The Mech Touch novel Chapter 2492

Chapter 2492: Redeemed

The evening dinner continued in harmony. The Gravada Knarlax's dining hall was large enough to accommodate thousands of people. Bots and dishes continued to float above the heads of the Larkinsons as they enjoyed the night before the wedding.

Numerous Larkinsons approached Ves to talk about matters that they normally wouldn't be able to bring up. As the Larkinson Clan grew, so did the status of the patriarch. His time was too valuable to spend on addressing each and every Larkinson's personal concerns.

So meeting him to talk about something that wasn't on any agenda was quite difficult these days.

Today was an exception. As Ves looked forward to his wedding, he was in a good mood.

Melkor stepped up to him. "Hey, Ves."

"Hello. Are the Avatars doing okay?"

"We are already back to full strength. The new recruits are a little raw, of course, but the veterans of the Nyxian Gap Campaign have more than enough experience to cover for that. I'm proud of our cadre, though it's a shame you've pulled out all of my expert pilots."

"You know why we had to do that. Expert pilots need room to develop themselves. Your men also shouldn't look up to them all the time."

"I don't think you're here to talk about that, Melkor."

Ves sensed an anxious mind behind his cousin's visor.

"You're right. I have a rather presumptuous request. I heard from one of your assistants that you recently designed a second version of the Crystal Lord."

"Yes. The Crystal Lord Mark II is a modernized upgrade of the Mark I. It not only possesses a much more powerful glow, but it also incorporates restricted alien crystal tech, courtesy of the MTA. It's a fine machine that will be sure to dominate many battles on land."

"Can you design an improved, customized variant for me? I.. I want to pilot a mech you've personally made for me. I saved up all of my merits to get the best mech possible."

Ves grew serious when he heard that. This was a big request.

"It's not going to be easy. This is a time-consuming project. The Crystal Lord is a third-class rifleman mech. It's also completely landbound. Such a mech is not a great fit to our current clan. I'd have to spend months on your customised variant. This is not a cost-effective use of my time."

"So that's a no?" Melkor's heart sank.

"I didn't say that. You should let me finish. Instead of trying to adapt the Crystal Lord Mark II design to your needs, it is much more convenient for us to design a clan mech that will already be up to standard once it's finished. Granted, this clan-exclusive rifleman mech is meant to be piloted by any Larkinson, but it will serve as a much more convenient base for your custom mech. Do you understand what I am saying?"

The Avatar Commander relaxed. "I get it. You need to design a new base model first so that it won't take much work to develop a suitable custom mech."

"It's a much better use of my time. This way, every other ranged mech specialized in the Larkinson Clan will receive something new as well."

"Will you be upgrading the Bright Warrior design to serve as this base?"

"I'm not sure yet to be honest." Ves admitted as he fell into thought. "I think.. our implementation of the Bright Warrior model hasn't fit our circumstances. The modular mech platform exists to provide our mech pilots with choice. It is meant to make us adaptable against a variety of different threats. Instead, most mech pilots simply opt to choose one of the four configurations and stick to that for the remainder of their assignments."

"Part of that is due to the lack of resources. You didn't have enough materials to build the parts to give every Bright Warrior the opportunity to switch configurations."

"That's true, but your Avatars are also too accustomed to lacking choice that they don't quite know what to do now that they have options. I am quite aware that your Avatars has optimized their spare parts stockpile so that there is considerably more leeway to switch configurations than before."

After all, it was incredibly wasteful and completely unnecessary to prepare for sets of configurations for every individual Bright Warrior. Retaining just half of the parts was already enough to give every mech pilot enough choice.

Yet even then, the Avatar mech pilots simply didn't switch.

Melkor shrugged. "I can't force my men to pilot a different configuration. You are asking too much of them. Joshua can pilot all four configurations because he's a prodigy. Our Avatars, while good, cannot master multiple mech types. You can force them to do so, but nobody will be able to rely on them in battle."

That was very fatal in battle. One of the reasons why the Larkinsons always performed well in battle was due to the trust they held towards each other. The mech forces did not recruit incompetent mech pilots.

"It's due to that reason and more that I'm not quite certain whether the Bright Warrior model has a future. It served its purpose as a convenient, versatile mech model. A year ago, the Bright Warrior perfectly fit our needs due to its ability to overpower any third-class mech. This won't be the case today. It's unrealistic to design a second version of the Bright Warrior that can crush other second-class mechs. At best it will be on par with them, but due to the nature of modular mech platforms, its performance will always be 10 to 20 percent worse than specialized mechs."

While Ves hadn't entirely made up his mind yet, he was already leaning away from multi-purpose mechs. They might work well enough for first-class mechs, but he would rather spend his time on designing a roster of specialized mechs in order to maximize performance.

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