The Mech Touch novel Chapter 590

"What’s the name of this design?" A mech technician asked as he admired the technical mastery that Ves had demonstrated in fusing those parts together.

"I call it the New Sentinel. It takes the basic template of the Pointed Sentinel but elevates it to the next degree. The finished product will still resemble the old version, but its actual performance is far from regular."

This was because Ves had picked some of the best parts from the junkyard. Though all of them came from low-end mech that the arena organization didn’t attach much value to, they happened to be best points of their original mech models.

"The New Sentinel is built from heavily modified versions of the parts I’ve collected. Each of these parts have their merits, and I’ve taken care to select the strongest parts that will still be able to merge with the frame of the Pointed Sentinel. Compatibility issues will undoubtedly pop up, but I’m confident I can deal with most of the problems."

Each mech model had their good and bad points. Unless a mech designer deliberately screwed around, every design that came from their hands should contain some elements with a competitive level of performance.

In his initial selection process, Ves straight up ignored the trashy bits and and took away the best parts. Combining all of them into a single frame meant that the New Sentinel shook off most of the weaknesses of the old design.

Of course, that was easier said than done. They all had a lot of work in store.

"Chief Haine."

"Here."

"I’ll hand over the responsibility of modifying the parts and assembling them together over to you and your men. Try and finish the work within two-and-a-half days."

"That’s going to be tough." The chief said as she seriously studied the schematics of the new design. "You’re asking us to perform a lot of radical changes."

"I’ve designed this new mech with very loose tolerances. You don’t need to be too precise in fashioning the new parts. Just get it done in time."

"I can’t promise you we’ll meet your target, but I’ll work my men like hell to get it done."

Chief Haine immediately issued a set of orders, dividing the work among the men. Every part needed major adjustments in order to make them compatible with the New Sentinel.

By far the largest job consisted of changing out the artificial musculature. Ves was very unsatisfied with the musculature of the old Pointed Sentinel. Ophidian-Wheelax Industries had plainly cheaped out by buying an inferior component license for the muscles of the mech. This was truly infuriating considering that melee mechs depended on a good artificial musculature system to exert their offensive power.

It was the equivalent of equipping a doddering old man with a spear and a set of armor! No matter the quality of the gear, if the underlying foundation was weak, the mech would never be able to surpass a certain level of performance!

This low maximum ceiling of performance directly countered OWI’s original intention of designing a mech with a high price-to-performance ratio. With such a low cap on performance, how could the Pointed Sentinel ever be a good bargain for mech pilots with decent skill?

Ves basically butchered the old man and pieced a new body together with the butchered parts of other corpses. The unholy creation that came into being would hopefully be able to match the strength of a warrior at his peak.

"Hahaha! What a great feeling! So this is how it feels like to create a true frankenstein mech!" Ves spontaneously laughed. He felt as if he had gone mad for a moment. "I never knew that breaking so many important rules was fun."

Of course, the rules were there for a reason. Mech design was a profession that was littered with rules that formed a comprehensive list of best practices. If Ves was an ordinary mech designer, he would never dream of building a frankenstein mech. The only reason why he dared to do so was that he not only possessed a broad foundation, he also made use of the Jury-Rigging Sub-Skill.

The value of this Sub-Skill was inestimate to Ves. It saw very little use when he designed an original mech, but when it came to modifying existing mechs, Jury-Rigging turned into a vital necessity. It would rarely be the case where he would have the ideal set of mech parts at hand. With this Sub-Skill at hand, he could draw on decades of experience in substituting proper parts with less optimal ones.

It was like replacing an amputated leg with a prosthetic. Although the replacement limb would never work as good as the original, it at least did the job of enabling the person to walk again.

While Chief Haine pressed her mech technicians modify the parts in rapid tempo, Ves directed his attention to the most challenging task of all. Unifying the different parts on a software level.

Rashly cutting mech parts from other wrecks and sticking them to another frame never worked unless they came from the same product line. In order to mate these parts together, Ves had to unify them on a hardware and software level.

Ves had already taken care of the former by completing the New Sentinel’s design. He could trust Chief Haine to make sure the mech technicians didn’t screw up on that front.

The only work he couldn’t outsource was working on the software. This was something that only Ves possessed the qualifications to tamper with. "It’s a good thing I’ve shored up my programming skills recently."

Though his Computer Science Skill only reached a Apprentice-level standard, this was already good enough for the vast majority of independent mech designers to program their own mechs. Ves also learned how to hack into the existing programming of the mech, though he never dug in too deep in that field because it clashed with his design philosophy.

"This is going to hurt."

Ves could take a couple approaches with regard to the software of his new mech. The most optimal approach entailed creating a new software from the ground up. This sucked up a huge amount of time, so he directly skipped to the next option.