The Mech Touch

Chapter ?5703 The Trouble With Class IX Design Philosophies

He was pretty sure that design spirits could not attach themselves to mechs that were not alive.

Although he did not really figure it out back when he first became inspired to use them in this fashion, his current understanding allowed him to understand a bit more of the inner workings of the forces he had been dealing with for years.

The relationship between a living mech and a design spirit was similar to the relationship between a Larkinson and the Golden Cat.

The fact that an ancestral spirit like Goldie was able to form highly similar connections between both humans and living mechs strengthened this theory.

The biggest difference was that design spirits were unable to propagate their glows through humans, at least not normally.

This suggested to Ves that the relationship between a design spirit and a living mech was deeper and more intimate. It touched upon more profound concepts that he did not understand, let alone identify.

How exciting.

There were still plenty of mysteries related to design spirits that Ves could explore. That did not stop him from making use of them as long as his existing methods worked.

It was a pity that he was not able to help the mechers as much as they wished.

"I would like to verify your statement." Master Goldstein said and projected a first-class support mech design. "Please attempt to attach a design spirit of your choosing to this work of mine."

Ves stared at the Master for a moment before he shrugged. "Sure thing. I need to study your work for a bit. I need to get a feel for its conceptual existence."

He did just that. The schematic displayed a highly sophisticated mech that possessed limited fighting capabilities because it was packed with support- oriented functions.

Ves actually found that he was able to understand more of the tech and principles than he would have a few months ago. All of the focused studies on first-class mech design were beginning to pay off as machines of this caliber were no longer as indecipherable as in the past.

Of course, a first-class mech designed for the RA's combat forces was much more advanced and higher-end than a typical product on the market. There were many little areas where details and technical specifications had been blacked out in order to deprive Ves from learning about these details.

While Ves could use the surrounding parts to deduce what was missing in these empty voids, there was little point in speculating on this. He just needed to get a basic understanding of this mech design.

He understood that this was actually a pretty valuable opportunity to study a large part of the design of an excellent first-class support mech that was good enough to be employed by the Red Association!

Vayro Goldstein already bestowed Ves a lot of trust by exposing so many design specifications for a mech design that was bound to play an important role for the mechers.

The mech design could not escape the multipurpose leanings of high-end mech design. It possessed a lot of different modules that contained all kinds of handy features.

It possessed a stealth system.

It was able to repair itself and other mechs.

It came equipped with an expansive ECM module that was particularly good at jamming large areas in space.

It was equipped with a minidrive that enabled it to travel to other nearby star systems in a reasonable time frame.

It was able to fabricate equipment by drawing on locally sourced materials.

All of these functions sounded useful when just one of them was outfitted on a mech, but combining them all in a single support mech turned it into an infinitely useful machine that would remain relevant no matter the situation!

That was a common characteristic among all multipurpose mechs, as Ves had learned over the course of his studies. They did not have to fulfill every single role that existed, but they needed to possess a good enough selection of different functions to avoid turning into deadweight at any moment on the battlefield.

Ves just found it interesting that even first-class support mech followed this principle, if in a different fashion than their direct combat equivalents.

However, as handy as the aforementioned functions looked when they were all grouped together in the same mech design, there was one primary feature that stood out above the rest. It was the entire reason why Master Goldstein designed this new mech in the first place.

It was a brand new system that was unlike anything he had seen before. Though he did not know how it worked, he was able to deduce its function by looking at certain clues.

The selection of hyper materials was a clear giveaway.

"Paranis Alloy, named after the individual who invented it." Goldstein helpfully explained. "It is an alloy that blends several hyper and exotic materials together to produce a synergistic effect. The key hyper materials used to form it are classified, but I can tell you that they are based on the space and negation attributes. According to numerous lab tests, Paranis Alloy is capable of projecting a narrow energy beam that can negate transphasic effects across vast distances. Depending on the power of the system utilizing this new material, the device can not only negate all of the transphasic properties of an alien warship, but also lock her down in material space, preventing the enemy vessel from fleeing by utilizing warp travel."

"What… is the range of this device."

"Hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Up to a light-second under ideal conditions."

"What?! Really?!"

"Yes, but it will be difficult to maintain a sustained lock at those extreme distances." Master Goldstein admitted. "There needs to be friendly assets in the vicinity of the target that can provide real-time targeting data to my support mech."

"All of those signals still have to travel back and forth somehow. That causes a lot of lag."

"That is true, but there are technological solutions that can minimize this problem."

"That still doesn't entirely eliminate the problem." Ves claimed. "Your support mech will miss its target sooner or later. At these distances, even a slight deviation can cause its negation beam or whatever you call it to go thousands of kilometers off-mark."

"That is why this support mech is not designed to operate on its own. It is designed to be employed as a squad or in larger numbers for the express purpose of preventing alien warships from escaping the battlefield. Intrasystem travel is one of the prevailing advantages of our alien adversaries. Their original warp drives may lack our more efficient FTL capabilities, but they are still superior when it comes to traveling in realspace. The puelmers and the other major alien races utilize the most advanced native warp drives that are built with larger quantities of phasewater. That makes many of their warships faster than many of our ship classes."

That sounded annoying. The aliens could effectively cut their losses and run with any warship that was not already trapped. This enabled them to save more warships and bring back valuable combat experiences that could be used to teach other alien forces how to put up a better fight in the future.

Ves took a few more minutes to study the overall design before he completed his examination.

"Okay, I understand the gist of this mech design. I will make my attempt now. This won't take long."

It felt strange to make this attempt on a mech design that he had not worked on, but he just pretended that it was one of his usual products and followed all of the right steps out of routine.

For all of the functions of this unnamed mech design, its primary purpose was to interdict the warp travel capabilities of enemy warships at extreme range. It relied heavily on spatial manipulation to do so, which meant that the Phase King was the most appropriate choice for this occasion.

Try as he might, he could not embed the Phase King in the design.

Just as he suspected, much of the reason was because he had not worked on this powerful first-class support mech design. Ves possessed a tenuous grasp on it, so how could the Phase King do any better?

The fact that it was not alive did not help either.

"It isn't working." Ves shook his head. "Believe me, I tried my best. This mech design is really good, but I haven't worked on it at all. The way I usually work is that I already have a design spirit in mind when I first start to work on a mech design. By continuing to hold this thought as I work, the mech design's connection to the chosen design spirit continually grows stronger as I near completion."

"Which means that it is not possible to attach a design spirit to a mech design unless you are personally involved in the design process." Master Goldstein concluded. "Well, that is… disappointing. It is not feasible to have you work on every mech that is being designed throughout the new frontier. It is already unacceptable that you provide this benefit to a select number of mechs designed by us. What we seek is a universal method that can be understood, deciphered and taught on a systematic basis. Your solution falls short of this standard, Ves."

Ves shrugged. "It should be possible for other mech designers to do what I can do once they learn how to design living mechs. I am pretty sure that my wife Gloriana, Alexia Streon and maybe Ketis can do this by themselves already. I have also taught living mech design to several batches of Terran mech design students who have enrolled in my course. They may be able to do this as well eventually, though they will need to receive additional lessons."

Master Goldstein crossed his arms. "This is not acceptable. The efficiency is too low. You need to speed up your progress and realize your design philosophy. As long as you have made it this far, you can spread your teachings far and wide and reap considerable benefits from doing so. It is obstacles like these that are holding us back from promoting you to a tier 2 galactic citizen."

Well, if the Transhumanists continued to pressure Ves into speeding up the development of his Carmine System, then that might not be an issue for long.

That ended this particular diversion. Ves at least gave Master Goldstein a consolation prize by conveying the theory and his specific method on how to attach design spirits to living mech designs. It was up to the mechers to figure out what they wanted to do with it. Perhaps they had a rational mech designer in their ranks who had already learned how to design living mechs by freeloading off the lessons that he taught at the Eden Institute of Business & Technology.

It would only be a matter of time before his monopoly on design spirits would come to an end.

It may take years or decades, but now that the Red Association successfully extracted this valuable trade secret from him, it was already a fixed outcome.

Ves did not actually feel too bad about it. The mechers would definitely use it for the collective benefit of human society, though they would make sure they gained the greatest advantage of all in the process.

Learning to let go and share valuable knowledge with the rest of the mech industry was a necessary process of advancing to Master Mech Designer.

It did not exactly feel good to follow this process, but that did not make it any less necessary. Ves was able to make peace with this fact even if it left a sour taste in his mouth.

The compensation from the Red Association better be good, or else he would get really pissed.