The Mech Touch novel Chapter 518

Chapter 518: Carrot and Stick

Ves scheduled another comprehensive meeting . Every mech designer in the task force had been ordered to attend it, though it was sufficient for them to show up as projections . They could hardly enter a shuttle and transfer over to the Shield of Hispania while the entire task force entered FTL .

In the meantime, Ves fulfilled some of his other responsibilities . He paid a visit to each of the Shield of Hispania's hangar bays to provide consultations for the resident mech pilots and mech technicians .

He spent days drawing upon the full potential of his formidable mind to fill out an expansive but fairly abstract plan . Staring at the developing mech roster all day disconnected him from the mechs and people that the numbers represented . Ves couldn't let himself become too detached to reality .

"Mr . Larkinson, can you teach us how to increase this laser rifle's heat capacity?"

"I don't understand why this mech glitches out whenever its power reactor reaches twenty-seven percent capacity! We've been thinking about replacing it with another one, but it's too costly if we proceed with this solution!"

"I heard you've got a good touch for mechs! Every mech you laid your hands on feels great for every mech pilot! Can you bless our mechs as well?"

The low-level problems didn't require much effort for Ves to address . He found it relaxing in a way to forget about his heaviest responsibilities and return to basics . Ves always believed that the best mech designer needed to rely on both theory and practice to advance their understanding of the craft .

"Knowledge advances our technical understanding of mechs, but practice allows us to develop our artistic side . "

Not every mech designer agreed that their profession incorporated art or craftsmanship . This was different from other design professions such as architects who constantly try to influence the people that inhabited the structures they designed .

Ves found it kind of sad that most of the mech designers he had met among the Vandals ascribed to a different school of thought . They leaned more towards a functional or utilitarian perspective of mechs .

This viewpoint expressly rejected any subjective attachments to mechs and only cared about their objective performance . The spec sheets were holy and the numbers never lied .

Having corresponded with the likes of Iris, Pierce and Laida, Ves understood that this was common among the mech designers who worked as grunts in design teams .

"They don't have the power to exert any influence on the designs they are working on . They are only there to perform some menial tasks . "

Only the highest-ranked mech designers that led the design teams had a use for their artistic side .

"The high-ranking mech designers among us don't just need to reach the rank of Apprentice, they also have to develop their first original design by themselves . How did they even manage to accomplish this?"

Independent mech designers like Ves who founded their own businesses turned out to be very rare . While Ves himself knew that most mech designers shied away from the risks and the high barriers to entry associated with going it alone, too many mech designers opted to go for the easy road .

While these mech designers pursued honest careers, their overspecialization atrophied their ability to design a complete mech by themselves .

"A mech designer who specializes in legs won't know what to do when they have to design the other portions of a mech . "

At the very least, there would be a noticeable imbalance of quality . Yet even then, mech designers like Mercator and Iris somehow made the cut . How did they do it?

Ves checked the MTA's expansive archives and looked up their first original designs . He quickly found out that they used the same strategy they employed during the design duel .

"They ripped off another design . "

Truly, the definition of what constituted an 'original' design was hard to pin down . If Ves copied the Caesar Augustus but coated it black instead of white, then nobody would accept he designed an original mech . Yet if he attempted to design a vague copy of the Caesar Augustus while making use of different component licenses, then he arguably designed an 'original' mech .

Even if the imitation possessed highly similar specs to the original, it still constituted an original design to the MTA . Their exact criteria on the matter was a secret . Suffice to say, the actual hurdle wasn't very high to most mech designers .

"Did I make too much of a fuss when I debuted my own work to the public?"

No . A proper first original design attracted a fair amount of publicity . Ves followed the tradition sincerely and got rewarded for it with plenty of coverage that boosted the marketing for his Blackbeak design .

As for the poor imitations and ripoffs designed by his colleagues within the mech regiment? The MTA may have validated their designs, but their only practical use was to collect dust in the archives . No one spared a glance at their so-called debut works, and this lack of distinction would certainly become a hindrance to their careers if they tried to make something of themselves in the private sector .

"They may be able to get past the MTA, but they can't fool the market . "

Time passed until the time for the meeting began . Ves sat himself at the front of the conference room . The seats had been constrained in concentric circles this time to foster a sense of equality . The main reason why he called for this meeting was to address the concerns of lower-ranking mech designers who did most of the actual grunt work in the fleet .