The Mech Touch novel Chapter 440

The true worth of a mech designer lay not in their skills or experience, but in the quality of their designs.

One did not necessarily lead to the other.

Even if a mech designer possessed a genius-level intelligence and enjoyed extensive tutoring from renowned Masters, his products might still end up lackluster and without inspiration.

This often happened in high-pressure learning environments in the galactic center and the galactic rim. Their abundant wealth and population enabled many hopefuls to study mech design. Yet once they entered the ultra-competitive mech markets there, they instantly got swamped.

They learned in the most brutal fashion that to be a successful mech designer, they needed to be more than technically adept. They needed to have a sense of art and craftsmanship.

"Mech design is both a science and an art. Among two functionally similar designs, the one which resonates more with the people will always have an edge."

Artistic sense could be trained, but only up to a certain point. It was something which could never be defined or measured in hard numbers. What one person found beautiful, another person might think of it as trash.

The key to mech design was to design a mech that appealed to a broad audience. If that couldn’t be done, then it should at least be attractive to its target audience.

To be nominated to win the award for Best Mech Design of the Year, a design had to possess more than technical prowess, though that was also indispensable.

The Crystal Lord design happened to be strong at both. The product line exhibited pretty good specs and possessed a clean and mostly faultless design.

However, the main qualities that pushed it into contention to win an award was its inexplicable effect at impacting both bystanders and mech pilots alike. The mech possessed a weight to it that could hardly be seen in other mechs besides those that possessed a very special history.

Many mech designers who witnessed the copies in person and mech pilots who tried out the virtual copies in online games all puzzled over what made the Crystal Lord so special. When they compared the Crystal Lord to the Blackbeak, they noticed the same qualities, but at a weaker level.

Clearly, the Crystal Lord was not a fluke, and its compelling allure must have been a deliberate design feature. As mech designers and mech pilots puzzled over the mystery, word of mouth spread far and wide, and even foreign markets showed interest in importing the remarkable mechs.

All of this had made the powerful and influential Bentheim Mech Court take note. Besides presiding over difficult disputes and contentions in the mech industry, they also recognized the works of brilliant mech designers who resided in the Bright Republic.

That the Crystal Lord had been acknowledged by the Court was already an enormous honor. Though it only fell into contention in the lowest grade of its awards, demand had already spiked once the news leaked out.

All of this thrust the LMC into a spotlight, but sadly the mech designer who shaped the remarkable design was many light-years away from the spotlight. While his company accepted more and more accolades, Ves was cooped up in his newly-assigned office to prepare to take up his new duties.

Despite having cut off his connections to the mech industry back, Ves found it rather strange that his achievements directly led to a promotion in the hollowed-out design department of the 6th Flagrant Vandals.

He blinked and rubbed his eyes as he took a break from his reading. "The Crystal Lord must be selling like hotcakes right now if word of it had managed to reach the Vandals."

Though Ves still felt a little bewildered about it since his accomplishments back home shouldn’t have affected him like this, he decided to roll with the punches.

In preparation for the new tasks Professor Velten expected him to complete, Ves needed to get up to date with various protocols and technical data. The extra reading imposed on him didn’t help so much because much of the true secrets of the three actively developed designs of the Flagrant Vandals remained enclosed inside impenetrable black boxes.

Though it annoyed him to be deprived of how certain key components worked, he slowly realized that it wasn’t just a matter of secrecy. The professor also wanted to preserve his sanity. Spending the last couple of days trying to digest the new information already strained his mind somewhat, though his mental fortitude was a lot stronger than anyone realized.

"The so-called higher concepts don’t seem so nebulous now that I think about it." He muttered. "The main reason why they are so dangerous is because they can potentially ruin someone’s design philosophy."

From the brief instructions the professor had given him, Ves needed to be very prudent with what he read. Ves remembered what she said back then.

"The process of learning is one of the strengths of a civilized race. Each generation, the human race advances a little more because they learned from the mistakes of their predecessors. Yet we spend so much of our lifetime learning from others that we risk losing the ability to think for ourselves. There are lots of dangers involved with indiscriminate learning. Besides learning faulty information, you also risk narrowing your perspective on matters. Once this transfers to your developing design philosophy, you essentially become prematurely locked to someone else’s stance on mechs."

Basically, Velten wanted Ves to study up so he could be of more use, but not go too far with his learning unless he wanted to destroy his ability to cope with the unknown and design mechs that could truly be called as his own work.

Ves knew she had a point, and as much as Ves wanted to dismiss the risks, he couldn’t. Though he wouldn’t get confused by the higher concepts, the danger to design philosophy and artistic vision remained as potent as ever. The more he learned, the more he agreed with the solutions of the original designers, and the less he tried to figure out alternative solutions.

Designing mechs eventually needed a hands-on approach. The more successful mech designers never reached their heights by relying on learning alone. They also applied their knowledge and tested the boundaries between what they knew and didn’t know if it would be possible.

Thus, as much as Ves wanted to delve into the depths of the archives, he forced himself to pull away.

"I know enough about the three designs to get the gist of them all." _{frёeωebɳovel.com}