The Mech Touch

Ves withdrew from the Desolate Soldier that he had moved to the workshop. In order to open up enough space to work on the mech, he had to move the statue of the Unending One to the Scarlet Rose's hangar bay.

The mech technicians stationed there did not appreciate their close proximity to the unnerving black statue. The objections only died down after someone dr.a.p.ed a huge curtain over the monstrous-looking ornament.

In any case, ever since the Desolate Soldier mech arrived, Ves had been tinkering with it without much aim or direction.

He studied the mech. He inspected its systems. He familiarized himself with its spiritual foundation.

The mech was in use for a while, but due to its relatively low performance, it was mostly used as either a backup mech or a training mech.

It hadn't been used in battle since the Larkinson Clan left the Ylvaine Protectorate. The machine basically took up space and that was why the Living Sentinels were glad to pass it over to Ves. It's silver coating looked almost as good as new, which further reinforced the notion that it was a neglected mech.

Ves didn't like to see that, but this was an inevitable outcome of the growing prosperity of the Larkinson Clan. The Desolate Soldier was solely designed to offer a cheap but effective option to resist the sandman invasion. Its relevance against powerful human opponents was not that great. If not for its glow, the LMC would have retired the model already.

Even then, the Larkinson Clan had better options. Many customers throughout the Komodo Star Sector still appreciated the Desolate Soldier's duty-based glow, but the Larkinson mech pilots had come to prefer the warmth of the Bright Warriors.

The Desolate Soldier encouraged mech pilots to fight for a noble cause.

The Bright Warrior encouraged Larkinsons to fight for their family.

Of course, it also helped that the Bright Warrior was a bridge mech that exceeded any third-class mech in the clan's lineup. Many mech pilots were jealous at the few lucky Avatars who were privileged to pilot these powerful machines.

Just their awesome defensive capabilities was enough to drool over. In the previous battle, hardly any Bright Warrior had succ.u.mbed! The survival rate of their mech pilots evoked a lot of jealousy and requests to supply these mechs to the Sentinels and every other mech troop.

"It's not that easy." He shook his head. "The supply of Breyer alloy is limited. I already have some better mechs in store for our clan. In time, all of our mech pilots will be paired with proper second-class mechs."

He had different plans in store, but they had to wait until he returned to civilized space. He turned his attention back to the mech he had just finished servicing.

Though the mech technicians assigned to perform maintenance on the mech had done a decent job in keeping it in good condition, their lack of care was apparent. Who wanted to invest a disproportionate effort to fix a tiny problem buried deep in the mech's internals?

While most mechs were designed with robustness and sudden failures in mind, Ves couldn't stand the neglect. He spent multiple days fixing every little problem he managed to detect and restore the mech to its peak condition.

It was an extremely wasteful use of his time. As a mech designer, just an hour's worth of his time was potentially worth billions of hex credits! This was because he could have spent his time on completing his mech design projects faster. Once some of them entered the market, Ves was sure to earn a lot of money.

"I don't feel I have wasted my time, though."

He enjoyed tinkering with the Desolate Soldier. The mech might not be flashy, but it was derived from his work. It felt good to revisit one of his soldier works and contemplate what he had accomplished, how much he had progressed since he completed its design and what he still lacked.

When he compared his Desolate Soldier to his current work, he recognized that not a lot had changed.

The Doom Guard was his latest commercial design project. Though it featured a rather innovative terror glow, its main innovation merely consisted of forcing two antagonistic two design spirits together.

The model held value to the market. Even now, its sales continued to increase despite its inherent weaknesses. The ability to intimidate mech pilots could truly save a lot of lives and prevent more losses when utilized correctly.

The problem was that his design philosophy was not as enthusiastic. Working with design spirits may be a possible way to realize his ambitions, but it wouldn't conform to his original vision.

Making mechs alive in a way that caused people to mistake them as gods was certainly a grand achievement. However, a part of him disliked the thought of making powerful living mechs, only for them to be carbon copies of each other.

The only individuality that the vast majority of his existing exhibited was the faint traces their users left on the mechs.

To mechs such as the Desolate, Doom Guard and the Blessed Guard, these deviations weren't intentional. They were accidents. It was similar to how someone used a tool. Long use caused the tool to acquire scratches, wear marks and other imperfections.

In many cases, tools had to be precise in order to provide the most value to their users. Any damage or deviation from the norm degraded the value of the mech.

This was not what Ves wanted in his products. Life should not be an accident, nor should its value diminish as it grew.

Life was something to be cherished. A mech like the Desolate Soldier mech in front of him deserved a better fate than being left in the dust.

He even felt tempted to upgrade its armament so that it would become relevant in battle again.

"I can't." He shook his head. "I'm better off selling this mech on the second-hand market. There are plenty of people looking for bargains."

This should be the most proper way to dispose of a working mech. Just because users such as the Larkinson Clan had outgrown the Desolate Soldier did not mean the rest of the mech market disdained these good machines.

He knew that many mercenary corps and other private outfits often had difficulty keeping their heads above the water. Buying discounted second-hand goods that delivered almost just as much performance as a brand-new product was a good way for them to stay in business.

Of course, buying second-hand mechs was not really proper due to their reduced longevity. Even the Desolate Soldier that Ves had just finished servicing still showed signs of age that weren't so easily to remedy.

"I haven't really designed this mech with extreme longevity and durability in mind." Ves murmured.

The mech was only supposed to work long enough to last the Sand War. He had made many compromises that allowed him to increase performance at the cost of longevity.

His future works didn't make so many tradeoffs. They were far more expensive than the Desolate Soldier and meant to last at least ten years of regular use. Gloriana also disliked this tradeoff. Mechs that were pushed to their limits were significantly more likely to malfunction over the course of their lifetime.

"Legacy mechs need to be able to live for a long time." He concluded after contemplating the fate of the Desolate Soldier mech in front of him. "My living mechs deserve to live longer than a couple of years. It would be quite sad if most of them are discarded or recycled after five years of battle. That's way too short for my liking. This kind of treatment is reserved for cattle!"

The reason why he preferred to design premium and more expensive mechs was because it fit best with his aim of making his mechs withstand the test of time. A good mech model could last for two whole mech generations before becoming obsolete. That was forty years at minimum, which ought to be plenty of time for living mechs to enjoy a fruitful life.

"Is that enough?"

Ves didn't know. He wanted his mechs to last even longer than that, but that was difficult to accomplish.

"There is a contradiction."

The spiritual components of his mechs always developed and grew stronger over time.

In contrast, the physical components of his mechs definitely weakened over time. Either they wore out or the progression of newer and better technologies turned them obsolete.

If Ves truly wanted to turn his products into legacy mechs that increased in value over time, then he had to reconcile these two opposing developments.

"One solution is to actively upgrade my products."

This was a costly and wasteful solution to many mech owners. Who wanted to waste at least half the price of an old mech to upgrade its parts, only to obtain a stronger that was still constrained by its original design?

The burden was too great. Existing owners had to hire mech designers or other specialists to upgrade an existing mech without crippling it. The other solution was for Ves and Gloriana to revise the design with upgradability in mind.

This was the most ideal solution to his customers. By designing a Mark II of the Desolate Soldier in a way that allowed owners of the Mark I edition to easily update their mechs with an LMC-supplied upgrade kit was the most practical solution to keep his older products relevant.

Yet the burden on Ves was massive. He would have to constrain his design choices with upgradeability in mind.

"This sounds like a nightmare!"

For now, Ves wasn't able to come up with an easy solution. Everyone he thought about were either prohibitively expensive or imposed too much of a burden on his design work.

It would have been great if he could design more mechs like the Devil Tiger. Out of all of his current, only his first masterwork embodied his aims to the greatest degree!

He found it rather funny that he only made this realization a short time ago. Before then, Ves always thought of the Devil Tiger to be an aberration. He originally regarded it as an experiment to explore some usual ideas.

"I was wrong." He shook his head.

The Desolate Soldier might be his greatest commercial success, but the Devil Tiger represented the peak of his current work!

This was because the tiger mech was one of his few products that inherently solved the contradiction.

Over time, both its spiritual character and its physical makeup grew stronger. The powerful ASMAS allowed the Devil Tiger to constantly strengthen its structure and many of its parts.

In hindsight, Ves realized that the Devil Tiger was the first he designed with physical growth in mind! By adding this core feature to his bestial mech, he ensured that the mech had the potential to remain relevant beyond two mech generations!

With proper care, the Devil Tiger might even live thousands of years, turning it into a true god in the form of a machine!

Though Ves felt immensely pleased at what he had accomplished with this design, his smile quickly dropped as he recalled the hefty price to enable such a mech.

"Legacy mechs are unaffordable to the bulk of my market."

ASMAS and other nanomachine-based systems were powerful and adaptable, but they were far too costly. Ves could forget about using them on any third-class mech designs. Even most of his second-class mech designs wouldn't be economical if they incorporated these kinds of solutions.

He hummed a bit. Was it impossible for him to design legacy mechs such as the Devil Tiger?

"Maybe the technology in the future will drive down the cost of nanomachine systems." He guessed.

It happened to many other technologies. As long as the demand was there, plenty of scientists and developers worked hard to increase the practicality of a given solution.

Another way to solve or mitigate the problems related to nanomachine systems was to partner up with a mech designer who specialized them. What would it be like if Ves, who specialized in the spiritual development of a mech, joined forces with a mech designer who specialized in the physical development of a mech?