The Mech Touch novel Chapter 587

Overall, Ves faced a serious challenge of his own. The base design of the Pointed Sentinel truly couldn’t catch up with Captain Orfan. Considering her personality, she wouldn’t be able to hold herself back too much.

If she piloted the Pointed Sentinel after it received only the most essential repairs, then she would do much more damage to her own mech than her opponent could ever inflict. _{ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm}

"Captain Orfan is her mech’s worst enemy."

It sounded like a ludicrous statement, but instances like this happened many times before. Countless stories proliferated on the galactic net on how skilled mech pilots met their own end after transferring from a high-quality mech to a low-quality mech.

This showcased a fundamental truth. There should never be too much disparity between the strength of a mech and the strength of the mech pilot. Why do expert pilots insist on piloting extremely expensive custom mechs?

Because they would otherwise break their own mechs!

The newly advanced Venerable Foster obviously struggled with this issue herself. Her old training mech which served her adequately started breaking down as soon as she broke through. Evoking forced resonance only put more pressure on the frame, as her mech’s vastly increased power came with a subsequent tradeoff of accelerating the consumption of its lifespan.

It could be said that the quality of a mech determined the upper limit on the skill that mech pilots would be able to display. Those who possessed more ability would inevitably brush against the limits of what their mechs could perform. Therefore, it was vitally important to match the power of a mech with the upper limits of a mech pilot’s skill.

Ves keenly understood this point, and so did many others. Why did Walter’s Whalers used to buy second-hand trash mech worth 3 million bright credits or less? It was because the average skill of their mech pilots was absolutely abysmal.

Straight-up investing money in better mechs didn’t necessarily improve the strength of the Whalers either. If Walter handed over mechs worth 30 million credits to his badly-trained mech pilots, the actual strength they could express may only be equivalent to the power of a mech worth 10 million credits or less.

"The strength of a mech pilot must be proportional to the strength of a mech!"

Of course, this statement wasn’t absolute. There were many ways of strengthening a mech without overly burdening the mech pilot. The easiest way to cheat this rule was to strengthen a mech’s armor. Many armor formulas shared the same attributes in terms of weight and density, but they differ dramatically in the amount of protection they offered. This was mainly a function of the quantity and quality of exotics they utilized.

This was also the most important point of difference between third-class mechs and second-class mechs and etc. Third-class mechs utilized a much lower standard of armor formulas than second-class mechs. The cost of second-class mechs may easily be tens to hundreds of times more than a third-class mech, but their armor may easily be five to ten times stronger.

Of course, the amplification of strength constantly bumped into the law of diminishing returns. A mech that was twice as expensive may only be ten or so percent stronger in reality.

This made it uneconomical for third-rate states to imitate the standard of mechs employed by the vastly richer second-rate states.

In any case, right now Ves had to work with a third-class low-end mech. In his eyes, every mech that costs less than 30 million credits was a budget mech, and the Pointed Sentinel fell squarely in this category.

The mech industry produced budget mechs en masse. Why not? The private market hungered for them. The skill, training and aptitude of the majority of the mech pilots in the private sector matched well with budget mechs. They would never be able to get their money’s worth if they piloted an expensive premium mech such as the LMC’s Bleakbeak or Crystal Lord.

Ves explicitly designed his original mech designs towards squad leaders, champions, mercenary commanders and the like. Possessing the ability of an advanced pilot was the basic qualification to pilot his mechs, because they both came with lots of strength and highly sophisticated control mechanisms that average pilots would never be able to use to their full potential.

This limited his customer base, but Ves had never intended to compete with budget mechs. Due to their low cost, the barrier for entry in that market was far too low. Too many mech designers plunged into that market already.

Though there were lots of risks involved with plunging straight into the premium segment, his ability and his high-quality work had pulled him through. The LMC stood on a firm foundation thanks to his good judgement and previous hard work.

His private sector experience provided him with lots of experience on what skilled advanced pilots demanded out of their mechs.

On the other hand, his experiences with several outfits such as Walter’s Whalers and the Flagrant Vandals gave him a better perspective on what basic mech pilots asked out of their mechs.

The gap between basic pilots and advanced pilots was actually fairly wide. A mismatch in mechs and pilots between the two basic categories might prove disastrous.

In the case of Captain Orfan, her instinct-driven piloting style magnified that small possibility into certain catastrophe.

When Ves explained his train of thoughts to Chief Haine, she nodded in understanding. "Can’t say I’ve bumped into this issue a lot, but I’ve seen some cases like that over the years. The thing is, you’re asking us to upgrade a mech from something that is suitable for basic pilots into a machine that can handle the stress outputted by a peak advanced pilot. Even if you are a Journeyman Mech Designer in all but name, we’ve only got three days to work with before we have to send the Pointed Sentinel onto the arena grounds."

Her skepticism was justified. Even Ves didn’t fully believe he could accomplish this ambitious goal in so little time.

"Do you believe in miracles?" Ves asked with a grin.

"There’s no such thing as miracles."

"Well, I’ll make you a believer in the next three days. There’s nothing we can’t do as long as we take a clever approach."