The Mech Touch

From what Ves could determine, the Samurai Project did not appear to be a gamechanger.

Its addition to the Larkinson Army's mech roster would not spark a revolution or a comprehensive boost in combat effectiveness.

It mostly added more choice to the Larkinson mech pilots while also giving them the option to embrace a different style of mech combat.

Ves actually thought favorably of the Samurai Project. Its stormblade technology added more variety to melee mechs and allowed them to inflict at least partial energy damage.

The enhanced effectiveness of stormblade weapons against energy shields was also particularly useful in the Red Ocean. The native alien warships generally relied on transphasic energy shields to mitigate large amounts of damage, so anything that gave his mechs an edge against this powerful protection was good news in his eyes.

The only major shortcoming of the Samurai Project was that it would drain its energy reserves faster while engaged in combat. Ketis already made sure to increase her work's longevity as much as possible by ensuring the sword only became energized when making contact with obstacles.

"Stormblade weapons can be a lot more powerful and destructive when wielded by the right warriors." Ketis remarked. "An expert pilot with the appropriate expert swordsman mech can break the limit of this tech and inflict devastating attacks. A part of me is eager to see whether one of our swordsman mech specialists will be able to soar with the help of the Samurai Project once it is finished."

That sounded interesting to Ves as well. He could always choose to facilitate a mech pilot's breakthrough with the help of the transcendence glow, but he preferred to wait for natural breakthroughs in order to avoid promoting anyone unworthy.

The conversation soon turned to discussing other ongoing mech design projects.

Ves gave brief updates on the Dullahan Project and the Ghost Project. Ketis looked surprised at how he altered their original concepts and intended to add untested new tech to them both.

"You always taught me that we should never bite more than we should chew. Aren't you making the same mistake by becoming up with the Empowered Blood Sharing System and the Geist System? Neither of them sound easy to invent as you will need to build up entirely new theoretical frameworks in subjects that you have never explored in the past.""

He understood her skepticism, but he maintained his confidence in his ability to succeed in his new ventures.

"You don't need to be concerned for me, Ketis. While my earlier advice still rings true, a stronger mech designer does not have to hold back as much. Due to some recent…changes, I've become an even faster learner than I was in the past. I have already mastered all of the basics of biotechnology, so the EBSS probably won't be an issue. I am a bit less confident about realizing the Geist System, but I think I will manage to cobble something together."

The swordmaster shrugged. "It's your problem. This has nothing to do with me. Frankly, a part of me looks forward to seeing you fail. Your mech designs are becoming more and more ridiculous. Sometimes, I get the impression that you have become more passionate about bringing literal monsters to life rather than meeting the needs of the mech pilots that are just asking for solid and reliable mechs."

She brought up an important point about the mismatch between the decisions of a producer and the expectations of the end users.

"I know what you are trying to say." He said with a serious expression. "This has always been one of the problems afflicting every industry, not just mech design. It is not enough for creators like us to design mechs that straightforwardly give mech pilots what they have asked for. Our customers do not know what mech designers are capable of, and have limited awareness and imagination of what mechs they could actually obtain if they make the right demands."

Sara Voiken briefly directed her attention away from cuddling with Lucky to add her voice to this discussion.

"While it is important to listen to the feedback of mech pilots, it is the mech industry that is the greatest driving force of innovation. Mech designers are constantly pushing the limit and exploring completely new ways to make mechs stronger. In the past, no one thought about designing a mech that is entirely made out of nanomachines, but once a mech designer developed the first successful smart metal mechs, an entirely new market came into life. The same applies to biomechs, striker mechs, stealth mechs, heavy artillery mechs and etc. It has always been inventive mech designers who created them before there was any strong demand."

Her argument emphasized the leading role of mech designers in driving innovation. There were a lot of mech designers in human space, and many of them constantly worked on breaking or expanding the existing paradigms of mechs.

Most of them ended up failing and producing nothing of value, but a few exceptional mech designers succeeded in creating a new subset of mechs that fulfill a need that the general mech community never thought about.

A good example of this was living mechs and glows. Ves came up with both of these signature design solutions long before millions of mech pilots came to embrace their unique advantages!

Gloriana held a slight view on this matter.

"I do not disagree with you, Sara, but we should not dismiss the importance of listening to our customers. Not every innovation from a mech designer is a good fit for the market. One of the greatest annoyances of mech pilots is being forced to pilot a bad mech that those who have no understanding of their profession think is good."

This was a familiar topic of contention to everyone. Hardly anyone occupied the extreme positions, but it was clear that different mech designers leaned towards different sides.

Innovative and creative mech designers such as Ves tended to believe that they knew better than their customers. They were more willing to invest in the development of radical new design solutions in the belief that they had accounted for all of the variables.

That was not always the case, as evidenced by how Patriarch Reginald Cross mutilated the original version of the Mars, but Ves was one of the few innovators who possessed a positive record.

Most mech designers tended to err on the side of caution, however. There was nothing wrong with meeting the more immediate demands of mech pilots. The biggest advantage of mechs that did not become hijacked by the selfish desires of a maniacal mech designer was that they were stable, consistent and reliable.

Gloriana normally leaned in this direction as she was a big believer in doing fewer jobs well than doing many jobs poorly.

"We won't be able to surpass the competition if we keep doing what most of our rivals are already doing." Ves said as he crossed his arms. "There are Master Mech Designers and Star Designers that enjoy head starts of at least several generations. They have become a lot more skilled at meeting the existing demands of the mech market. Do you think it is a good idea to try to outperform them in all of the areas that they have spent decades if not centuries on improving? That is a fool's dream. It's a lot more realistic to branch out by creating your own niche in the mech market before working to expand it to the point that it becomes mainstream."

That was his strategy for the most part. His living mechs might not be as tough, fast or hard-hitting as the mainstream mech models released by all of the most prestigious and successful mech companies, but he wanted to be damned sure that no competitor could sell mechs that were more alive than his own products!

The gathered Larkinson mech designers eventually went back on track and updated each other on the remaining ongoing mech design projects.

The Greenaxe Project and the Bloodripper Project were both proceeding nicely as well. No one involved in them had anything special to say for the time being.

As people such as Ketis and Sara went back to working on their respective mech design projects, Ves turned towards his wife.

"Do you want to work on the Dullahan Project with me? I think I can use your input in my attempted implementation of the Empowered Blood Sharing System. I think I can optimize the layout of the blood veins so that they will take up less capacity and lower the burden on the mech design."

His wife immediately made a disgusted expression. "I do not know anything about biotechnology and have no desire to get caught up in your latest hobby. I will do my best to adapt the conventional internal architecture so that it won't get mangled by your hamfisted attempt to insert bioparts into our work, but I won't touch any of them myself."

"Are you sure you don't want to expand your repertoire with biomechs or cyborg mechs? I can somewhat understand your resistance against the former, but the latter can give you the opportunity to get the best of both worlds."

"Biomechs are not consistent enough!" Gloriana shouted at him. "Cyborg mechs are admittedly much better in this regard, but they are still partially tainted by the inconsistencies and mutations that are inherent in the growth of any bioproducts."

That was a pretty clear rejection on her part. Ves was disappointed that his wife wasn't willing to share in one of his new passions. It would have been incredibly useful if he could extend his collaborative relationship with her to biomechs. They would have been able to design fantastic organic mechs that boasted more optimized physical structures.

Oh well.

He and his wife simply proceeded to work on separate aspects of the Dullahan Project.

Ves had already done most of the essential work on integrating the Empowered Blood Sharing System into the internal architecture of the Dullahan Project. He had made sure to leave enough room to ensure that the expert space knight did not suffer a significant drop in basic performance.

However, Ves did not dare to settle the design of the EBSS. He first needed to test the performance of the Blood Knight Project in reality.

Though Ves was close to completing this side project, it would probably take months for the Larkinson Biotech Institute to grow adequate copies of the Blood Knight design.

This was an awful long time and Ves did not know if he had the patience to settle down for a long wait just so that he could obtain proof.

As Ves struggled to determine whether he should lock in the current design of the organic parts, a notification interrupted his work session.

"What is it, Verle?"

"The Cross Clan has the development of the probes. Master Benedict Cortez is already in the process of fabricating them in person. They will probably be finished within the hour upon which the probes will be loaded into a handful of DIVA stealth shuttles so that they can be delivered to their intended destinations."

"Mhmm. Understood. How long do you think we need to wait until we have obtained any solid results?"

"That is hard to say. It will take several hours to deliver the probes to the surface of the brown dwarf star. After that, they will have to conduct a slow and cautious search in the approximate area where Lord Pearian's is purportedly located. I've been told that while the probes can be relied upon to blend into the background, their detection range is not particularly impressive. They also have to ascend to the uppermost layer of gas to transmit a tightbeam signal to our fleet in order to discreetly relay their findings to us. All of this will probably keep us busy for at least a handful of days."

"I see. I guess we don't have much options if we want to avoid triggering any alarms."