The Mech Touch

Chapter 6502 Greedy Carmine Mech Proposal

After Ves and Gloriana put their children to bed, they retired to their own bedroom and got ready for a short rest.

"Meow-" Lucky yawned as he rested on one of the pillows.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

While Ves had changed into his pajamas, his mind was not on sleep, but on what mechs he should design next.

Carmine mechs were in extremely high demand right now. Ves knew that there was little use in designing other mass production models at the moment because the demand for them was not as high.

The market clamored for more Carmine mechs. Even his fellow Larkinsons wanted to get their hands on Carmine mechs that were qualitatively superior to the Yellow Jacket

models.

There was nothing wrong with the Yellow Jackets, but everyone could immediately tell that they were clearly budget models designed for the lower end of the market.

The Larkinsons had grown spoiled ever since Ves first showered them with one premium mech model after another.

The clan had never been particularly short of money. The success it had attained in the mech industry and over its various expeditions had enriched the clan's coffers and allowed it to take better care of its mech forces than many other private organizations. This was why the Larkinsons had the luxury to look down on the Yellow Jacket models. Few if any of them wanted to shackle their futures to what may possibly be the cheapest and weakest Carmine mechs in existence.

This was why Ves urgently needed to design a more powerful and advanced Carmine mech that catered to the upper end of the market.

However, that was not the only priority on his mind.

Aurelia's request caused Ves to turn his attention to another potential market.

Now that mech piloting had become available to 96,5 percent of the population, a huge amount of norms wanted to get into mech piloting, possibly from scratch.

They all required at least 5 years of training to achieve minimal combat effectiveness with a simple Yellow Jacket mech, but that was far too little to match the skill level of a typical professional mech pilot.

Perhaps the practice of auxiliary qi cultivation methods might allow the inexperienced Carmine mech pilots to accelerate their learning ability and master their skills considerably faster than before. Ves was not sure how effective this could be, but he did not think the effects would be too exaggerated.

It was safer to let a young Carmine mech cadet undergo 8 to 10 years of schooling as was standard. Teenagers tended to undergo a rapid growth period during their academy

years. They were highly responsive to focused training and improved extremely rapidly if the conditions were right.

What Ves wanted to do was to cater to these future talents and heroes by designing a highly versatile Carmine starter mech that could grow alongside their young bonded partners and mature into a powerful combat mech after applying continuous adaptive upgrades!

This was not a simple mech to realize.

"It's like designing a training mech that is designed to be easily transformed into a fully capable combat mech, one that must also be modular and highly adaptable to other mech archetypes!"

It was already difficult to design a good training mech or modular mech platform in isolation.

Trying to fit both roles in a single comprehensive modular mech design exceeded the limit of what normal mech designers could accomplish!

Sure, if they tried hard enough, they could probably cobble up a shabby solution together, but it would absolutely underperform as both a training mech for mech cadets and a combat mech for professional soldiers!

What Ves aimed to realize was a Carmine mech that could remain somewhat competitive with the prevailing training mechs on the market at the start, but also transition into a decent modular mech platform after undergoing a really easy overhaul!

"This is crazy... yet can it be done?"

Ves grew more and more excited at the prospect of undertaking such a challenge. It would test his skills and force him to develop all kinds of creative new solutions. The technical demands of this project would exceed every other mech he had designed in the past!

Much could go wrong if he attempted to design such a mech. The sheer amount of moving and adjustable parts needed to design such a monstrosity exceeded the normal limits.

This was dangerous because more parts translated into more failure points. There was always a risk of components breaking down or malfunctioning due to one reason or another. It became a lot more difficult for maintenance crews to inspect the conditions of every individual component and replace them before they broke during the worst possible time.

Ves had never been particularly gifted in this fine and intricate technical design work. He knew his own strengths and weaknesses. His approach towards mech design had often been described as sloppy. He was willing to tolerate small errors and shortcomings so long as the holistic package aligned with his vision.

That was an approach that worked particularly well for simple mech designs with high tolerance for errors such as the brand-new Yellow Jackets or the highly robust.

Ultimatums.

However, this training and combat Carmine mech concept would be anything but simple. Ves was not making his job easy by trying to do too much with a single mech

frame.

Was he up to the task? He was not too sure, but he was willing to give it a try.

The choice of collaborators was crucial. He needed to cooperate with mech designers that could help make up for his shortcomings but also believed in his vision.

He soon turned to his wife, who was sitting in front of her vanity doing... woman stuff.

"Gloriana."

"What is it, Ves? Did you come up with a new mech concept?"

"I did. Our first daughter has given me quite a bit of inspiration. Let me explain what is on my mind at the moment."

Ves quickly summarized his train of thought to his wife, skipping a lot of explanations because he knew she was knowledgeable enough to fill in the gaps herself.

After he conveyed his idea, his wife furrowed her brows while putting down her

hairbrush.

"That is... an ambitious idea. Normally, I would never allow you to design such a greedy Carmine mech. You are trying to fuse two kinds of mechs that diverge far too much from each other. Training mechs are designed with safety, longevity and economy in mind. They need to be easy to pilot from the beginning, which clearly reduces many advanced operations that can only be implemented in more high-end machines. However, by demanding that the owners of this training mech be able to convert it into a fully capable combat mech, you need to develop a conversion plan that retains as many parts of the former as possible, but also offer far superior performance from those very same starter components!"

His wife clearly understood the heavy challenges that Ves needed to tackle if he tried to design such an ambitious Carmine mech.

That last description was the most crucial challenge that Ves needed to overcome in order to turn this project into a success.

What Gloriana said was correct.

To put it in a different way, Ves needed to design a training Carmine mech that was not

only safe and harmless to pilot for Carmine mech cadets in their teens, but also perform like a powerful premium Carmine mech when their bonded pilots had grown up and graduated from the mech academies!

It may just be possible to realize such a complicated mech if Ves stuck to a single mech type such as a rifleman mech, but that did not satisfy all of his demands.

Ves wanted to take this a step further and design a Bright Warrior Mark III-like modular mech platform that could easily be transformed into any common mech archetype! "I know it is difficult, honey, but it can meet the demands of so many people that I don't need to design any other Carmine mechs for a time." Ves explained his reasoning. "I know it is taboo to attempt to meet the demands of far too many people at once, but I am not. necessarily looking for excellence. What I want is to design a 'good enough' training Carmine mech and a 'good enough' modular Carmine mech platform. As long as it can perform adequately well in all fronts, my goal has succeeded. Third-party mech designers are free to license the design and develop their own specialized variants that perform significantly better at their narrowly defined roles."

His wife still disapproved of his ambition. "You are letting your past successes inflate your confidence. Just because you have been able to break the genetic aptitude tyranny does not necessarily mean you are skilled and experienced enough to solve this technical puzzle. You need to rely on a completely different set of knowledge than what you are usually good at to design such a solution. If you were a Star Designer or a renowned Master, then I would have wished you good luck, but you are still short of reaching that standard. This mech proposal of yours is the product of your own hubris. I know you want to save time and design one mech that can fulfill the roles of two different machines, but there are good reasons why very mech designers have tackled

this challenge."

She raised a couple of good points. Not even older and more seasoned mech designers dared to tackle such a complicated project. It was far too easy to produce a mediocre mech design that barely made any ripples in the mech market. It was too much of a risk to commit to this sort of project.

The mech market strictly divided training mechs and combat mechs for good reasons. One should never be used to fulfill the functions of the other, or else a lot of accidents

could occur!

"I have only heard rejections from you. Do you have any more constructive feedback for me, or is telling me my mech proposal sucks all you can share, Gloriana? You know I cannot design a training Carmine mech or an advanced combat Carmine mech in isolation. Aside from disabled veteran mech pilots, every Carmine mech pilot starts out as a completely blank slate. He has to practice with a genuine training mech for at least a few years before he can graduate to piloting a real combat mech. Unlike potentates, a norm cannot switch from one machine to the other. He is stuck with the first Carmine mech that he is bonded. That is why I cannot easily simplify this mech concept." Ves was being limited by the greatest weakness of the Carmine System.

If Miss Alexa Streon had already begun to make attainments in the development of her revolutionary living legacy mechs, then he could push aside such a convoluted solution. A Carmine mech pilot should be able to pilot a training Carmine mech during his

academy days before transferring to a combat Carmine mech belonging to the same mech dynasty!

However, Alexa was still at the early stages of fleshing out her design philosophy. There was still a lot more room for growth and optimization. Ves did not dare to incorporate her experimental work too soon on a project as important as the second commercially available Carmine mech of the Red Ocean!

While Ves lamented that his direct disciple had not yet been able to come out with her first proper living legacy mechs, his wife offered an alternative solution. "Hmph! You accuse me of overlooking the need to provide constructive feedback, but that is because you are too short-sighted to recognize the obvious response to my criticism. As far as I am concerned, you must rein in your greed by simplifying what is not essential. In my opinion, the demand for high modularity must go. Why must you design a training and combat Carmine mech that can fight as a swordsman mech, a knight mech or a rifleman mech depending on the configuration? It is much more realistic if you limit yourself to designing a rifleman Carmine mech that can fulfill the roles of both a training mech and a combat mech. This way, you can perfectly meet

Aurelia's demand for a suitable machine to enable her part-time Carmine mech pilot

career!"

"That... actually doesn't sound so bad."