The Mech Touch

Chapter 3704: Mars Project

Ves needed a moment to adjust to Professor Benedict's explosive revelations.

Right now, any form of minidrive was new technology to humanity. They were insanely expensive and considerably inefficient depending on their complexity.

It would take multiple generations of continuous development in order to mature the tech to a more practical and affordable state. By that time, the amount of phasewater required to build a minidrive would probably be half or a third as much as before.

This was why most powers weren't in a hurry to add minidrive-equipped mechs into their arsenal.

Though they opened up a lot of new possibilities, investing that money into more or better mechs was much more cost-effective!

"You never mentioned this before in our prior talks about our upcoming collaborative expert mech design project." Ves said.

"That is because we did not imagine that we could get our hands on a substantial quantity of phasewater this early. It is only when we have managed to defeat the pakklaton refugee fleet that Reginald has told me to find a means to make use of our new bounty in the successor mech to his Bolvos Rage."

In other words, big boy Reggie wanted to have the latest toys. He was the kind of spoiled kid who nagged his parents to buy the latest released version of a popular virtual game upon the first day of its release.

Ves glowered as he thought of how the addition of a combat drive could completely mess up the design of an expert mech!

Not only would a combat drive take up valuable space in the rear of the mech, it also imposed a huge burden on the entire machine!

"From what I've heard, all forms of minidrives are notoriously power hungry." He told the other man. "How are we going to power Reginald's upcoming expert mech?"

"By investing more in its power reactor." Professor Benedict answered simply. "We must also upgrade the power transmission systems and other relevant parts. Though the cost and complexity of our expert mech design will rise at a geometric rate, the benefits we can obtain from these improvements are not light. The power levels of the expert mech's energy weapons will also rise in turn."

"That's true, but I bet they will also generate an insane amount of heat. You will need to add dimensional heatsinks or other advanced tech in order to prevent Patriarch Reginald from getting cooked alive by his own machine!"

"Heat management will indeed pose a major problem, but many issues can be resolved with enough funding." Professor Benedict nonchalantly replied as if this was not a great concern.

Ves truly couldn't see how they could design and make this expert mech at a reasonable cost. By the time they were done, the cost of the Cross Clan's extravagant new machine might be a hundred times more expensive than the Everchanger!

"I suppose this is one of the consequences of having an expert pilot in charge of a clan." Ves sighed.

"Indeed. To be fair, there is good justification for doing our best to empower Patriarch Reginald's expert mech. Even if he does not break through to ace pilot, he can still take advantage of the enhanced firepower and additional mobility options of his new expert mech to turn around losing battles. The impact he can exert on the battlefield may even exceed that of the Amaranto."

Ves asked another important question. "What if Reginald successfully breaks through, though? His brand-new and superexpensive high-tier expert mech will become obsolete in an instant. He will need to pilot an ace mech in order to showcase his full power and I don't think we can straightforwardly upgrade the expert mech that we have painstakingly designed and built for that. Only the best Masters tend to design ace mechs."

The older man looked dismissive. "This is the Cross Clan's problem, not yours. We will see what we can do once we reach that point. For now, even if it is not necessary to equip Patriarch Reginald's new expert mech with a combat drive, we will do so anyway because of the reasons I have mentioned before and because it will make our client feel better. When it comes to matters like these, boosting the confidence of the pilot is worth all of the additional expense."

The implicit theory here was that Patriarch Reginald would increase his chances of achieving a breakthrough if he piloted a more powerful and expensive mech.

Whether it was accurate or not, the Cross Clan appeared to be quite willing to squander tens of thousands of MTA credits on this bet!

Ves shrugged. The professor was right. It was none of his business how the Crossers spent their money.

Of course, he would feel quite upset if they wanted to splurge half of their total funds on building a giant statue of Saint Hemmington Cross in the center of Kotor City on Davute VII!

The strength of the Cross Clan directly affected the strength of the expeditionary fleet.

This was why he was not strongly inclined to object to the Crosser spending plans. Perhaps it might sound foolish to invest a disproportionate amount of money on just a single expert mech, but the hope of creating a new ace pilot was worth the gamble.

"Take a look at my initial drafts." The Senior offered as he projected a few sketches.

Ves immediately grew fascinated by the mechs that Professor Benedict had visualized. They not only included all of the elements they talked about before, but attempted to combine them in a way that squeezed out as much efficiency as possible!

"As you can see, I have presented two different draft designs to you. One of them depicts an expert mech without a combat drive while I have recently added one to the other draft design. The latter needs more work in order to make it more viable, but you can already see my overall direction from studying it. Take your time, Ves. These are not simple designs." 2

That was an understatement. Through their prior collaborations, Ves already understood that Professor Benedict tended to hold extremely high expectations for both himself and his customers. He was the kind of mech designer that sought to pursue the best solutions within his means and assumed that the users of his products would also put in the same degree of effort!

That tended to go extremely poorly when the majority of his clientele consisted of uncivilized pirates who never earned high grades in whatever academy they attended. 1

Fortunately, Professor Benedict was able to preserve his sanity when he went back to designing mechs for professional second-class soldiers.

There was still a gap, though. If Professor Benedict wanted to design the high-spec of his dreams, he needed to find a sufficiently strong and skilled mech pilot that could actually keep up with all of the complex functions of such an insane machine.

Patriarch Reginald was pretty much one of the best mech pilots that he could get at this stage!

Though the leader of the Cross Clan possessed a lot of personality problems that made it difficult to work with him, there was nothing wrong with his combat skills. Getting tutored by his father who used to be an ace pilot elevated his prowess to an immense height!

If Venerable Joshua and Patriarch Reginald dueled against each other with completely even expert mechs, then the latter would easily be able to spank the former! 1

Of course, this wasn't actually a fair contest considering that Joshua was still in his thirties while Reginald was over 70 years old. It was not impossible for Joshua to catch up and exceed the Cross Patriarch when he reached this age range.

Once Ves got over the extreme amount of skill required to pilot either of the draft designs, he began to examine the basic properties of the newest of them that incorporated a combat drive.

"The Mars Project is a high-tier expert hybrid mech at heart." The Crosser will largely be energy-based to take advantage of the upgraded power reactor of this machine. Depending on how many dimensional heatsinks we can obtain, we may need to assume that the Mars Project will excel more in prolonged battles than short, heated engagements."

Ves nodded in understanding.

Dimensional heatsinks worked vastly differently from conventional ones. They were essentially holes in reality that siphoned any heat into a completely different dimension, and could do so endlessly.

The biggest constraint aside from their extreme cost was that they could only funnel a limited quantity of heat energy at a time.

In other words, it might take minutes for an overheated mech to cool down to a reasonable level!

Therefore, the most relevant variable in relation to heat management was how many dimensional heatsinks the Cross Clan could obtain.

Ves was quite familiar with the quirks of dimensional heatsinks because his Amastendira also made use of one. He could not fire the powerful laser weapon unscrupulously because of the need to wait until its dimensional heatsink funneled away enough excess heat.

"It should be fine even if you can't get your hands on a large amount of dimensional heatsinks." He remarked as he continued to study the design. "I see that you have made sure to reserve room for future expansion. That is good. You can easily slot in extra dimensional heatsinks once we are in a better state."

The other solution was to replace a weaker dimensional heatsink model with a more powerful one, but the costs would skyrocket as a consequence!

"Though Patriarch Reginald will have to limit the intensity of his combat actions if he pilots such an expert mech, I believe it is well worth the tradeoffs considering that each of his attacks can easily deal several times more damage. He does not have to fire as many shots in order to defeat his opponents."

‘’That is true’’

Ves noticed a clear difference when he studied the weapon loadouts of the two draft designs.

Though neither of them went into excessive detail, he could see that the revised draft design carried more weapons that were suitable for long-ranged firefights.

Professor Benedict even opted to replace a few positron weapon systems with laser weapon systems in order to give the Mars Project a better chance of sniping down distant targets!

"I don't mean to doubt you, professor, but is this a wise choice?" Ves skeptically asked as he pointed towards the laser weapon mounts. "Your draft design has already taken on a great burden by mounting a combat drive on its back. This gives the Mars Project the option to warp forward at accelerated speeds and close the distance to any enemy fleets. Why would Patriarch Reginald need any long-ranged weapons in this instance?"

"There are plenty of countermeasures against close-ranged warping, Ves. We make use of some of the solutions as well. While the effective range of these countermeasures vary considerably, there may come a time where warping relatively close to an enemy fleet is not a wise option. Patriarch Reginald has made a request that the Mars Project should also remain useful in long-ranged combat. He has grown more frustrated with the Bolvos Rage's lack of precision solutions as of late. He does not mind it if the Mars Project becomes more of an all-rounder due to this design choice."

"I see."

"It is technically feasible even if we are not allowed to make use of your luminar crystal technology."

Hybrid mechs could excel in many different ranges but possessed an inherent bias for short to medium-ranged combat.

This was because their multitude of integrated weapon systems were not that accurate at longer ranges. It took a huge amount of effort in order to make them precise enough to compete against sniper mechs such as the Amaranto!

Still, the client had made his demands known. It was up to Ves and the Professor to do their best to realize Patriach Reginald's ideal mech..