The Mech Touch

The collective efforts of the Design Department, Product Research Department and the Marketing Department yielded a lot of results.

Each day, Ves gained access to a flood of new reports and other data. It was excessive for him to go through all of this reading material, but fortunately he didn't have to. He merely had to quiz the assistants responsible for managing a specific task or order them to write a summary of their findings.

With so many people dedicating themselves to so many different tasks, Ves gained a lot more pertinent information and insights than in the past. Every additional detail lit up the darkness that was ahead of him, allowing him to stop groping in the dark.

Rather than guessing something, Ves could simply dig through the constantly-expanding database for the right proof. By backing up his decisions with solid data, he gained more confidence in his design choices.

The chances that his assumptions were wrong were much smaller, though he was careful to allow for at least some room of error.

After all, not every data was accurate. Ves also had to account for the shortcomings and biases of the people who provided, collected and interpreted the data. With each additional step in between, the data became more distorted.

It would have been a significant burden to keep track of every detail concerning the six design projects, but that was exactly why he split them up. While Ves regularly discussed the direction of every project with the other two Journeymen, he mainly focused his energies on fleshing out the concepts for the two projects that fell under his purview.

The Bright Warrior Mark II Project was the most straightforward of the two. On the surface, it was nothing more than converting a third-class mech design to a second-class mech design.

Of course, it was a lot more complicated in practice. A lot of changes took place during this conversion process. Design choices that made sense for lesser mechs became suboptimal if he attempted to apply them to greater mechs.

Before Ves specified anything else, he first had to set a budget for the mech design.

He couldn't set the budget too high because it would be a waste to invest too much in a second-class mech he only intended to field for a few years.

On the other hand, he couldn't be too stingy either. The Larkinsons needed to pilot something better than the second-class commercial mechs that were already being shipped to the Cinach System. Otherwise, what would be the point of switching mechs?

"I think aiming for a production cost of 200 million hex credits per copy is reasonable."

This was fairly generous but not too luxurious in Hexer standards. The highly-successful Blessed Squire design also cost the same amount to produce.

However, it was not appropriate to make a straight comparison between the Blessed Squire and the Bright Warrior Mark II.

Their roles were completely different.

The former was a purely supportive mech that was designed to be nothing more than a projectile sponge, a moving battery and a glow dispenser.

The latter was initially meant to become the mainstay fighting machine of the Larkinson Clan. Ves wanted as many of his mech pilots to switch to a Bright Warrior Mark II once he completed its complicated design.

This was quite easy to accomplish as the Mark II catered to many different mech pilots, just like its predecessor!

The Mark I version came in four different configurations.

The second design choice that Ves had to make was determining whether he wanted to keep the current configurations.

Gloriana happened to have an opinion about this topic. She sought him out and explained her views.

"We can do more with the Bright Warrior concept this time."

Ves raised his eyebrow at him. "Explain."

"A second-class mech isn't as limited in terms of capacity as a third-class mech. Components can be smaller as long as we invest more money into them. What I suggest is to make more room in the basic configuration of the Bright Warrior so that there is more room for customization. This way, we don't have to stick to choosing between a rifleman mech, knight mech, lancer mech and swordsman mech."

Though her argument was sound, Ves did not immediately accept her suggestion.

"Just because we can doesn't mean we should. The four configurations already cover 80 to 90 percent of every medium mech pilot. Sure, there are other mech types absent from this list, but will their inclusion truly matter to our mech pilots? I think not. Even if some of our mech pilots specialize in piloting striker mechs or auxiliary mechs, almost all of them are proficient in piloting the four basic configurations. In fact, all we really need is the rifleman mech and knight mech configurations."

Every mech pilot first learned how to pilot those two basic mech types before choosing their specialization. Even if a mech pilot didn't score well in piloting them, they should at least be decent enough.

Adding the swordsman mech and lancer mech configurations added a lot more practicality to the modular mech platform. Ves already thought it was more than sufficient to leave it at that, but Gloriana thought differently.

"You're treating the new Bright Warrior like the old one. It doesn't have to be like that, Ves. I think there is untapped potential in the concept. As long as you increase its scope, it can become a truly useful asset to the Larkinson Clan, just as you envisioned."

Ves shook his head. "It's not possible. Our mech pilots are too specialized. They don't want to switch mech types according to the situation. I still think the Bright Warrior Mark II is best suited to serve as a stopgap mech and a reference for upgrading the Quint."

"You don't understand! As long as we free up enough capacity, we don't have to spend a lot of effort in adding at least four more configurations. We can turn the Bright Warrior Mark II into a platform that can become a striker mech, a cannoneer mech, a construction mech or even a stealth mech!"

Her list of suggestions did not impress him at all. He stared flatly at his wife.

"It will take too much time to design these extra configurations. Our clan can't wait that long. Also, the overall design will have to give up a hefty chunk of its budget in order to incorporate all of these miniaturized components. That means we have less money to spend on its armor system and the configuration-specific parts. In other words, the performance of the entire design will drop."

He decided to retain the original mold as much as possible. Not only did it save a lot of time and effort, it also ensured that its performance of the Bright Warrior was reasonably up to standard relative to its cost.

Perhaps the biggest deviation to the original design was the switch to another armor system. Ves wanted to implement armor plating made out of materials that were widely available in the Yeina Star Cluster and elsewhere. He didn't want to resort to using Breyer alloy anymore because its supply was too limited and Ves had much better uses for this material.

This led to a very strange situation. Almost all of the specs of the Bright Warrior Mark II exceeded the original, but its defensive attributes were actually worse!

No matter if it was impact resistance, thermal absorption, electric insulation and other relevant properties, the successor of the Bright Warrior was actually easier to destroy!

It couldn't be helped. Ves intended to fabricate thousands of them from his own factory ship. There was no way that the constant cycle of melting down Cassandra Breyer's escape pod could output so much Breyer alloy in so little time. This was especially because Ves already reserved much of the current and future output to armoring and decorating the prow of his flagship!

As Ves steadily absorbed a lot of reports and other data concerning this design project, he began to sketch a draft design.

Overall, the modular mech platform with its four configurations looked fairly basic. Ves made a deliberate design choice to leave less room for optional modules.

The mechs didn't really need too many fancy functions. The Bright Warrior Mark II might be an average performer in the eyes of other second-raters, but Ves treated it as the bottom model of his clan. This was the mech that every Larkinson mech pilot should start with before moving on to more powerful machines.

Therefore, Ves didn't want to make it too complicated. He wanted to keep the configurations as dedicated to their primary functions as possible.

"A rifleman mech should be a rifleman mech. There is no need to issue a sword to this machine. The only way for this configuration to keep itself safe is to use its superior mobility to kite its pursuers. At most, I'll add a knife. Anything more will just slow down the mech."

"A swordsman mech should be a swordsman mech. A sword suited for chopping through mechs is all it needs. Okay, maybe I can throw a small shield and a pistol in the mix, but they are only there for emergencies."

"A lancer mech should be a lancer mech. It should do fine with a lance and shield. Whatever capacity is open should be put into increasing the shock and impact resistance of the mech. If there is still room left, I'll throw in a collapsible spear."

"A knight mech must definitely be a knight mech and nothing else. A tower shield is indispensable. As for the other weapon, it doesn't matter if it's a sword or spear. Aside from that, a pistol is all I'm willing to add."

While there was still room for additional weapons and modules, Ves merely filled them up with various auxiliary functions.

For example, the rifleman mech received an upgraded sensor system and some ECCM and anti-jamming systems.

The other configurations received some goodies as well, but they all augmented the primary functioning of the mech.

Perhaps the only other major change from the Mark I was its much-improved flight and maneuvering characteristics.

When Ves approached Juliet and asked her to complete his draft design, she went to work. Ves had purposefully left out the flight systems and other mobility systems from the incomplete draft.

This was a small test to see if Juliet was able to achieve greater performance than him. What he didn't tell her was that he had already completed the draft design himself.

Once Juliet did what he asked, Ves briefly admired her work and began to compare the current draft design to the one he made before.

The differences were clear. While Ves noticed that the techniques and solutions selected by Juliet were not too advanced, she achieved considerably better results!

The Penitent Sister designer exhibited a deep sense of understanding and proficiency in drafting the flight system of the Bright Warrior Mark II. Compared to his own work, the difference may be as much as 20 percent!

This might not sound impressive to some people, but in an instance where Ves would have to work for months to squeeze out an extra percent of performance, this was quite impressive!

Of course, only a few parameters received such a huge boost. The acceleration of a mech and the other parameters received much more modest boosts in comparison.

The only variable left out of the draft was the effect of Juliet's design philosophy. This was something that Ves would have to explore very carefully once he moved to the actual design process.

"Thank you for your input, Juliet." He said softly to her. "I know it's been difficult to work with my wife staring at you all of the time, but I could have never imagined that my Bright Warrior Mark II could be so nimble."

Juliet shrugged. "I am only fulfilling my obligations."

"Has my wife annoyed or harassed you in any way this past week?"

"Not quite." Juliet shook her head. "Aside from glaring at me, she is content to ignore my presence. This makes it difficult to coordinate with her. It has gotten better as of late."

Ves grinned. "Reality is dawning on my stubborn wife. There is nothing she can do to stop our collaboration. The sooner she accepts this change, the sooner she'll get back to normal."

"Has she ever been normal, sir?"