The Mech Touch novel Chapter 205

Considering the transient nature of his design, Ves skipped the growth element of the X-Factor. In order to win over the test pilots as quickly as possible, he decided to focus on immediate impact.

By now, Ves developed a standard procedure of sorts when trying to shape the X-Factor. At his current level of concentration, he’d be able to work with a maximum of three images, all of which served a different purpose that would synergise with each other when they came together.

The first image defined and enhanced the role of the design. The second image centered around a powerful totem animal that introduced the right mix of primal instincts into the design. The third image should be based around the myth of a legendary human figure in order to strengthen his design’s higher level cognition.

With this division of images, Ves established his first formal X-Factor technique. He called it the Triple Division for convenience.

The first image should be an idealized knight mech. To maximize the compatibility between his mech and the test pilots, Ves wanted to ground the experience with something familiar. By building up the foundation of his X-Factor on the knight mech itself, Ves insured that no matter how many individual touches he applied, the test pilots would still feel at home.

Sometimes it might not be a good idea to put the archetype central to the design in question. Too much familiarity bred contempt, or at least made the design appear a little boring.

In order to balance out the familiar, Ves counterbalanced it with a strong and invigorating totem animal.

"Let’s go with a hexapod king."

Though he’d never seen a hexapod king in the flesh, he intimately studied the Kaius, which was based on its carcass. The sheer power and terror of them both made for a profound image that had long been seared into his mind.

Choosing the hexapod king as the totem animal for his design shifted its emphasis from defense to offense. Though his design would very likely lack the endless power supply of the beasts, it would still be able to inherit much of its primal ferocity.

Choosing such a savage totem animal risked getting out of hand, so Ves decided to temper it with a more rational human legend. What kind of mythical figure could he conjure up that fit well with the design without being too excessive?

Ves went with the image of a mounted knight called the Leading Edge, or Sir Edge for short. He’d been born in the saddle and had been brought up to serve as a professional knight since he first showed his aptitude for riding.

As a consummate cavalryman, Sir Edge had mastered fighting in both a mounted and dismounted state. On foot, he could hold a shield wall as any other shield bearer, but he truly came to being when he sat on the saddle. He knew how to keep an overview of the battle and choose the right timing to go in for a thundering charge.

In the heat of the battle, he tossed almost every consideration aside and fought with his heart’s content, bellowing war cries all around!

As Ves became increasingly immersed in the backstory of the Leading Edge, his competition hadn’t sit still. Oleg already sprinted towards a design terminal and drew up a basic schematic based on what he thought would be a ’comfortable’ knight.

As a young and talented Apprentice Mech Designer, Oleg developed his own approach to mech design. He possessed a much deeper foundation in the nuts and bolts of mech design, so he hardly needed to pause in the process of picking out components.

Unlike Ves, Oleg decided to stick with the classics and design a fully defensive knight. While his design still stuck to the medium weight class, Oleg pretty much jacked up its armor budget to the maximum possible amount.

"A knight can never have too much armor." He thought as he rapidly refined his rough schematic into something presentable.

He utilized the full functions of the advanced design software in his terminal. A separate projector constantly subjected the latest version of the design to a barrage of standard simulations, which the hidden super processors buried underneath the workshop churned out in rapid tempo.

With the help of these powerful functions, Oleg rapidly eliminated the weak points in his design. His optimization-based approach to designing his mech made full use of the abundant amount of processing power at his disposal. Without the corresponding amount of resources, Oleg’s approach would never achieve results so quickly.

The only downside to this method was that Oleg exerted relatively little control over the direction of his simulations. It constantly spat out error-prone results that led him into dead-ends. This forced him to backtrack on his designs until he reached the point where he could take a different path.

His approach also let go of any attempts to adhere to a strong vision. Even Oleg didn’t know how his design ultimately looked like. Some designers couldn’t even image working without a definite goal in mind, but Oleg embraced the inherent uncertainty.

It didn’t matter how the end product looked like. As long as its specs surpassed the previous version, Oleg was happy.

In contrast, Ves let his vision guide his design choices. Once he split his focused and dipped it into the Triple Division, his mind became filled with the righteous purpose of shaping it into reality.

"Let’s see what I have to work with." He said and opened the catalog in his terminal’s design suite. The parts listed in the catalog came in different sizes and shapes. Even a minor deviation had a lot of implications to his ultimate design. _{ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com}

Instead of making calculative choices based on specs, Ves took a step back and viewed the parts in a holistic manner. Each time he saw a part, he asked himself whether they conformed to the images buzzing in his mind.

Most of the time, the images buzzed in disapproval. Only a couple of times did they show their approval. He slowly ticked off the necessary components until he ended up with a full set of components.

At first glance, they didn’t seem powerful. Ves ended up passing over the most powerful components in favor of those that harmonized well with his vision and each other. They all possessed an intrinsic underlying rule that Ves didn’t fully understand.