.

After a bit of explanation, Venerable Joshua reluctantly bought on to this ambitious idea. "I can work with this, I think. If our clan can really benefit from it, then I'm willing to try it out. What kind of configurations are you thinking about making, though?"

Ves smiled. Now that he managed to convince Joshua to embrace the idea, the rest was simpler.

"Let's start with just a couple. We can add more mounted wargear loadouts as time goes on, but we don't have the time to design that many." He tapped the projection that he currently projected. "Take this artillery wargear for example. I may have gone overboard with exaggerating its size and cannon loadout, but this is actually a decent choice. When I look at the expert mech lineup of our clan and the rest of the Golden Skull Alliance, I see a distinct advantage in melee machines. We don't have that many solutions that work at range."

Especially at the top-end. In the near future, they could rely on just three expert pilots to provide ranged support. Venerable Joshua, Venerable Brutus and Venerable Stark were the only ones who could help, and only the latter two were truly capable of matching against other expert pilots who excelled in ranged combat.

As much as Ves believed in Venerable Joshua's strength, his hero mech along with his broad specialties meant that he was at a significant disadvantage in this situation.

So when Ves thought of a solution to this problem, he became inspired by Uranus. Just make everything bigger. Size conveyed greater power, which meant that adding more bulk onto Joshua's expert mech translated to greater strength, though not in any aspects.

"If you mount this… wargear… Onto Joshua's machine, then it changes everything." Ketis noted with some concern. "He won't be able to dogfight or maneuver quickly anymore. With how few extra boosters are added to this wargear, he won't be able to fend off any enemy expert mech that comes close."

"It's not an issue, Ketis. As long as no enemy comes close, Joshua will enjoy an absolute advantage in ranged combat. An expert artillery mech is a scary opponent to face. Just its existence is enough to cause a lot of dread in any powerful opponent."

She wasn't satisfied, though. "Will it be effective enough? What about the cost? More importantly, in order to make this additional gear worthwhile, it has to incorporate resonating exotics. I'm already hearing about supply problems. It will become even harder for us to obtain all of the necessary materials if you go through with this plane. How will you solve this problem?"

Ves raised his hand to stave off her barrage of questions.

"It's not as troublesome as you think. Let me begin by stating that this external wargear is meant to be expendable. That doesn't mean that Joshua should dump it into space as soon as it is spent. I would still like to get it back at the end of the battle. It is just not as important as the core mech itself."

He fiddled with the design interface in order to make his point clear. He drew up a very simple battle where the Chimera Project deployed with its artillery loadout.

In the first ten or so minutes, it fired its cannons with abandon. The integrated heat sinks and power supply meant that the mounted wargear was able to output a lot of damage without draining the core mech.

Once a battle progressed and the wargear reached its limits, Joshua merely had to issue a single command to purge the spent equipment.

Now that it was freed from this burden, the mostly-fresh expert hero mech was able to join the fray and continue to fight by relying on its base form.

"The best part about designing and fabricating the mounted wargear loadouts is that they don't have to be too expensive and difficult to make." Ves explained. "The core mech is clad with Unending alloy and I doubt that any material that we can get in the short term will come anywhere close to its durability. So I see no point in trying to catch up to that. Instead, we can rely on cheaper materials but simply apply greater quantities so that the size and bulk of the wargear is responsible for conveying power. This is also a good way to squeeze greater power out of low-grade resonating exotics!"

It was not as simple as that, but Ves didn't feel the need to explain all of the details.

What mattered was getting Venerable Joshua onboard this new plan.

For his part, the young expert pilot became increasingly more interested in trying it out. Just like Ves, Joshua frequently craved new mechs. He would get bored if he piloted the same one all of the time.

"I'd like to try this out." He said with greater certainty in his tone. "The extra wargear has to be useful, though."

Ves nodded in agreement. "That is what we are going to explore right now. Not every mounted wargear makes sense. It is very hard to turn your expert mech into a nimble and agile light skirmisher when we are adding to its bulk rather than the other way around. Let's see what you can do and what roles our clan is lacking."