The Mech Touch novel Chapter 299

Ves hadn’t spent 13,000 DP in vain.

The Energy Storage IV and Conductors III Sub-Skill provided him with enough of a foundation to take any existing energy cell design and transform it into something else. They also provided him with a promising approach on how to deal with the overcharge phenomenon.

"The Glowing Planet’s energy field can’t be stopped or blocked. An energy cell will acquire an overcharge whether they’re empty or full. The energy field makes it so that energy cells won’t let physics stand in the way of stuffing themselves full with energy."

What did this mean?

"I should just let it happen. The key is to mitigate the problem after it has occurred."

The simplest and most primitive way would be to drain the overcharge, either by siphoning it elsewhere or by using it up in a rapid fashion.

"I’m sure someone is already figuring out a way to do that. It’s not very efficient or safe, though."

Dealing with such a deadly amount of charge risked courting disaster. Any excessive transfers also generated massive amounts of heat and stressed out any components involved. Mechs would require daily maintenance to continue to function this way.

Such a solution merely exchanged one problem for another.

Ves wanted to develop a more elegant solution. In order to gain entry into the fortifications erected by the Mech Corps, Ves had to present the brass with a new design that could impress them on the spot.

"Let’s think about the structure for a moment."

Pretty much every mech-grade energy cell focused on cramming as much energy as possible inside its standardized volume. The materials and structures used in the cell focused primarily on maximizing their energy density.

Ves wondered if a structure that prioritized a different goal would be able to achieve a different result. Every energy cell he encountered so far used the same principles to store their energy. They only different in the safeguards and the materials used, leading to a limited variation of structures that basically looked the same from a distance.

A couple of different ideas flourished in his mind. Ves opened the designer program and spent some time designing alternate energy cell designs using existing ones as the base.

To put it simply, Ves thought he might find a solution by lowering the energy density of a cell. In essence, he wanted to see whether the overcharge phenomenon could maintain its strength against an energy cells that had been purposefully designed to be bad.

He only spent half a day to come up with four different designs, which he further split up into cheap and expensive variants.

Compared to conventional energy cells, these deviations worked a lot less efficiently than others. They generated substantially more waste heat while holding much less charge in total.

"It’s all well and good to doodle some new designs, but the only way to see if it works is if I fabricate some physical copies."

Ves left his bunk and went to the nearest workshop. The Whalers brought a cheap 3D printer to this expedition. It was the sole machine that could print new components if their mechs required replacement parts.

He unconsciously sneered at the sight. The cheap and awful printer had obviously been salvaged from a former production site. Lack of maintenance and overall neglect had degraded the machine to a fairly awful state. The Whalers didn’t even bother using it to fabricate most of their replacement parts, preferring to order new ones from another source.

"Well, it’s not like I have anything better to work with. Let’s fix her up."

He performed some superficial maintenance on the machine. The machine probably hadn’t received so much care in a decade. Most of what he did amounted to cleaning the interior and correcting the alignment of any components that had shifted during intensive jobs.

Ves lacked the expertise to bring the printer back to its prime, not that he had the time to spare in the first place. "This should be enough to work with some precision."

He didn’t place a lot of demands on the quality of his energy cells. He only wanted some proof of concepts to test out his ideas.

As some of the simpler components of a mech, the printer didn’t have to strain too much to spit out the energy cells. It only took two hours to fabricate all eight of them. Ves ordered a couple of bots to take them away to an empty underground testing chamber he appropriated from the Whalers.

While it didn’t matter if they held a charge or not, Ves charged them up to full capacity anyway in order to hurry up the process. After that, he set some automated measuring equipment before leaving the energy cells alone.

Ves checked up on his experiment every twelve hours.

The first time he checked in, he raised his eyebrows. Surprisingly enough, one pair of energy cells that shared the same design acquired an overcharge after only several hours.

"If I want to develop a cheap bomb, then this should be the right direction. It’s a shame no one will want this. It’s too volatile."

He carefully directed a couple of bots to lift the two cells and take them far away from the base. After that, he made some more adjustments to his rig before he left the chamber.

Over the course of several days, Ves continued to visit the chamber to inspect his progress. The other pairs of energy cells eventually became affected by the overcharge phenomenon, but different than last time, the problem became much less severe.

Regular energy cells acquired a charge that varied from three to seven times their initial capacity. In contrast, his experimental designs only acquired a maximum charge of two times its initial capacity.