The Mech Touch novel Chapter 442

Lieutenant Chandis had a complaint for practically every aspect of the Inheritor model. Much of the reason why was because its design had been tailored for what the higher ups thought what was best for the entire mech regiment.

The wishes of the individual mech pilots who would have to rely on these death traps to survive in space hardly registered in comparison. Every improvement needed to be weighed against more practical concerns such as cost and ease of fabrication. If either of these two factors became negatively impacted, then Professor Velten wouldn’t approve of the changes.

Therefore, much of the complaints he heard from Chandis had already been echoed by the reports he read from the database.

Still, there was a huge difference between reading about the problems from a dry and succinct document compared to hearing it from a mech pilot who had to deal with the consequences on a day-to-day basis.

Chandis probably knew about some of the concerns that played in the background, but he made a persuasive case anyway, largely by employing his emotions.

"Too many comrades have died from this inadequate piece of dung!" Chandis kicked at the plating of the mech. Despite being relatively thin in the scale of mechs, a human foot could never leave a mark on its surface. "Look, just tell your bosses to invest some more money into quality mechs. These Inheritors aren’t worth the materials they’re built from!"

"It’s actually the opposite." Chief Carmon remarked from the side. She maintained her jaded expression throughout the lieutenant’s tirade. "The Inheritor is doing a great job in maximizing the strengths of its materials. The only problem with this approach is that there’s a limit on how much we can optimize their strengths and create more synergies."

In other words, it was as as if the Vandals sculpted a miniature mech out of sand. No matter how exquisite they carved the model of a mech, one good kick could effortlessly blow it away.

Fiddling with the shape and dimensions of the sand model only affected its structural integrity by a minor degree. Such changes would never be able to provide a comprehensive boost in survivability.

The only way to do so was to carve the miniature mech model out of a stronger material such as stone or wood.

However, doing so demanded more money and effort from the Vandals. Ves had read the internal documents on the Inheritor, and in one of them Professor Velten brutally calculated the cost efficiency of switching the Inheritor’s material composition to a stronger mix.

She concluded that increasing the costs by fifty percent would only raise the overall longevity of any random Inheritor mech by twenty-nine percent or so.

To Ves, that sounded very normal. Only at the lowest end of the mech design spectrum would the level of improvement be proportional to the increase in material costs. After that, the law of diminishing returns came into effect. Improvements became increasingly harder to achieve without spending a fortune.

In practical terms, an absolutely trashy mech that cost 3 million credits in raw materials to produce could be twice as good if the cost of materials was 6 million credits instead.

However, if a mech that cost 45 million credits got overhauled with materials that cost 90 million credits, the actual rate of improvement might only be around 10-35 percent. The range was rather large because it heavily depended on the skill and vision of the mech designer.

However, the point was clear. Every mech outfit or mech regiment needed to find a balance between their income and expenditures. Spending lots of money and resources on expensive mechs might sound good, as they often lasted longer on the battlefield, it might not be able to make up for the huge upfront costs.

The calculus that Professor Velten performed had led the 6th Flagrant Vandals maintain the current design of the Inheritor in its current state. Regardless of its performance, it was easy to fabricate from cheap exotics that were abundantly available from the market and lots of mundane materials that could be mined from practically any asteroid in any desolate star system.

Ves estimated the market price for the Inheritor at around twenty million credits. This didn’t sound so bad. The Vandals basically substituted the role of frontline mechs to the Inheritor.

Yet no one ever complained about frontline mechs. In exchange for chopping offs some limbs or even the heads of these mechs, they piled up on lots of cheap armor and slapped some gun barrels on it to make them effective at range. Although the abundance of armor didn’t protect the mech all that well and slowed it down for quite a bit, as long as they stayed at range, the mechs would not be exposed to too much risk.

It was different for the Inheritor. The only thing it had going for was speed and acceleration. Besides that, it possessed no range at all, forcing the mech to close in to knife fighting distance in each engagement. The Vandals needed to commit the Inheritors in a single go, which was very risky as complications constantly happened on the battlefield.

All of these concerns passed through his mind in an instant. While Ves sympathised with Lieutenant Chandis and his men, Ves too needed to think about the big picture. The big shots evidently decided that they would rather sustain more losses in mechs and lives than to invest in upgrading the much-maligned design.

"I will see what I can do, lieutenant." Ves answered vaguely when Chandis expected a response from him. "Your concerns are being noted."

He felt like this liaison gig wasn’t as important as he hoped. Sure, he got to see more of the Vandals, but if he constantly ended up in situations like this where he wouldn’t be able to make people’s problems go away, then it was difficult for him to feel happy about it. The Inheritor design was a light skirmisher that was built to be cheap. Ves could find no leeway in meeting any of the demands set by Chandis.

Nevertheless, he dutifully toured around the hangar while Chief Carmon showed him around the place. Ves spoke with a few other mech pilots and heard the same complaints. This time, he changed up the conversation a little. He heard more than enough bad things about the Inheritor. He wanted to know what made this design so important to the Vandals.

"Well, I gotta admit one thing about this mech." The mech pilot explained as he stood in a straight posture in front of his mech. "It teaches you how to pilot a melee mech in space. There’s no substitute to actual battle experience. No matter how much we trained in the academy and during boot camp, there’s always the realization that whatever simulations we are in is fake. Only with our backs against the wall will we be able to see if we measure up as a Vandal."

Ves thought that these words carried a lot of weight in the Vandals. Even though he hadn’t spent too much time with the mech pilots, he spotted a subtle but pervasive division between mech pilots who used the Inheritor to those who used the other models.

The were rookies.

They mostly consisted of inexperienced mech pilots who had been banished to the Vandals for some reason or another. Piloting this death trap of a mech seemed like a reckless and wasteful decision as it played fast and loose with their lives, but the incredible amount of pressure they endured also seemed to polish off their rough edges.