The Mech Touch

Trying to replace the virtual piloting simulation programs was not a trivial ambition.

It amounted to nothing less than upending the entire industry and market around this product category!

Ves did not think he could succeed in this challenge. He only came up with this idea just now. Developing it into an actual feature and product demanded a huge amount of time and effort! It would take decades if not centuries to complete a new practice tool that could completely displace virtual reality programs as the premier choice for mech pilots!

He just wanted to add another selling point to his upcoming commercial training mech design and possibly his other products as well.

He might even turn it into another staple feature of living mechs, one that was explicitly geared towards helping mech pilots improve!

Ves first thought about the strengths and shortcomings of virtual piloting simulator programs and tried to think how his own alternative could provide a superior practice environment.

He briefly turned his attention back to reality and swept his gaze across Fort Fishblood.

His elevated position granted him a decent view of the recently-erected base. Worker Bees had converted the materials harvested from Violet Ridge on one side of the portal and the Gate Continent on the other side of the portal into additional structural reinforcement.

The Larkinsons had never stopped their construction efforts. Ever since Venerable Tusa came back with recordings of powerful and highly destructive fish-whales, the construction teams were tasked with strengthening the fortifications of Fort Fishblood.

While they could only provide limited assistance in any battle, a bit more defense was better than nothing. Fort Fishblood turned into a larger, taller and more complete fortification by the day.

Naturally, mechs still played a starring role in the defense of this beachhead. While the Larkinsons had begun to dispatch groups of mechs in the surrounding environment, most of them stayed behind and guarded the fort against any possible attacks from the neighboring hordes of Swarmer fish.

He spotted the tall and thick Shield of Samar not too far away from the ancient space gate. The expert mech was dormant at the moment but could switch online at any time.

"Expert pilots have the greatest need for a superior practice environment."

This was the biggest downside to becoming a demigod!

When expert pilots reached an entirely new life phase, their piloting capabilities far surpassed their previous levels.

Simulators did not become irrelevant at the expert pilot level. People like Venerable Tusa and Venerable Joshua still needed to spend a lot of time in simulators in order to polish their basic and fundamental piloting skills to greater heights!

However, the inability for simulators to accurately represent the more metaphysical aspects of high-ranking mechs meant that expert pilots lacked a complete practice tool.

No matter how many simulated battles they fought, they weren't able to exercise their resonance strength in the slightest!

Aside from that, they weren't able to practice their resonance abilities and other advanced functions of expert mechs either. In the long run, their ability to pilot their expert mechs might actually regress because the flaws in their practice routine distorted their piloting style!

Ves' eyes shone as he continued to observe the Shield of Samar.

"If I can make a special illusionary simulator that can accurately simulate the full feature set of an expert mech, I can step up the practice of all of my expert pilots!"

This was an incredibly valuable innovation and one that might revolutionize the training pattern of high-ranking mech pilots across human space!

Ves quickly shook his head in order to temper his wild ambition.

Based on his current capabilities, it was impossible for him to construct such a powerful and complete illusionary practice environment.

Simulating the piloting experience of an ordinary mech was already challenging enough. Doing the same for a powerful expert mech that not only leveraged true resonance but also prime resonance was an extremely time-consuming endeavor!

He turned his sights away from the Shield of Samar.

He instead directed his gaze towards the more ordinary mechs utilized by his clan. Both the old and new models were special in their own way, but they were far from reaching the exaggerated power levels of his expert mechs.

They were much easier for him to simulate, but that didn't mean that he could pull it off in his current state.

"I am at the starting line when it comes to implementing this idea. I shouldn't aim too high at the start." Ves reminded himself.

He cast his gaze away from his existing mechs and thought back on his upcoming mech design projects.

Out of all of the ones he had in mind, the simplest mech that he could use as a platform for this feature was the commercial training mech.

The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced it was the right choice to implement his new idea!

"Training mechs are already focused on training mech pilots to begin with, so a new illusionary piloting simulator is not that big of a surprise!"

Training mechs were also slower, weaker and less complex in their external performance characteristics.

They did not possess the huge amount of firepower of the Transcendent Punisher nor the compound glow of the Ferocious Piranha.

They were merely simple practice tools that calibrated their performance at a lower level in order to accommodate the limited piloting abilities of mech cadets.

The difficulty of simulating a lower-performing mech with fewer bells and whistles was much lower!

"This is a realistic goal." Ves smiled.

Of course, he still had to invest a lot of time and effort in this new effort. He needed to start from scratch and conceive of an entirely new application of spiritual design that he had never developed before.

Even if he put in all of that work, there was no guarantee that he would succeed!

"Can I even do this?" Ves wondered to himself.

He did not feel discouraged at this idea. While he originally drew inspiration from this idea by viewing Purgatory in person for the first time, he did not intend to develop a creation as massive and profound as a real pocket space.

He just wanted to construct a spirituality-based illusionary realm that could provide mech pilots a more effective way of improving their piloting capabilities.

"What is the point of doing this? How will my living mechs be able to provide superior training conditions than virtual piloting training programs?"

He thought about the living mechs that defined his work. He recalled the complaints from his mech pilots about how the virtual simulators were incapable of allowing them to grow alongside their real living mechs.

If his product served as the core or carrier of the spiritual piloting simulator, then Ves might be able to break this constraint!

"This will be a huge step forward for the mech pilots of our clan!"

Ves also had to arrange a complete piloting simulator in spiritual form, of course. This demanded a lot of work and he wasn't sure whether the spiritual foundation of his mech design was able to carry a spiritual construct of this magnitude.

"In theory, it shouldn't be a big deal. The simulator program is just a large collection of programming code. I don't need to create an actual realm in an intangible form.

That was way too far away for Ves! He believed he would have to realize his design philosophy before he could tackle such an ambitious project.

For now, Ves would already be happy if he created a basic, barebones illusionary piloting simulator. The main requirement was that it provided a qualitatively better training environment with a much higher degree of realism than before.

In this form, the simulator would already allow mech pilots to practice alongside their living mechs. Both of them would be able to gain combat experience and deepen each other's relationship towards each other!

This was already a fantastic benefit of his virtual piloting simulator that could not be matched by any virtual piloting simulator! It didn't matter if his own work possessed other limitations due to their lack of maturity.

He could always expand this spiritual training simulator at a later date. His upcoming training mech design would primarily serve as a test platform in order to verify whether his radical new training concept was viable.

Once he created the most basic form of the spiritual piloting simulator and observed how different mech pilots interacted with them, he could derive new conclusions and design more elaborate spiritual piloting simulators for his subsequent products!

"I can even incorporate the growth aspect in the simulator so that it will grow grander and more elaborate over time!"

A newly-built living mech only possessed a limited amount of strength and carrying capacity for spiritual constructs.

If the living mech grew stronger over time, the simulator that was embedded into its spiritual foundation would be able to grow and become profound as well.

Ves might even make it so that its practice sessions became more attuned to the individual training needs of the mech pilot!

Once his thought reached this point, he felt as if something in his mind had clicked. By developing a brand-new spiritual piloting simulator for his commercial training mech, he finally judged that his crucial training mech design possessed enough added value to stand out in the mech market.

"Being able to provide a considerably more realistic practice environment is already an undeniable attraction to highly competitive mech academies!"

This was because the spiritual piloting simulator in his mind had the potential to offer more benefits.

Greater realism combined with deeper immersion gave Ves a chance to address the other major shortcoming of virtual training solutions!

If his spiritual alternative was able to pull the mind of the mech pilot deep enough, the new practice environment might cause the target in question to experience the illusionary battles as actual life-and-death struggles!

Normally, this was an incredibly difficult attainment. The best virtual reality developers had failed to come up with a simulator that could make mech pilots forget actual reality to the point where they treated their existences in the virtual environment as their real lives.

Yet Ves did not believe it was impossible for him to create this condition. His expertise in spiritual engineering was just good enough for him to be able to construct at least a basic form of immersive illusion.

He just had to lean heavily on the mind-melding and emotional manipulation aspects of his design applications.

If the glows of his mech designs were capable of making a pilot feel awe or fearful, it should be possible for Ves to induce other kinds of emotions in order to raise the stakes of simulated battles!

Ves briefly paused when he thought about the potential dangers to this design application.

"Can I go too far with this? What if a mech pilot becomes so deeply immersed that they prefer to inhabit the lives of their illusionary selves?"

This was not a new problem. There were countless addicts that had completely fallen for the charm of virtual reality games.

This problem would only grow worse with a more realistic simulation method. Ves needed to implement a lot of precautions to make sure that the mind of the mech pilot became clear again after the end of a lengthy illusionary simulation session.

"Maybe… I can reset their minds with the help of Lufa's glow."

This sounded like a great combination!

As Ves continued to think on how to implement all of the specific aspects of his new spiritual piloting simulator, he recognized many different challenges that each needed to be solved in different ways in order to make the entire idea work.

Yet no matter what questions he raised, he was always able to come up with the right answer.

If he wasn't able to solve a problem in the short term, then he would definitely be able to come back to it when he became a more experienced mech designer!

His passion became stoked as he became more certain about implementing this fantastic new innovation in one of his next mech design projects!

"It's viable!"