The Mech Touch novel Chapter 7370

Chapter 7370: Inhuman Demands

Ves spent the next few days reorienting his focus to supervising the elaborate design process of his Woodsap mechs.

The Terrans invested so much manpower and resources into the elemental Carmine mech designs that it became a challenge to stay on top of every single development.

His collaborators were not just satisfied with publishing a single model.

They split up the project into several different branches, each led by a different team of Master Mech Designers.

This way, the Terrans not only promoted greater diversity, but also increased the fault tolerance of the overall effort.

All of this increased the complexity of the Carmine design project. Too much was at stake here. The Terrans thoroughly considered it to be a prestige project, one that could reinvigorate their national pride should it meet their more ambitious goals.

This was good news for Ves as the Terrans assigned some of their best talents to the project. While it was difficult for Ves to assert his authority over academics who dedicated at least a century of their life to their chosen fields of specialization, he was still glad that he had nearly unreserved access to their wisdom and problem-solving skills.

The physical projection of Master Laila Rebecca Devos looked particularly pleased with the progress the Terrans had made so far.

"We are roughly on schedule. Our progress has been brisk. While we have faced many difficulties, most of them are related to the overly ambitious goals set by our researchers and developers. The core design formula is solid as far as we have ascertained. We want to make the new Woodsap mechs widely available as soon as we have unveiled them to the public, so we have decided to tighten up the scope of our R&D. Our mech designers will spend less time on exploration and more time on optimization."

Ves smiled. "That is good. You can design more ambitious and unusual variants after we have completed the initial batch of Woodsap mechs. The ones that are currently in the works should already satisfy many of the Terrans that have rejected the Yellow Jackets for their cheapness."

The Woodsap mechs as intended not only possessed enough power to compete against the more impressive first-class multipurpose mechs in use today, but also offered a much lower learning curve.

Due to the special technologies applied by the Terrans, the early testers had already begun to experience a new way of controlling their biomechs.

Rather than piloting their mechs as if they were two distinctly separate entities, the individuals who piloted the Woodsap mechs controlled them as if they controlled their own bodies!

Although the early tests already revealed a host of problems and complications to this novel method of controlling a machine, Ves had faith that the Terrans would be able to work out most of the technical problems in the coming months.

In the past, the mech industry never had a strong incentive to develop this alternate control system to the fullest.

While it offered a much lower learning curve, it imposed severe restrictions to the mech design in question.

For example, it had to adhere closely to the humanoid form and could not deviate too far from the proportions of the pilots in question.

The alternate control system also promoted a sense of laziness that could prevent many mech pilots from exploiting their machines more effectively by performing actions that were impossible to replicate with normal human bodies.

It was only because the Terrans prioritized the Woodsap mechs so much that they invested serious resources into solving many known problems while tolerating the rest.

The Terran Alliance couldn’t wait for five to ten years for the first batch of Carmine mech pilots to complete their accelerated training programs.

The norms-turned-Carmine mech pilots needed to make their Woodsmap mechs combat effective as soon as possible.

The best candidates outside of potentates were trained infantry soldiers.

The Terrans had already begun to train tens of thousands of handpicked troopers.

Each of them had already scored high in terms of martial arts, marksmanship and teamwork.

They only needed to learn the theory and practice of piloting multi-ton humanoid war machines.

The importance of this initial batch could not be overstated. They would bear a great amount of responsibility in debuting the Woodsap mechs. Their performance would directly determine everyone’s first impressions of the first advanced Carmine mechs in existence!

While it was fairly easy to teach them the necessary knowledge to pilot their future machines, the job demanded more than just theory.

Their physiques needed to undergo fairly radical modifications in order to gain the qualifications to interface with their upcoming biomechs!

This was the most controversial aspect of the collaborative design project.

"How is the augmentation of the prospective pilots proceeding?" Ves asked. "Last I have heard, your people have generated plenty of disputes about this subject."

The physical projection of the Terran Master Mech Designer made a troubled expression.

"It is not a question of whether we can do it. We can already execute the necessary steps needed to transform a ’normal’ Terran citizen into a tree-human hybrid. The greatest issue is that our mastery of the relevant technologies is not extensive enough to minimize all of the sequelae. This is how the first sequence of fully-transformed Woodsap mech pilots appear."

Master Laila Devos transferred an encrypted data package over the communication channel.

When Ves decrypted the package and projected the contents to the side, he immediately frowned.

The physical transformation was worse than he expected.

The people who voluntarily agreed to undergo experimental augmentation regimes had lost the elegance and suppleness of the human form.

They grew taller and thinner.

The worst cases had grown at least 50 percent taller than their previous forms, causing them to appear so inhuman that they could scare any child!

What was worse was that every test subject had lost their healthy pink human skin.

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