The Mech Touch

Chapter 7082: New Design Plans

After the conclusion of the banquet, the EdNet graduates needed to find their places in the clan.

The mech designers among them conveniently joined their colleagues over at the Tarrasque.

The Design Department became a lot more crowded due to their addition. The returnees still needed a lot of time to recover and catch up to all of the current events that they failed to appreciate while they were still isolated from reality.

Not everything proceeded smoothly. The EdNet graduates gained a lot of theoretical knowledge, but their practical skills were inconsistent. They lacked a lot of experience when it came to working with hyper materials and more recently superdimensional materials.

They also spent a lot of time forming their own cliques within the accelerated virtual reality environment. It was as if they spent more than a decade forging deep friendships and mutual understanding with each other.

The result of all of this was that the barriers between the returnees and the Larkinsons that remained anchored in the real universe did not go down.

It might never come down.

Ves grew a little concerned about this issue, but Gloriana did not think it was a big deal.

“The EdNet graduates have indeed lived in a world apart from us.” She said. “This is a fact. It is natural for them to be more close to each other than the clansmen that they have not seen in 15 years or so. Give it time. I will make sure to group different mech designers together so that they can steadily familiarize themselves with each other again. The barriers will not go away, but as long as frequent contact has warmed the two groups up to each other, they will automatically diminish until it becomes harmless.”

Her argument made a lot of sense. They were all Larkinsons in their end. Their connections to the Golden Cat marked them out as kin to each other. The Larkinson Network ensured that they would never see each other as enemies unless one of them committed outright betrayal.

“Just make sure that elitism must not take root.” Ves said. “It is important to maintain a meritocracy, but if the EdNet graduates think they deserve a greater say on matters due to their vastly improved design capabilities, then we need to prevent that from happening. Relations between the two groups will definitely sour if that happens. Every member of the Design Department has a place.”

If that was not the case, then Gloriana could always fire them in order to make room for more deserving workers.

Whatever the case, the Design Department needed to maintain a positive, cooperative and productive atmosphere.

Ves and Gloriana both depended heavily on a well-run department to facilitate their own design work. This was why they were quite sensitive towards potential problems. Their work directly suffered if they started to neglect potential problems.

The pair continued their discussion. The newcomers predominantly consisted of Journeyman Mech Designer who had acquired a lot of high-end expertise and were eager to prove their worth, both to understand their new place in the hierarchy and to prove that they had not wasted their EdNet training.

Gloriana made a proposal. “We shouldn’t delay any further. We need to start our first-class mech design projects sooner rather than later. We need to put our rejoined mech designers to good use, and I cannot think of a better way to do so than to work together on first-class multipurpose mechs for our clan.”

“Isn’t that too soon, honey? Sure, our clan has gained valuable first-hand experience with the Dracoloids, the Omega Threshers and the E-MULES, but we have yet to test how our people will fare after wear and tear starts to take its toll. Besides, the EdNet graduates have very little personal experience with hyper materials and all of the other new tech that has come out as of late. We need to give them time to get up to date with the latest trends in the mech industry.”

“The situation is not perfect, but we should move forward anyway.” His wife calmly argued. “What you have just said regarding their lack of readiness is an advantage rather than a detriment in my eyes. The EdNet graduates have superior theoretical knowledge in many fields, but possess a critical gap in hyper technology and E-technology. The mech designers who stayed behind or got recruited after we sent our people off to EdNet training have much greater knowledge and hands-on experience in these fields.”

Ves understood her cleverness. “I see what you are trying to do. Both groups of mech designers have opposing strengths and weaknesses. They will benefit greatly if they cooperate with each other.”

“Exactly! The dynamic will be similar to ours. We are highly divergent mech designers, but that allows us to complement each other well.”

He had to admit that her setup sounded promising. He was more than willing to let her experiment with this approach.

Of course, if her idea did not work out, then she would bear all of the responsibility. Ves would not carry any of the blame.

The two talked a bit more on how they thought the Design Department should proceed.

It became clear to the both of them that their focus should remain on the Premier Fleet for the most part.

They would not stop the other lead designers from proposing to design new second-class mechs or upgrade any of the existing second-class mech lines. It was actually good if they did so because the expeditionary fleet was still making use of far too many outdated mech models.

In order to bring them into the Hyper Generation, individual Larkinson mech designers manually upgraded and modified many of the older machines.

This was good as the clan did not have to rely solely on the Design Department to update its existing mech models.

This was also bad because the increased divergence of older mechs due to an absence of standardized updates meant that these individual products steadily strayed further and further from their roots.

If the divergence had grown too much, then the changes became irreversible.

For example, a highly modified Transcendent Punisher Mark III may no longer be able to upgrade to the Mark IV in the future because the former had changed beyond recognition!

While Ves did not disapprove of allowing living mechs to develop into increasingly more unique and individualistic products, too much chaos was not necessarily a benefit to everyone.

It was best to constrain the divergence rates of all of the ordinary living mechs. Exceeding it meant that a mech designer manually had to design an individualized upgrade for the unique machine.

This was a cumbersome and labor-intensive task. Unless the mech pilot was so good that he or she deserved special treatment, it was not worth it to provide this special treatment.

In any case, the addition of many mech designers who were able to handle much heavier and more advanced workloads granted many boons to the Design Department.

Gloriana was already plotting to figure out how to best exploit the returning labor, preferably without letting them realize that they were getting taken advantage of by their own superior.

“You should be able to allocate enough manpower to work on several first-class mech design projects at a time.” Ves remarked. “Which sort of first-class mechs do you think the Design Department should tackle first? Do you want to dive straight into designing multipurpose mechs, or do you think it is better to extend our existing mech lines to first-class territory?”

His wife frowned as she considered this difficult matter.

“The mech pilots of the Premier Fleet have all fallen in love with the Dracoloids and the Omega Threshers. They are genuinely good first-class multipurpose mech models that are packed with interesting technologies. More than that, their configurations are excellent. Not everyone is able to appreciate them, but our soldiers believe that those models are underappreciated. Given this circumstance, it is logical for us to develop in-house solutions that seek to fulfill the same roles as those third-party models but better.”

“You do not sound particularly convinced.” Ves commented.

His wife sighed and moved closer to lean against Ves’ body. The two shared their body warmth with each other, though Ves did so far more than Gloriana due to the enormous disparity in the sizes of their true bodies.

Oh well. It was the thought that counted.

Gloriana’s expression grew more conflicted as he tried to balance her private interest with public interests.

“I will not be participating in any of these standard mech design projects by myself, but if I was in the shoes of the mech designers, I would want to express my own skills instead of reproducing and adapting old and relatively feature-poor configurations. So what if we upgraded a Redlance to a first-class spearman lancer mech? It will turn out as a very expensive suicide weapon if such a machine ends up in a situation where its melee combat and charging capabilities will only lead it into getting surrounded by thousands of voribugs. I am beginning to see why the first-raters like multipurpose mechs so much.”

“What about the first-class multipurpose mechs then?” Ves asked. “It is already pretty clear that we are trying to design our own living mech versions of the three aforementioned mainstays.”

His wife continued to lean against his side.

“We should not try to design first-class multipurpose mechs that end up as straightforward substitutes of the Dracoloid, the Omega Thresher and the E-MULE. It is best if we sit down with mech pilots, mech designers and other relevant personnel so that we can decide as a collective what sort of specializations and synergies we should pursue when designing our first-class multipurpose mechs.”

“That may take more than a single session.” Ves warned. “This is almost the same as starting from scratch.”

“We shall see, Ves. I will schedule this meeting later this week if possible. That should give the EdNet graduates enough time to recover and provide suggestions from a fresh perspective. I will not formally start the mech design projects until we have concluded Aurelia’s birthday party and leave Yernstall behind.”

Ves agreed with this choice. He needed to spend more time on preparing for their daughter’s pivotal 10th birthday. He also needed to further the design of the Arboreal Project, cooperate with the mechers to define his ambition Polymetal mech and finish the Riot Mark III Project.”

At least that last part should be dealt with pretty soon.

Despite the minor delays imposed by Dulo Voiken, the spearman mech specialist suggested genuine improvements and optimizations.

He had kept Gloriana’s words in mind and made sure not to impose any radical requests that required a complete overhaul.

This meant that as long as Gloriana was willing to dial back on family time and sleep, it should not take longer for the two of them to upgrade the broken Riot Mark II into his much more superior Mark III configuration!

The significance of this job was great, and Ves did not want to compromise on quality and other factors.

“We won’t be able to complete the Riot Mark III before our daughter’s birthday, is that correct?” Ves asked even though he already knew the answer.

His wife nodded. “That is right. It is too unrealistic to expect us to complete the entire mech design and fabricate it in the days that we have left. There is only one circumstance that I can think of where this is possible, but…”

Both Ves and his wife had privately discussed the merits of fabricating the Riot Mark III entirely within the Workshop of Creation.

Doing so would enable them to make use of top-notch production facilities. It would also make it much more convenient for Ves to convert the Riot Mark III into a D-mech at a later stage.

However, there were several disadvantages to this approach. It also forced Ves and Gloriana to spend their precious Ascension Points.

“Let’s just keep it simple.” He said. “If I feel the need to do anything special, I will take care of it myself once the mech frame is almost complete.”

“Hm, I suppose this is the best approach.” Gloriana reluctantly said.

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