The Mech Touch

Ves gained a lot of confidence in the viability of his demimech.

The draft for the Carmine Raider looked like a fairly compact but capable demimech that should easily be able to crush most second-class infantry forces.

Its height was only a bit shorter than the height of the torso of a typical medium mech.

Shrinking the machine to such an extent demanded a massive amount of adjustments that Ves never grappled with before.

For example, the substantial reduction in size meant that the mech lost a lot of mass, mechanical strength and leverage. Its limbs were shorter, its mech engine became a lot weaker and it needed to squeeze all of its parts in a much tinier frame.

While it sounded easy enough to simply substitute larger parts with miniaturized ones, Ves had to make far more adjustments as the dynamics of a demimech were completely different from that of a full-sized mech.

Ves did not feel too concerned about these problems. He might not have any actual experience with designing this kind of machine, but he possessed enough knowledge and experience to cope with the challenges imposed by this atypical design.

He did not really stick to a fixed mech archetype this time. The role of a demimech of this scale was much different from a traditional mech. He did not feel like turning his Carmine Raider into a straightforward knight mech or rifleman mech.

"I think you can get away with designing it as a hybrid mech." Jovy said. "It would also help a lot if it has at least some flight capabilities. You don't have to make it as fast as an actual light mech, but it should possess enough maneuverability for the pilot to pull off complex maneuvers. This will help a lot with testing the properties of the Carmine System at this scale."

Ves rubbed his hairless chin in contemplation.

The demimech shared many aspects of mechs, but had also shrunken down to the point where he could apply the design principles of ultra-heavy combat armor.

It just so happened that Ves was not entirely unfamiliar with working on suits of combat armor.

He had spent a significant amount of time on designing and upgrading his Unending Regalia over the years.

Even though his personal suit of protective armor did not come with any significant integrated weapons, it still allowed him to figure out how to handle considerably smaller and more limited armor systems, mechanical servos, energy supply systems and more.

Ves ultimately came to a decision.

"We can do that, provided that you help me out with selecting and integrating all of the miniaturized weapon systems. That is a bit of a blindspot to me. I am much more accustomed to handling larger and more generous weapon systems."

"I can take this responsibility." Jovy immediately responded. "You should focus on the big picture for this design. I can solve all of the time-consuming technical problems that are not worth your attention."

"Great! If that is the case, then we can go a little wild for this design."

Ves had tried to err on the side of caution for the first two mech designs, but he wanted to be a little more adventurous with the demimech design.

Ironically, he had more room to play this time. The Carmine Trooper and the Carmine Knight both had to be fairly basic and foolproof in order to reduce their complications as much as possible.

The Carmine Raider was an unprecedented work as far as Ves was concerned. There were no standard templates of demimechs that he should follow.

The stupendous availability of miniaturized parts meant that Ves could slot in as many of them into his design as he wanted. As long as Ves and Jovy did not select anything too weird or abnormal, they should be able to treat them as modular components that they could readily slot into the frame of the demimech.

By the time the pair completed the draft design of the Carmine Raider, they ended up with a scrappy and fairly maneuverable urban combat machine that was armed to the teeth.

The demimech's frame integrated a combination of miniaturized plasma and laser weapon modules. It also featured a pair of shoulder-mounted missile launchers that could easily be replaced by other weapon systems.

Its handheld weapon loadout consisted of a plasma sword and a machine gun, but the machine could easily employ a different set of weapons.

Ves truly felt that this demimech was highly suited for urban combat. It possessed a lower profile, it was a lot more surgical in its offensive options and its capacity for producing collateral damage dropped by a considerable margin.

He grew particularly happy with the array of small boosters spread across its compact frame.

These boosters significantly increased the demimech's short-ranged maneuverability and turned it into an even trickier combat machine!

Of course, a single demimech was no match to an actual mech in raw power. The difference in scale was too substantial.

The demimech's reduced capacity also came with other downsides. Its range and staying power were not good. Its defenses were predictably poor. Its melee combat capabilities were far inferior to its ranged combat capabilities.

Ves was unable to fit a cockpit that could safely eject its pilot. He was sure he could cobble together an improvised solution that could serve as a decent substitute, but there was too little time to work out such an ejection system.

"It is not strictly necessary so long as we test this mech under heavy supervision." Jovy reassured Ves. "We will have our teleporters locked to the test pilot at all times. He will be whisked away before the demimech is able to cause any actual harm."

"I guess that works."

The demimech was his favorite mech design thus far. The completely different circumstances caused Ves and Jovy to come up with original design elements that they had yet to work on before.

They could afford to do this because the individual parts weren't as large as that of a regular mech. It took a lot less time to get everything right as a consequence.

"Do you want to tackle the design of the juggernaut while we are at this stage?"

Ves shook his head. "Let's flesh out these three designs and fabricate them first. Who knows what insights and lessons we will gain over the next hours. The delay will also give us more time to think about how we should tackle this troublesome juggernaut design."

"Very well. We will do it your way, Ves."

Ves and Jovy proceeded to design the Carmine Trooper first.

Their design speed was impressive. Ves was already highly productive due to his mysterious spiritual sublimation. His performance comfortably exceeded that of any other second-class Senior Mech Designer.

That said, Jovy turned out to be more than capable of carrying his own weight!

The RA Senior possessed a few shortcomings in more practical areas that spoke of lack of experience in designing and fabricating mechs for actual use. His intuition and instinctive understanding of mechs were not as developed either. This was understandable as Jovy mostly practiced his craft within the confines of the Design World. He also did not have any masterwork certificates to his name.

Jovy's grasp of scientific theories and the Red Association's vast array of technologies were much more impressive in comparison. He possessed an excellent first-class cranial implant that provided him with an astounding boost in analytical ability.

These differences became evident once they started to design the Carmine Trooper side by side.

Ves adopted a more spontaneous design approach where he skipped a lot of calculations and made a lot of gut decisions. He allowed his intuition to play an outsized role in his design process.

There were plenty of cases where Ves did not even put much thought in the theory and the numbers of specific design elements!

Instead, he approached his design work as if he was sitting in front of an incomplete canvas and only needed to make a few loose brush strokes in order to complete a painting to his satisfaction!

Jovy on the other hand possessed a much more proper and data-oriented design approach. His weaker intuition did not pose a hindrance to him as he relied on his cranial implant as well as the generous quota of the Khamatar Reign's processing power to calculate much of his solutions!

What Ves particularly found impressive about Jovy's design approach was the use of a lot of different formulas.

Instead of trying to puzzle out solutions on an ad-hoc basis, Jovy seemed to possess an appropriate formula for nearly any situation. This not only allowed him to formulate his solutions faster and with greater consistency, but it also prevented him from getting stuck!

The design of the Carmine Trooper quickly took shape under their combined efforts.

It was ultimately a basic spaceborn hero mech without any other bells and whistles aside from its Carmine System.

Fitting in the Carmine System was not that difficult as the design of the Carmine Trooper offered enough room to accommodate the extra organic parts.

Ves had to spend a bit of time learning what sort of organic products he could produce inside the mech workshop.

Many of the bioproduction machines were astoundingly complex and incredibly overkill for what he required.

Fortunately, Ves managed to find a number of simpler equipment that could rapidly grow the organic components of the Carmine System without requiring a lot of handholding.

At this stage of the development of the Carmine System, Ves was unable to design a universal version that could safely bond with any possible human.

Every human body was different and unique. This was especially the case in the upper levels of society.

Practically every single first-class individual was a separate species in biological terms!

They received so much genetic tinkering and biological modifications throughout their lifetimes that they became reproductively isolated from each other.

If their genes diverged to such an extent that they couldn't produce offspring with each other in a natural manner, then it was exceedingly dangerous for them to exchange blood with a Carmine System that was attuned to baseline human physiques!

Perhaps in time, Ves could develop an upgraded version of the Carmine System that automatically adjusted its DNA and blood composition based on the biological properties of the mech pilot during their initial contact.

This was a necessary step in order to enable mass production!

Unfortunately, Ves was not there yet, so he had little choice but to adapt the Carmine System for the Carmine Trooper to a single mech pilot selected in advance.

"Okay, we're done with this." Ves said once he put the finishing touches to the Carmine System.

Jovy had taken care of the rest of the details during this time.

It only took a short time for them to develop a close and tacit form of cooperation with each other.

Ves found it quite handy that Jovy's design approached possessed a lot of parallels with that of his wife.

Both of them had received excellent education. Their elite schools had imparted them with much more structural design techniques that allowed them to make greater use of their cranial implants and any external sources of processing power.

Of course, Jovy was a lot faster and more efficient at this than Gloriana!

This was the first time that Ves seriously collaborated on a mech design with a genuine first-class mech designer.

He never knew that possessing a first-class cranial implant that was entirely geared towards mech design could make such an enormous difference in design efficiency!

It was no wonder that Gloriana nagged about this subject all of the time. She understood a lot better how much a first-class cranial implant could accelerate her work and how much additional attention she could invest in refining her solutions.

If Jovy was a woman or agreed to undergo a sex change operation, then there was a faint possibility that Ves would have thought about divorcing Gloriana.

The temptation to 'upgrade' to a better wife and collaborator was too irresistible!

"You're getting distracted. What are you thinking about, Ves?"

"Huh? Oh, nothing. Let's wrap up this design so that we can move on to designing the Carmine Knight."

Ves inwardly shook his head to clear his head of any distracting or irrelevant thoughts.

What was he thinking? There was no way he would turn his back wife! He could not go against his own principles, and he did not want his children to grow sad!