The Mech Touch

Designing the first three Carmine mechs for the Survivalist Faction turned out to be a relatively simple process.

The technical content of the designs were not particularly challenging. Ves had deliberately dumbed down a lot of aspects to the point where they performed like entry-level second-class mechs at best.

The severe lack of time did not grant Ves the luxury to employ more powerful and sophisticated solutions. It was actually quite impressive how he and Jovy were able to whip up a handful of rough but fully functional second-class mech designs in just a couple of hours.

Sure, none of them possessed the refinement or raw power that allowed them to win any awards, but the most important part about them was that Ves had great confidence in their Carmine Systems.

"Do you need to take a break? I can't help but notice that your attention is drifting off again."

"Ah, that's not necessary, Jolie! I admit that staying awake for four straight days without taking a single nap might not have been my best idea, but I don't think it will affect my work efficiency."

The RA Senior paused in his work and stared at Ves with a puzzled expression.

"My name is Jovy. Are you certain you can persist? Misspelling names or mistaking my identity is one of the more severe signs that your judgment is being impaired."

"It's nothing! Really! I'm fine!" Ves pushed back any suggestion that he was out of his mind! "Anyway, let's move on to producing these mechs before we tackle the design of the juggernaut. I am really eager to try out these high-end superfabs. I don't recognize their models or manufacturers, but they can easily blow my AP-VEX out of the water."

Jovy still looked suspicious, but he readily moved on to business. "I wouldn't celebrate so soon if I was in your shoes. These superfabs are designed with exacting precision in mind for the most demanding and delicate projects. They offer greater manual precision and control throughout the production process, but it is also easier to botch a job if you are incapable of handling them correctly. I highly recommend you read through their manuals first before you operate them. These instruments are meant to be utilized by Masters tasked with creating masterworks. That is why you have been assigned this workshop in particular."

Ves could fully see that as many of the machines eschewed automation for greater manual control.

As he began to skim through the dense and thick virtual manuals of a couple of the Red Association-exclusive production equipment, he found it increasingly more difficult to keep track of every new variable that he had to take into account.

He underestimated how much the high-end production machines demanded out of him in terms of skill and multi-tasking ability.

It turned out that the amount of manual settings and variables that an operator needed to take into account was so great that it was impossible for a baseline human to keep track of all of the variables!

"Can you handle it, Ves?" His friend walked over and asked with concern. "If you prefer to work with more familiar workshop equipment, I can request someone to materialize a copy of your AP-VEX Superfab."

"That won't be necessary. If I want to become a first-class mech designer, 1 will have to work with this caliber of production equipment sooner rather than later. It isn't every day that I get to play with some of the best workshop machines that the Red Association has to offer. I don't need to master all of the operations of the machines at once. I just have to gain a solid understanding of the basics before I am good to go. I will try to set up the accelerated growth of the three Carmine Systems first before I tackle one of these superfabs."

It was best to set up the growth of the organic components that made up the Carmine System for his three experimental first. Time mattered a lot for biomechs and biomachines. The longer they were allowed to grow, the less defects and deviations they exhibited.

The best biomechs had to be grown over a span of months or even years in order to attain the highest degree of quality!

It was not necessary to wait that long for Ves to produce his current batch. The Carmine Systems he had in mind were predominantly made out of fortified and modified human flesh.

Although the organic parts were rather weak and unable to cope with the rigors of heavy campaigning, they should be quick and easy to grow to full size. That was already sufficient for a bunch of test mechs.

"Ugh, what sort of stuff do mech designers grow with this organic synthesizer?" Ves let out a frustrated breath as he tried to make sense of the manual and the overly complicated control interface. "Who owns this workshop anyway?"

He eventually got the blasted machine to process his order without adding any unusual chemicals or strange organs. The Carmine System was just an oversized and glorified vascular system when it came down to it. There was no need for Ves to make it any more complicated.

He spent a few more minutes hovering around the strange biotech production machine in order to verify that it wouldn't produce an unholy mutation of flesh and machine.

His few personal experiences with biotechnology had taught him that he could never be too careful when messing around with biomechanical production.

"Alright, let's proceed with fabricating the conventional parts of our Carmine mechs."

The high-end superfab that Ves chose to do his work was extremely powerful.

Its production speed was blazingly fast when he tried to fabricate anything simple. It was able to process the tougher and more troublesome exotic materials with such great power that Ves could proceed with the next step in a matter of seconds instead of minutes.

In fact, the superfab worked so quickly that Ves actually had to adjust a few settings to slow it down! If the large and complicated device ran through the queued processes too quickly, Ves wouldn't be able to exert enough control over the individual operations, thereby preventing him from putting his personal touch on all of the fabricated components!

Ves thought about employing additional enhancements such as Blinky's design network or his recently developed Living Workshop ability, but he held himself back in the end.

There was no need to go all out and reveal his extraordinary work methods in one of the strongholds of the Survivalist Faction!

It wouldn't help that much anyway. The Carmine mechs he intended to fabricate were all based on rushed and flawed designs. It was impossible to make any of them look good to the high-minded mechers anyway.

"I just need to fulfill the job, nothing more."

Hours passed by as Ves and Jovy fabricated the first three test mechs with increasing proficiency.

Once Ves got a handle on the basic operation of the high-end superfab, he began to accelerate his pace while simultaneously exerting greater manual control.

He started to get a better hang of what mech fabrication was like at this level. Ves knew he was only scratching the surface of what was possible.

The superfab was meant to be used to fabricate powerful and incredibly sophisticated first-class mech components. Using it to fabricate a large collection of second-class parts was overkill.

Nonetheless, the more Ves studied its options and its technical properties, he was able to envision all of the variables a qualified first-class mech designer needed to master in order to fully realize all of its possibilities.

Ves did not particularly feel enthused by the prospect of overseeing all of these overwhelming options. They seemed excessive from his perspective.

His approach to fabricating mechs was a lot more holistic and esoteric. That meant that he was fine if the mech parts exhibited minor defects and misalignments so long as they did not compromise the safety of the mech as a whole.

He actually felt that all of these random and seemingly chaotic deviations added a special sort of subtle charm to a mech.

Unlike the lifeless and completely 'correct' mechs produced through materialization, the mechs produced through manual fabrication always bore the marks that were unique to the production machines as well as their human operators.

These slight variations and differences caused each of his products to develop their own unique flavors and personality. They might have been derived from the same design, but each copy started out with a unique identity and continued to diverge when put to use.

Ves felt he was able to impart a slight amount of personal touch to every part. He was not able to do this as well as he hoped, but it should be more than enough to impart a sufficient amount of life in the three Carmine mechs.

The assembly process did not present Ves with any complications. Despite utilizing a new high-end assembly system that directly utilized strong and focused applications of gravitic forces to lift up gigantic metal components as if they were as light as a feather, the basic control scheme was not that different in the end.

Ves had deliberately kept most of the design elements fairly simple in order to avoid the need to employ any complicated assembly procedures.

The only stressful moments in the assembly phase was when he needed to gradually integrate the rapidly-grown bioparts of the Carmine System into the mech frame.

The extensive networks of gigantic blood veins and other bioprogrammed tissue could not be tossed around like normal metallic components.

He had to keep them at the right temperature range and prevent them from losing too much moisture. He also had to fit them in place in just the right way before merging any contact points with the mechanical systems of the Carmine mechs.

Fortunately, Ves did not make any serious mistakes, and all of the parts behaved as expected.

He only encountered a few annoying complications when he attempted to integrate a down-sized version of the Carmine System into the half-open frame of the demimech.

The tighter spaces and his overall lack of experience with working on machines of this size forced him to slow down in order to do everything properly.

Neither Ves nor Jovy had accrued any experience with demimechs, so both of them had to be able to improvise a lot of new solutions on the spot!

These additional challenges would have probably produced significant delays for Novices and Apprentices, but the two Seniors were far too competent to get stumped by these issues.

They ultimately got the hang of it and managed to complete the third and final Carmine product of this batch!

Both Ves and Jovy stepped back and took a few minutes to catch their breath and admire their latest handiwork.

"I must say that it is a novel experience to work alongside a mech designer as unconventional as you." Jovy spoke up first. "Your approach to mech design is much more haphazard than I expected. My teachers within the Association would have ripped you apart for breaking so many rules. I find it interesting that you somehow found a way to make it work and turned it into one of the strong points of your design style. I have the sense that these Carmine mechs would have never become so alive if you employed a more structural approach."

Ves always liked it when others stroked his ego. He did not dare to take full credit, though.

"Too much chaos isn't always a good thing. You're not so bad yourself. There are good reasons why mech designers from your Association are regarded as the best in the business. You have mastered an endless amount of best practices that have been meticulously developed and formulated by entire generations of Masters and Star Designers. A part of me is envious of you for having the privilege and the cognitive ability to not only memorize them, but master them all. You mechers are really something else, Jovy."

The two had only worked together for less than a day, but already developed a strong degree of mutual respect and familiarity towards each other!