The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1852

Chapter 1852 The Mech With Clothes

After hearing back from the Rim Guardians, Ves soon put the new development aside and went back to designing his mech.

Progress on the Larkinson mech design barely kept up with the schedule they set. With only three months in total to design a mech that actually consisted of four mechs, Ves could only devote a couple of weeks on each of the configurations!

This was a very brutal pace, now that Ves thought about it. Even with his enhanced productivity upon reaching Journeyman, Ves still required at least two months to design a good mech!

The only reason why their short timetable worked was because of how many aspects the configurations shared in common.

Rather than see it as designing four mechs as one, Ves was truly just designing a single mech with four light variants.

Of course, 'light' being relative here.

It was as if they were designing a naked mech with four different outfits. Each set of clothes altered the properties of the mech in a drastic fashion.

This was anything but usual in mech design. Ves and Gloriana had to overcome so many problems relating to balance, implementation and integration.

Making the clothes 'fit' to the frame was one of the biggest difficulties they faced. If the fit was too tight, then the clothes became a burden to the underlying frame. A tight fit also increased the difficulty of repairing the mech and switching to another configuration.

The other extreme was no better. Making the fit too loose or small weakened the 'clothes'. If they were too light and flimsy, then it wouldn't take much effort for an enemy to render the mechs harmless!

Designing a mech with accompanying clothes was difficult. The unique problems that emerged from designing a modular mech platform presented Ves and Gloriana with plenty of headaches. They never encountered these issues before, and trying to work out solutions for the very first time was a huge burden.

Even as Ves became immersed in the design process, he always made sure to keep an eye on the passage of time. He always had to push his subordinate mech designers to work harder while expecting more from himself. The moment any of them slacked off, the project would definitely fall behind schedule!

Despite the constant worries, Ves never lost confidence. Instead, his passion burned even hotter as the pressure piled up on his shoulders. The deadline that he had set became a goal and an obsession to him. It was not in his nature to break his promises, especially when it came to mech design!

Even though he wouldn't suffer any actual penalties if he exceeded his self-imposed deadline, his mentality would definitely suffer a severe blow if he was late!

With a potential masterwork mech at stake, Ves could only push himself to toil harder and make the most of his design sessions!

Currently, Ves preoccupied himself with the space knight configuration. Though much of its planned design elements had been set in stone, Ves still hesitated over its secondary features.

In spaceborn battles, space battles mostly served as punching bags. They blocked damage so that more vulnerable mechs and assets didn't have to get hit.

This was something the Larkinson mech's space knight configuration already excelled at by virtue of the Breyer alloy integrated in its armor system and internal support structure!

The extra armor cladding affixed to the base platform at many points vastly increased the damage resistance of the resulting mech. The ease of attaching and detaching these modular sections of external armor also resulted in further advantages in battle.

As long as the base layer of armor belonging to the base platform wasn't affected, a space knight could continuously rotate in and out of the battlefield and replace its consumed external armor section!

While it required a lot of training and planning to set up such a rotation, it would definitely extend the space knight configuration's role in battle during extended engagements!

They would just have to fabricate a lot of spare external armor plating and keep them in reserve until it was time to draw upon them. This was something that Ves could easily sustain. Even if his supply of Breyer alloy was cut off, he could always resort to other materials to form different sets of external armor cladding.

This kind of adaptability was very important to forces that might have a reason to head to a place where there weren't any opportunities to resupply like the deep frontier!

Only someone who personally experienced the difficulties of repairing or maintaining mechs under extreme conditions would even think of such a benefit!

Among all of the mech designers, only Ves and Merrill Truman lived through such times. That gave them a shared camaraderie that they didn't have with other mech designers.

Merrill was an interesting mech designer to Ves. Despite her unwilling stay in the frontier, she quickly adjusted back to life as a proper, orthodox mech designer.

With the Komodo Star Sector in great chaos, it hadn't been difficult to arrange a new identity for her. She now went by Merrill O'Brian and underwent a moderate amount of cosmetic surgery to alter her face and adjust her body profile.

This was enough for her to say goodbye to her previous identity!

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