The Mech Touch

As a mech designer, Ves was already aware of the concept of utility.

However, third-class mech designers viewed utility in a much more limited fashion than second-class mech designers.

The limited resources and technology at his disposal forced Ves to neglect utility in favor of focusing on the other three aspects of his products.

Offense, defense and mobility.

When stripped of all of their complexity, every mech had to offer a winning combination of these three aspects.

Of course, a good mech was not simply a package that scored high on all three aspects. A mech design was much more complicated than that, though many laymen still referred to aggregate numbers such as the mech performance index to get a quick evaluation of a mech.

What made a mech truly great was how well they fulfilled their roles. Having good offense, defense or mobility was often one of the main requirements for many roles, but they were not the only ones that existed.

Gloriana's lecture revealed how the addition of utility completely transformed the landscape of high-end mechs.

A very clear separation existed between cheaper mechs which lacked utility and more expensive mechs which used them as their main selling points.

"Utility allows mechs to manipulate the battlefield in far greater measures." Gloriana explained and called up a list from the galactic net. "Just look at the effects the MTA has registered. Many phenomena, whether they came about through resonating exotics or high technology, have already been categorized and standardized. In fact, the public ones are the most mundane ones. Every mech designer or mech company has developed their own inhouse solutions that aren't as easy to copy."

"Because they're related to their design philosophies, right?"

"Correct." She nodded before sighing. "Some design philosophies are very geared towards excelling in these areas. Mech designers who specialize in forming acceleration fields or damage redirectors can always count on selling lots of mechs as long as their foundational skills are decent enough."

Ves noted something from her wistful tone.

"Your Class I design philosophy doesn't give you much of an advantage with regards to utility."

"Yes!" She admitted. "I work best with the tangible and known aspects of a mech. My research fields encompass their standard properties, which means I'm good at optimizing and maximizing the fundamental parameters of a mech. Advanced utility has always been one of my more lackluster fields. I always had to collaborate or seek assistance from other mech designers if I wanted to add some advanced functionality to my custom mechs."

Gloriana's description of her own specialty suddenly enlightened Ves. He saw the opposite in himself!

"My specialty is pretty much all about utility!" He uttered in realization. "From my glows to my upcoming special features, they all fit in this category! I've never displayed any particular passion towards offense, defense or mobility. They are merely means to an end for me. What I am truly passionate about is adding different strengths and qualities to my mechs that fall outside of those basic areas!"

"Do you realize it now?" She smiled and patted his shoulder. "This is why we fit so well together. I can take care of the aspects you've neglected while you can focus on increasing the utility you can impart to your mech designs. Each of us has something the other wants the most. So long as we can maximize all four aspects, our mech designs are bound to become popular even in the highly-competed Hegemony mech market!"

Utility was pretty much a neglected priority to most third-class mech designers. It wasn't a coincidence that the mech community largely referred to utility applications as gimmicks.

Even in his previous mech designs, the utility they provided was not very spectacular. Even the Aurora Titan, which came with a very useful polarizing module, had to sacrifice almost everything to fit it into the mech.

Mechs which excelled in utility could only be treated as niche mech designs in the Bright Republic and other third-rate states.

As for second-rate states, they became so much more powerful and accessible that customers had begun to expect them to be implemented as core features. A quality second-class mech was not complete unless they incorporated a powerful ability!

After Gloriana explained the importance of utility, Ves gained a broader perspective of his own place in the mech industry.

Whereas most of his peers in the Bright Republic still focused on standing out by excelling in one of the three core aspects, Ves had already taken a different road, one that was more prevalent in second-class mech design.

Perhaps the main reason why an anomaly like him existed was because he depended on 'tech' and 'resources' that were inaccessible to everyone else but himself!

The unique expertise he formed and the ease in which he created or adapted design spirits meant that he was able to add utility to his mechs without paying a prohibitive price!

"You've realized that as well, haven't you?" Gloriana grinned and leaned closer to him. "While I'm aware that you need to expend some time, energy and other costs to apply your specialty to your mechs, you can obviously afford to do it in budget mech projects. Not only that, your specialty doesn't increase the material burden or technological sophistication of your mechs, which gives you an immense competitive advantage! Whereas other mech designers have to add expensive tech and materials, you can make do with adding intangible components to your designs!"

She was right. What Ves was doing was not as unique as he thought. The true value of his specialty was that he could impart utility to his mechs by spending resources that were not as scarce!

"Doesn't this give me an even greater advantage in designing third-class mechs?" He promoted her. "Hardly any third-class mech designer can do what I do. If I step up to designing second-class mechs, wouldn't I be clashing against all kinds of abilities?"

"You still enjoy an advantage here, Ves! We can still incorporate the standard abilities that are publicly known or available for licensing into our designs. If we just leave it there, our mechs are merely average and not as impressive as those who offer unique abilities. It's when we add your specialty that our mechs become special!"

"I get it!" Ves shot up. "We can double the utility of our products if we add standard abilities as well as my special features into their designs. In fact, we can achieve an even greater degree of utility if I can somehow achieve synergies between the two! The potential is great!"

Of course, so far Ves had not developed his special features very highly. The design spirit of the Adonis Colossus didn't offer anything special aside from its glow. While it was a very fantastic glow, it only amplified performance in an indirect manner.

He understood now why Gloriana claimed that his specialty was more valuable with more sophisticated mechs.

The utility he could impart onto third-class mechs were inevitably limited because they had to work in isolation.

In contrast, the utility he could provide to second-class mechs would always be stronger as long as he found a way to achieve synergy.

He had experienced the advantages of synergy several times in his life. He knew how much potential it held!

They eventually turned their attention back to the Deliverer. As one of their upcoming mechs, the Deliverer was a mech that doubtlessly centered around utility.

Though Ves hadn't been able to achieve any synergy with regards to its special features, the mech should already be able to stand on its own.

As Ves and Gloriana entered the workshop, they beheld the finished prototype of the mech.

Gloriana had supervised the fabrication process, so the mech did not contain any major defects. The Tovar mech designers had already received an earful from her about their fumbles.

Ves only made a brief inspection of the mech. He paid particular attention to its X-Factor.

If the X-Factor wasn't coherent enough, the mech would not be able to channel its design spirit as well. This would doubtlessly affect the strength or fluency of its spiritual abilities.

As expected, neither Gloriana nor the Tovars mech designers fully bought into the vision of the mech.

Alternatively, they didn't maintain a high degree of focus while they were fabricating the prototype, which led to a lot of scattering.

This was not a difficult problem for Ves to solve as long as he was willing to expend some spiritual energy.

He concentrated his mind and began to imprint his original vision onto the mech. Through various means, he smoothed out the incongruous factors and corrected a lot of flaws.

It was as if he was finishing a half-made product.

"There. The mech is much better now." He smiled.

Though Gloriana and the Tovars didn't see any changes, they somehow felt that the prototype had changed somehow. Its glow was much more clear and pure. This gave it the illusion that it had grown stronger.

Once he completed this correction, he only performed a cursory inspection of the remainder of the mech.

He provided some feedback to his design team.

"Technically, the prototype is decent. However, your minds were obviously askew while you were fabricating it. Your hearts need to be in the right place to make a good mech."

"We.. started to become uncomfortable as we were piecing together this mech." Miles Tovar answered. "Its glow makes me feel as if I have to betray everything I am in order to convert to a faith!"

Ves looked at their faces and saw that this was a bigger issue than he anticipated. Even if the Tovars didn't like his Deliverer, he thought they would have at least been able to tolerate it while they produced a copy.

Now, he saw that Brighters truly didn't get along with Ylvaine's spiritual fragment.

He made a mental note to himself to assign the production of the Deliverers to Ylvainans.

This was not a big deal. The Deliverer was a purely Ylvainan mech design, so limiting its productions to the faithful was only natural.

If Ves wanted to fabricate a copy of the Deliverer at the Mech Nursery, then he could only do it himself if he wanted to do it right.

"Let's bring this mech to orbit. I want to test the special features of the mech as fast as possible! I want it done by today!"

Now that the prototype was finally ready, Ves couldn't wait any longer. He wanted to verify his latest theories immediately!

As his design team arranged the transportation of the prototype from the workshop all the way up to orbit, Ves informed the Ylvainan test pilots to be ready to do their jobs.

He was looking forward to their reaction to the Deliverer.

"You also need to invite some mundane mech pilots to act as a control group, remember?" Gloriana poked his side.

"Ah! I'll call ahead."

He briefly called Melkor and told him to select three random Avatars to join the transport ship heading into orbit soon.

The Deliverer may be an Ylvainan product, but Ves could not rule out that non-believers would pilot it as well. He had to make sure that Brighters and other people were able to make adequate use of the mech.

Sadly, his mech wasn't really much good when stripped of its glow and special features. Ves held little hope that his control group would be able to make efficient use of his mech.

In fact, Ves even believed that the Brighter test pilots might clash against the Deliverer's design spirit!

While Prophet Ylvaine had been known to be tolerant towards other beliefs, who knew how well it took to unbelievers blaspheming the mech he guarded!

If everything went right during the first testing session, Ves would be making history today.

Soon, he would know if he succeeded in designing the mech that could save the Bright Republic!