The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1273

Mech designers weren’t supposed to be mech pilots.

For many mech designers, it simply wasn’t possible to pilot a mech due to their genetic aptitude. In the rare case a potentate decided to become a mech designer, their piloting skills were often far too poor to be of use on the battlefield.

It took too much time and dedication to become good in one profession. Most people in the mech community only possessed a talent in one or the other. Those who excelled in mech piloting would not possess the traits that helped them become a mech designer.

All in all, it was a matter of efficiency. Rather than train a mech pilot to minor in mech design or vica versa, it was better to dedicate their time to their best profession and see it as far as possible.

Only those who put their entire time to a single profession were the most likeliest to surpass the extraordinary threshold and beyond!

Ves knew this. Yet despite knowing better, the rush of piloting a mech threatened to overtake his passion!

At first, he hardly maintained control over his lithic frontline mech. The body did not belong to his own, and its movement and balancing patterns were too divergent from the human norm, thereby forcing him to learn from scratch.

Yet after he applied all the knacks and tricks as well as his own understanding of mechs to the problems, he slowly managed to assert finer control of the machine.

It was still a work in progress. No matter what he witnessed before, one did not simply overcome ten to fifteen years of dedicated training. Mech cadets spent a long time in training because there were endless nuances to piloting mechs!

"I shouldn’t feel proud to manage to walk like a decrepit grandpa." He muttered.

Piloting a mech was like controlling a second body that was way too big and clumsy. Its force exertion and its motions were too off-kilter.

What particularly plagued Ves was the amount of conscious control he needed to exert in order to make a deliberate movement. When he raised his own arm, he didn’t need to think about activating the right muscles to do so. His subconscious mind was more than capable of doing that in his stead.

It was different with a mech. His conscious mind was completely unfamiliar with the artificial musculature and the million other details of a mech. It could not exert the amount of intuitive control of the mech through the man-machine connection that mech cadets spent years to refine.

This was the key to piloting a mech in a natural manner. By offloading as many operations to their subconscious mind, the mech pilot would have enough conscious attention left to focus on the aspects that truly mattered.

A good mech pilot would not only have plenty of attention to spare, but also made use of it in the most efficient and effective manner.

For example, a rifleman mech pilot would leave the act of moving to their subconscious mind. Well-trained mech pilots were adeptly able to hook up their subconsciousness with the operating system of a mech and achieve an optimal level of data transmission and decision making.

This allowed the mech pilot to focus their full attention to their marksmanship, improving their judgement and their aim.

Ves fell awfully short on the aspect of unconscious control. He needed to split his attention to numerous tasks that other mech pilots regarded as child’s play!

If not for the throttling, compression, automation and all the other means to prevent a norm from getting overwhelmed, Ves would have fried his brains by now!

"The Rim Guardians must be laughing at our pathetic attempts to control our mechs."

His other peers fared worse. All of their mechs tripped on their feet a few times and planted their faces against the floor. The simple act of balancing a mech so that its center of gravity did not sway too much was apparently beyond them at first!

Time slowly lessened these pathetic displays, but the lack of control was very much evident in every mech’s movements.

"I doubt everyone is as clumsy as they appear to be right now." He muttered suspiciously as he observed the others through the sensors of his mech.

As a direct disciple to an esteemed Master, Tristan Wesseling ought to have undergone some Mastery sessions. While they were doubtlessly not as elaborate as the System, the mech designer from the Carnegie Group should have learned the same knacks and tricks that Ves employed to gain more control over his machine.

"Any of us may be hiding our true level of skill."

Even Ves defaulted back to his habit of presenting a false facade to his potential adversaries. Knowledge was power. There was no need to give it out for free to his competitors.

He deliberately acted as if he had a lot of difficulty in piloting his frontline mech.

In truth, he was confident enough in his level of control to be able to fare decently in a fight against his peers.

"Even an awful mech pilot can defeat me in my current state, but I’m not facing off against mech pilots."

He was doubtlessly going to put into a duel against one of the three other mech designers. As knowledgeable as they were when it came to designing a mech, they were mere babes when it came to piloting them in a serious simulation.

Ves possessed another advantage. He chose to adopt a frontline mech, which ought to have been the weakest and least versatile among the four restored lithic mechs.

Ordinarily, its simplicity and lower parameters should have been a disadvantage. If the four lithic mechs had been piloted by trained mech pilots such as the Rim Guardians, then the limits to their performance would quickly tell.

Not so in this case. Everyone was so new and unfamiliar with piloting mechs that no one came close to brushing up against the performance limitations of their machines!

In fact, the lower limit, the easier it was to assert meaningful control!

"More powerful mechs aren’t necessarily better if the mech pilot can’t keep up. It’s as if a normal mech pilot is attempting to pilot an expert mech. Even if it is theoretically possible, it’s disastrous in every single case!"

Frontline mechs were foremost designed to be simple, expendable war machines. They were meant to be piloted by awful mech pilots who rushed their training or whose genetic aptitudes made them unfit for normal mechs.

The first trial prompted mech designers to resort to their ingenuity when faced with the unknown. _{freeweɓnovēl.coɱ}