The Mech Touch

Gloriana saw that the dose of realism she just dished out had crushed her husband's dreams. She sighed and patted his shoulder.

"There is a lot more to expert mechs than you realize. Even I don't fully grasp all of the intricacies to them. The unusual properties of resonating exotics, from how they interact with each other to how they interact with expert pilots, all form an intricate web of positive and negative relationships that we have to navigate in order to design a good expert mech."

The greater the variety of resonating exotics, the more time it took to integrate them into an expert mech.

The greater the quantity of resonating exotics, the more difficult it became to keep them behaved.

If an expert mech used too much of these special materials, then the expense and design time would probably become prohibitive.

If an expert mech used too little of them, then the degree of power amplification when resonating with an expert pilot would become too weak.

"Did you know that much of the extra expert mechs that the Friday Coalition provided to its guest expert pilots are like this?" Gloriana suddenly brought up. "The reason why those foreign third-class expert pilots didn't raise a greater amount of hell on the battlefield is because most but not all of their expert mechs rank at the bottom in terms of strength."

Ves raised his eyebrows. "If that is the case, can they be defeated more easily by the Hegemony's own experts?"

It is true that any one of them can be defeated by a typical Hexer expert mech because the Fridaymen were only willing to use up low-grade resonating exotics for their construction. That said, there are also the likes of Venerable Ghanso Larkinson and Venerable Relia Foster who received a little bit more extra attention due to their strength and capabilities. In the end, it doesn't matter if the majority of extra expert mechs are trash. When three or four of them gang up against a mid-tier Hexer expert mech, the latter will more likely than not lose!"

What was worse was that the relatively weak expert mechs were still extremely lethal towards regular mechs. Expert pilots were so powerful compared to regular mech pilots that they and their powerful machines could easily demolish entire mech companies without feeling any pressure.

Ves suddenly learned a lot of new theories on expert mechs and resonating exotics. Was this part of the package of secrets that he would learn when he advanced to Senior?

"Why are resonating exotics so weird?"

"Well, there are lots of theories that attempt to explain that. The most common consensus is that resonating exotics are more energetic than regular substances. They possess the capacity to resonate because their internal structure and stability is less rigid in a way. That also makes them volatile and prone to breaking up or devolving into lower-quality materials, so they are actually quite difficult to salvage from wrecks."

"So once you use them, you lose them. Is that right?"

She nodded. "The yield is typically just 30 percent if you attempt to salvage all of the resonating exotics from a broken wreck. Why do you think the cost of servicing expert mechs is so prohibitive? Repairing them requires the use of a considerable stockpile of replacement materials. You always need more resonating exotics than what you are putting in an expert mech design at the beginning."

This complicated the acquisition issues of resonating exotics even further. The Larkinson Clan would have to forgo a lot of opportunities to acquire some if they weren't able to obtain sufficient quantities of a given material.

It was pointless to acquire just enough of a single material to fabricate an expert mech but have nothing left to perform repairs!

When Ves thought about all of the limitations that Gloriana had to abide by, it was no wonder that she had grown a bit more irritable and impatient as of late. Even Ves would tear his hair out if he had to find a way to mix and match sufficient types and quantities of resonating exotics together in a way that caused them all to fit in place.

"It's not as difficult as you think." She relaxed a bit and told him. "As I have mentioned earlier, Master Willix has provided a lot of assistance to me. She knows a lot of existing combinations of resonating exotics that are proven success formulas. The MTA has developed a detailed database of all of the properties of many known types of resonating exotics. As long as we give instructions to an AI or algorithm, we can let them perform all of the mixing and matching in the background. The only issue is that we can't rely on automation completely considering we are still working out how to apply them all in specific mech designs."

Solving all of these issues was not a big deal for Seniors or Masters whose superior cognitive and design capabilities enabled them to handle these problems with ease. They could also rely on existing databases as well as their own prior accumulations to minimize the amount of original research they needed to perform.

States and large organizations also provided a lot of assistance. The complexity of balancing out so many different resonating exotics was yet another reason why expert mechs were mostly developed by government institutions or in cooperation by them. The greater the cooperation, the faster an expert mech design project reached completion.

Ves frowned. "This knowledge is essential to me. I would have liked to know all of this from the start."

"Well, you would have gotten it if you didn't get distracted and go missing for weeks on end!" Gloriana sneered. "If you want to learn the essentials, then go ask Master Willix. She's been a huge help to me with regards to this issue. You should get in touch with her again so that you won't stay as clueless as you are now."

"I'll do that." He nodded. "So… can I design some mounted wargear for the Chimera Project? I haven't given up on it. One of the characteristics of this addition is that it is meant to be expendable, so it doesn't have to incorporate a lot of resonating exotics. It shouldn't be too big of a burden to design one that is at least barely compatible with the core mech."

"I already said no, Ves! Even if it's not as bad as you think, the fact of the matter is that you will still divert valuable manpower and time away from our core work. I don't want to compromise the core expert mech that will become the foundation of Venerable Joshua's strength. Look, you can play around with these toys after the first round design projects are over, but until we get to that point, I am in charge, is that understood? Our projects are critical. If we lose our restraint and start to pursue every little idea, we'll get swept by feature creep and end up with expert mechs that are years behind schedule and weighed down by too much bloat!"

Though Ves suffered under her admonishment, he did not want to back down and let go of his fantastic idea. His passion was stoked and he did not want his wife to douse it just when it got going!

"Look, I understand that you are afraid of screwing up, but don't you think you are going overboard, Gloriana?"

"What do you mean by that?!" She replied in a defensive manner while starting to hug Clixie against her chest. "Being in charge of designing expert mechs is a dream to me. I never thought I would be able to be in this position so soon. Ordinarily, I would have to wait until I become a Senior before I can dictate the development of expert mechs, but now that we have this deal with Master Willix, I can finally utilize my design philosophy as it was meant to be used!"

"I understand all of that, Gloriana. I get why this is a high-stakes period for you. It's just that I think you are being too conservative. Do you think that is good mech design? I don't. People like us advanced to Journeymen because we were willing to take risks, willing to invent new ways to design better mechs and willing to go against the current in order to achieve our ambitions! What you are doing right now sounds more like letting the current push you down the river rather than actively swimming against the flow!"

Gloriana vigorously shook her head. "This is not a moment for us to go contrarian, Ves! You can experiment all you like when you design your conventional mechs, but we are in the process of designing our best and most powerful individual works. This is a time where we need to consolidate all of our existing theories and methods and use them to the best of our abilities. Everytime we try out something new and unproven, we risk botching the entire project! The cost of that is very great because unlike normal mechs, when we fabricate an expert mech and it turns out defective, we can't break down the faulty parts and recycle the resonating exotics we put into it without suffering a significant loss!"

"What is a little risk when we have the potential to achieve greatness?"

Gloriana punched his arm as hard as she could. Unfortunately, her arm strength was as feeble as that of any civilian baseline woman, so Ves didn't even bat an eyelid.

"You and your stupid risks again! Your ability to assess risks is completely skewed!"

"Hey! That's not true! I make CALCULATED risks. There is a difference. I don't gamble like I'm in a casino. I calculate probabilities all the time. My success rate is quite high!"

"The only reason that hasn't blown up in your face is because you always find some way to weasel your way out of a crisis. Any other mech designer would have died if they followed your footsteps!"

"You didn't seem to have much of a problem with that when you married me. Don't you realize that much of the accomplishments that your design philosophy adores is because I actively sought out opportunities? I never sat back and thought that designing mechs in peace will elevate me all the way to Star Designer. That is because I know that anyone who has reached the apex of mech design never adopted the slow and steady approach and acted conservatively when they designed their most important mechs. Don't you want to fulfill your ambitions and design the perfect vessel? You do that by treating every mech design as an opportunity to try something new, not by playing it safe and ending up with a product that does not live up to your potential."

"You're just saying that because you want me to board your crazy shuttle! I am not allowing you to ruin my plan."

"The Chimera Project will become too boring if it develops according to your direction! Your roadmap for this project is too restrained. There's not enough innovation to keep my passion stoked."

Gloriana grunted in frustration. "Then just wait until I have sorted out the resonance exotics that we can use to empower Venerable Joshua's mechs. It will look a lot more impressive if we can plan out the resonance abilities that we'll be able to incorporate in his mech."

"That will just turn it into a regular expert mech. That's not enough for me. I need more!"

The couple argued with each other for twenty more minutes until they finally came to a consensus.

"ENOUGH!" Gloriana shouted. She had grown more tired of trying to change his mind. "Fine! I'll allow you to design this stupid wargear, but only one of them, okay?! You also can't divert any of our existing design teams to complete this time-consuming chore. Either do the work in your own time or hire a batch of new assistants. No matter what you do, I will never tolerate any delays in our core projects!"

Ves grinned. "It won't be a problem. I will set aside the conventional loadouts for later and focus on integrating the meat suit first. Since it is mostly organic in nature, I can just assign Dr. Perris and a bunch of biotech experts aboard the Dragon's Den to organize a separate development team. Is that acceptable to you, honey?"

She sighed. "Very well. I don't want you to get consumed by this side project though. I expect you to finish the bare expert mechs without all of this extra nonsense according to schedule. As long as we complete them first and in a beautiful manner, we can pursue all the upgrades afterwards."