The Mech Touch novel Chapter 588

Chief Haine figured it out first. "You never intended to stick to the Pointed Sentinel’s original design!"

"Exactly." Ves confirmed her guess with a perpetual grin. "Even if I designed a variant of the Pointed Sentinel that can make up for some of its weaknesses, its foundation is too weak! Rather than limiting ourselves to the shackles of the base model, why not break it apart and free it from mediocrity?"

"Are you crazy, Mr. Larkinson?! Do you know the immensity of what you are aiming to accomplish? You’re too ambitious! I wouldn’t be surprised if you chose to go this route if we had a month’s worth of time to tackle the problems that crop up slowly, but you only have three days time!"

Ves took her reproach without any sign of relenting. This was going to be one of his most challenging projects to date. In truth, his ambitious was indeed very wild, but his past competition experience already showed him that he could work under pressure.

He planned to take the Pointed Sentinel, disassemble it into pieces, and substitute its lesser parts with those from the junkyard!

A mech that deviated from any known design by a very wide margin wouldn’t be called a variant anymore. If Ves intended to go through with his plan to assemble an entirely different machine from parts of different mech models, then he was basically building a frankenstein mech!

Frankenstein mechs went far beyond patchwork mechs. The latter only filled up some of their holes with inadequate replacement parts. The former completely represented a new and divergent mech model that possessed only a vague relationship with the original design.

To design and assemble a frankenstein mech took a lot of guts! Mixing and matching wildly incompatible mech parts took a lot of skill, especially since every mech designer adhered to their own standards. Some commonalities would be shared among mechs from the same state, but beyond that every mech model comprised of its own system.

Rashly combining parts from different mech models would be like trying to push a square block through a round hole. The parts fundamentally couldn’t mate with each other. Even if Ves forced a connection through brute force, the parts all ran on different settings and programming. Trying to harmonize all of those complexities into a coherent whole took a lot of time.

Where would Ves be able to find the time to harmonize the programming?

"You’re taking an undue amount of risk for something that might go very bad." The chief warned Ves. "In my judgement, the chance of failure is over ninety percent. That’s way too risky to consider this option. We have other alternatives."

"And what are those options? Repairing the Pointed Sentinel? Making minor adjustments? Replacing some of its lesser components with better quality ones?" Ves retorted. "That doesn’t go far enough. If you understand the design of the Pointed Sentinel as well as I do, you’ll know that it simply can’t compete against the Rogue Breaker, especially after Mr. Creta is done with it. Playing it safe will lead to near-certain defeat in my eyes. In a time like this, the riskier option may be the only viable path to victory."

The regular courses of actions didn’t cut it to Ves. They didn’t go far enough in transforming the Pointed Sentinel from a bargain bin mech into a machine that could fully keep up with Captain Orfan’s piloting standard.

Chief Haine didn’t look convinced. "Even if you’re the head designer, you’re not in charge around here. Captain Orfan has put her life on the line for this honor duel, so she should have the final say. I won’t agree to something as drastic as building a frankenstein mech without her express approval."

"That’s fair enough." Ves acquiesced.

Even though he fully believed his judgement was right, it wasn’t his life on the line here. Though he had a limitless amount of plans in his mind, even he sometimes forgot that mech designers ought to serve mech pilots rather than the other way around.

Ves and the Chief returned to the workshop and waited until Captain Orfan paused her simulation battle. She emerged from the pod with an annoyed expression.

"What is it?"

"It’s like this."

Both of them explained their intentions to the captain. Chief Haine presented the safer while Ves elaborated on his wild scheme to construct a frankenstein mech.

The captain appeared impassive throughout the explanations. "Look at the results of my simulation battles."

She pressed a button on her half-open pod that summoned a projection of the outcome of the most recent battles. During the time that Ves and Chief Haine explored the inventory and junkyard, she completed over five simulations.

The captain lost in all of the scenarios. Ves read through the readout and saw that she not only tried out the Pointed Sentinel in a dueling environment, but also in large-scale battlefields which the captain was accustomed to. None of those situations ended well for her, and after reading the brief summaries of how her virtual mechs met their ends, he knew why.

"This ain’t the time to pussy-foot around." The captain said. "I’ve been wrangling with this piece of crap in five separate simulations and I barely made any progress. Do you know how difficult it is for me to rein in my power? It’s awful!"

"We can make focused improvements into increasing the upper limits of the parts."

"No can’t do, chief. That’s not good enough for me. A piece of crap is a piece of crap whether you polish it or not. If I knew how bad this stupid Sentinel really performed, I would have asked for another mech!"

"So you approve of my plan then, captain?" Ves looked hopefully at Orfan. He had a decent read on her personality. That was why he felt daring enough to think about building a frankenstein mech. Ordinary mech pilots would never think of piloting such a monstrosity.