The Mech Touch

After the Hyper Generation came into existence, a lot of debating took place in many different circles.

Many people started to develop their own ideas. They wanted to share their many thoughts with their friends and colleagues in order to obtain useful feedback.

There were also a lot of other people who started to harbor doubts about their understanding of all of the fancy new tech.

As a teaching professor, Ves keenly experienced the wave of curiosity and excitement that had swept across Terran society.

The Eden Institute was already hard at work in setting up brand new courses centered around teaching the basics of hyper technology!

These new courses were bound to become popular in the upcoming semester!

Curiously enough, the school also planned to open up numerous advanced public courses for mech designers who already graduated a long time ago. The offered classes would not only enable professionals to learn different aspects of hyper technology in a structural manner, but also gather a lot of like-minded colleagues together so that they could exchange ideas.

Ves did not have any interest in signing up to these public courses, but many other local mech designers who did not possess a background in hyper technology had already registered for them the next day!

As he walked across the campus of the Eden Institute, he heard plenty of interesting conversations.

"Do you think it is simple for you to design a mech with an azure energy shield? You need to secure a supply of phasewater first! This is a restricted good, and I know your father isn't high enough in the totem pole to obtain a quota for it. You should forget about working with this high-end tech and learn how to work with regular hyper energy shields instead."

"I regret my decision to specialize in the design of ranged mechs. Sure, they are still useful enough, but they have been relegated to a support function by the Hyper Generation. I was so sure that phasewater technology would continue to remain dominant for at least two more centuries. The mechers have ruined everything!"

As Ves entered the classroom and stood in front of his familiar batch of students, even he couldn't go around this topic either.

"The semester is almost over." He spoke in front of the fourth and fifth year students who had signed up to his Advanced Manual Superfab Operation course. "I have already worked with hyper technology beforehand, and I can teach you plenty of the lessons that I have learned from my own experiences with processing hyper materials. However, the time that we have left does not allow for a change in the curriculum. In order to help you along the way and figure out how hyper technology plays into your craftsmanship, I will permit you to ask questions related to this topic in the following hour."

Although a few of the students wondered how much a fairly young Senior Mech Designer like Ves actually knew about hyper technology, there were plenty of other students who did not hesitate to raise their hands!

"Professor, can you demonstrate how to fabricate a hyper product?!"

Ves responded with a rueful smile. "I would love to do so, but I need hyper materials in order to fulfill your request. Alexa, has the storerooms of this workshop facility received any hyper materials as of late?"

His teaching assistant shook her head. "No, sir. Hyper materials are constantly being identified and excavated in the wild, but the supply of mech-grade hypers is so limited at this early stage that they are already claimed by the ancient clans and the key institutions that work under them. The mech militaries have priority because of the early batches of hypers. The mech armies that are assigned to prospective warlords urgently need hyper technology to reduce their loss rate."

Numerous students looked at Alexa with envy. Her true identity as well as her recent entry into the Larkinson Clan had become known. There was no reason to hide this information, and it would be much easier for the both of them to operate in the Eden Institute with their current identities.

"Did you hear that, students? The supply of hyper materials will become a lot less constrained in a few years, but that time has yet to come. I think this is a good reminder that you must always think about the availability of materials in all of your projects. Just because you are Terrans doesn't mean that you have unrestricted access to all of the resources in your wish list. Phasewater will remain as scarce as always. The higher classes and tiers of hyper materials cannot be naturally formed. It is difficult to create the conditions necessary to spawn them, so I can imagine that it will be troublesome to obtain the potent hypers that you need to produce a high-end mech."

That caused a lot of students to look thoughtful or concerned. They thought that obtaining hypers would be easy because so many of them were being formed in the environment.

That was true, but only up to an extent. E energy radiation could only do so much. It took a much higher concentration of E energy in order to induce the transformation of higher tiers of hyper materials.

Ves and the T Institute had already experimented in this area. The most important finding that they had made was that it was troublesome to raise the upper limit of the concentration of E energy radiation.

The only reliable method that they could employ was to expose materials to the strong and active glows of various design spirits, but multiple living mechs or totems could not effectively stack this property.

What this meant was that the highest tiers of hyper materials that the T Institute could produce in-house was solely dependent on the strength of the design spirit.

More powerful design spirits such as Gaia could induce the transformation of high-tier hyper materials with much greater ease.

Less developed design spirits such as Kalo were much weaker. His glow could not produce any hypers that were strong enough to make them practical in first-class mech design.

Oh well.

The students continued to ask different questions. Most of them were rather basic, but Ves patiently answered them anyway.

His favorite student eventually received an opportunity to ask the question that was burning on his mind.

"Since you have already started to work on hyper technology, can you tell us how hyper technology relates to your specialization? Are there any strong synergies between hypers and living mechs?"

Ves grinned back. "That is an excellent question, Mr. Robar-Fulton. I cannot divulge everything, but I can tell you that living mechs can leverage hyper materials in multiple ways. I truly want to reveal the strongest and most useful interactions between the two, but this is strategic knowledge that is related to the success of my armed forces, so I will stay mum on that. One benefit that I can share with you is that exposure to different attributes of hypers can steer the growth trajectory of a living mech."

That caused Klaus and numerous other students to perk up. They all developed an interest in living mechs, though most of them had not signed up for his Introduction to Living Mech Design course in this semester. They could only try their luck next time.

"Can you give us a concrete example?"

"There are many different attributes that can imbue special properties to various mech parts and mech systems. Many of them are rather basic and common, but there are also weird ones that can be particularly useful. For example, a hyper material that has an aggressive quality can make a living mech fiercer in battle. Another hyper material that is related to accuracy can help to increase the hit rate when firing a ranged weapon. The effects grow stronger with better hypers. They tend to attract greater concentrations of E energies of the same attributes."

Ves did not explain much more because the students needed to complete their courses on both living mechs and hyper technology to understand the full picture.

"Sir, how will hyper technology affect the balance between ranged mechs and melee mechs?"

"Every mech designer has formed their own opinion on this subject." Ves replied with a smile. "I do not have any strong preference for one or the other, so my judgment is not as biased. As far as I am concerned, ranged mechs have not suddenly become a lot less valuable. They are still as useful as before. What is different is that melee mechs have caught up to them, which is good news for many professionals who have decided to earn a living by working with them. It is rather good that the Hyper Generation rolled out so soon. If the Phasewater Generation persisted for another decade, the piloting community would become much more skewed towards ranged combat."

In the past few years, mech pilots who worried a lot about their future had decided to specialize in ranged combat. None of them wanted to turn into cannon fodder and be forced to make suicidal charges against warships that could resist their melee attacks with ease.

The Hyper Generation restored the romance of melee mechs!

"What about first-class multipurpose mechs, professor?"

"I do not have any personal experience in designing first-class multipurpose mechs, but I think that there will be a trend of shifting their focus back onto melee combat." Ves replied after a bit of thought. "No multipurpose mech is evenly balanced. Most designs are skewed towards ranged combat. Oh, that is not entirely the case in Terran space. I almost forgot about your Destroyer weapons. You Terrans are really lucky, you know. You can already equip your melee mechs with the strongest offensive technology. Once you are able to combine it with hyper technology, your advantages in melee combat will only become more pronounced!"

That caused all of the Terran students to smile with pride. While the more valuable Destroyer weapons were harder to obtain, they were more than worth the price!

Ves suspected that Destroyer weapons happen to synergize better with hyper technology than other weapon types. He had already learned that Destroyer weapons were mystical in nature.

Though Ves had little understanding of the nature of Destroyer particles, he speculated that they could become a lot more potent if they were exposed to E energy of the right attributes!

If such a major change took place, then Terran melee mechs would become significantly deadlier than the melee mechs developed by others!

Ves started to feel greedy about this tech. He wanted to get his hands on a few Destroyer weapons so that he could pair them up with a few of his expert mechs.

It was not impossible for this to happen. His secret cooperation with the Streon Ancient Clan could help in this regard, and he could turn to the Devos Ancient Clan for help if he wanted to act more openly.

However, the supply of higher tiers of Destroyer weapons was not high. Each of them demanded progressively greater quantities of Destroyer particles to build.

Only god pilots could produce these special particles. That was only a moderate hurdle in the past, but the problem now was that the Terran Alliance only had access to a single god pilot!

There was no way that the Light of Sol would agree to pump out Destroyer particles day and night.

Destroyer weapons were destined to become even rarer than before, which meant that the cost of obtaining them would become a lot greater than in the past!

Ves put these powerful weapons out of his mind. His clan did not have to obtain a Destroyer weapon in order to field a strong melee mech. Ketis had already been working on more cost-effective ways to increase the offensive power of her swords. She could even imbue her weapons with qualities that no Destroyer weapon could replicate.