The Mech Touch novel Chapter 2474

Chapter 2474: Changing Stance

Ves appreciated the Valkyrie Huntress variant quite a lot. Whoever developed it provided him with a ready-made concept. If the Hex Army succeeded in leveraging its potential, then he would have all the information he needed to design something better for the Larkinson Clan.

The potential power of the Valkyrie Huntress was quite considerable. While the Valkyrie Redeemer was a lot more flashy, swooping straight down into a large formation of Fridayman mechs was bound to cause some attrition! The Huntress variant was a lot safer because the lethality of ranged combat was not as high.

The potential value of the Valkyrie Huntress made him reconsider his stance towards variants.

Designing an original mech was incomparable to designing a variant. Mech designers gained much more out of doing the former than the latter.

Yet that did not mean that variants were worthless. On the contrary. Sometimes they might even surpass the original mech model.

When it came to mech designs with fairly common traits, it was common for competitors to copy the works. Sometimes, they were worse, but the ones that mattered either represented sidegrades or upgrades.

Sidegrades weren't necessarily better than the original design, but they were still worth developing due to the different options it presented.

The Valkyrie Huntress was an excellent example of one. By changing the offensive capabilities of the Valkyrie Redeemer, the ranged variant presented Hexer mech pilots with a very useful alternative.

"Now, even a ranged specialist can pilot a Valkyrie mech!"

Best of all, Ves didn't have to spend more than a small portion of his day to stabilize the spiritual foundation of the mech.

This was a very cost-effective transaction in his book.

"My design time is limited. If I want to keep progressing, I can't waste too much of my time on reinterpreting the same mechs over and over again."

He considered designing variants and designing successors of his existing models to be too time-consuming. Yet they were too valuable for him to give up on entirely.

It would be great if he could completely off-load their development to other mech designers, not just his assistants but also external mech designers!

Perhaps in the future, he could start some kind of program whereby third-party mech designers were allowed to present their variants to the LMC. As long as their variants were useful enough, Ves would spend his time on them to restore their spiritual foundation to the best possible condition so that they would still retain much of their glow!

"If the drop in glow efficiency doesn't exceed 20 percent, hardly anyone will notice I think."

This way, he could benefit from more situations like the one he was in right now. The modern mech industry was fairly open and largely revolved around sharing knowledge, know-how and designs.

By adopting a possessive and overly-insular stance towards his own designs, Ves missed out on this interaction. Now that he started to interact with both Fridayman and Hexer Master Mech Designers through his designs, he realized he may need to open himself up to the wisdom of other mech designers.

Of course, Ves knew that he was in a rather exceptional circumstance right now. It wasn't every day that a Journeymen got schooled by a bunch of Masters!

What was even more important was that his interaction with these high-ranking mech designers was both cooperative and competitive.

Hostile mech designers such as Master Olson and Master Katzenberg drove him to remedy the flaws of his design philosophy.

Friendly mech designers were able to point out several areas of improvements while simultaneously taking over the burden of developing variants.

In either case, Ves derived numerous benefits that he wouldn't be able to obtain so easily by himself.

As his thoughts on this matter shifted, he directed his attention to the final variant developed by the Hexers.

[Valkyrie Hurricane - VR-HU-01]

The final variant gave up space combat capabilities in order to improve its fighting performance in the air. While the base model was already decent at tussling against enemy aerial mechs, the Valkyrie Hurricane excelled at dogfighting.

Ves admired the way the designer of the Valkyrie Hurricane vastly improved its aerial maneuvering capabilities. The mech also gained some minor tweaks that considerably improved its ability to fight up close against other aerial mechs.

The drop in glow efficiency for this variant was 15 percent, which was rather moderate.

In total, each of the 5 variants the Hexers came up with were impressive in their own right.

He found it interesting that the Hex Army demanded variants that excelled at fighting in a single environment. The Valkyrie Interceptor and the Valkyrie Hurricane straightforwardly gave up their versatility in order to obtain a moderate boost when fighting in a single environment.

"It makes sense for the huge Hex Army to pursue this degree of specialization."

The performance gains from specialization trumped the logistical advantages of relying on flexible mech designs.

Only smaller forces with limited manpower and carrier capacity preferred to adopt the latter approach. Ves always found it rather annoying that he had to split his own mech forces up into landbound and spaceborn forces. In most cases, this meant that the Larkinson Clan could only effectively deploy half of its total combat strength in any given battle! _{freewebnøvel.coɱ}

Therefore, Ves still hadn't given up on his goal to provide his clan with multi-environmental mechs.

"Our circumstances are different."

That said, he still recognized the value of mono-environmental mechs. They were cheaper, less complex, offered more capacity and were easier to pilot. Customers obtained substantially more value for their money if they employed the mechs correctly.

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