The Mech Touch novel Chapter 2515

Chapter 2515: Philosophical Differences

Ves and Gloriana spent too much time apart.

After Ves led Task Force Predator into the Nyxian Gap, his collaboration with Gloriana mostly happened through remote.

While that did not significantly impact the quality of their mech designs, they still grew rusty when it came to knowing each other's habits and preferences.

It also didn't help that both of them progressed their design philosophy significantly. Ves not only made several breakthroughs in his specialty, but he had also evolved his design style further.

The increasingly desperate circumstances of his task force forced him to develop new tricks and solutions to cope with the restrictions he faced. He put his life on the line for every change or modification he made to his mechs.

He also became exposed to a lot of pirate mechs. Though their quality and maintenance left much to be desired, the pirates exhibited quite a lot of ingenuity when it came to keeping their mechs running even if they hadn't been properly serviced in years.

Pirates were consumers of mechs as well. Just like regular customers, they had their own wants and needs. They abided by several familiar conditions such as limits on complexity, piloting difficulty and budget.

Though most pirate mech designers were as sloppy and awful as Johnny Blast, the mechs utilized by the more organized pirate groups such as the Dry Snakes and the Allidus Alliance were not inferior compared to his own work!

Observing how his pirate counterparts solved or mitigated the challenges unique to the Nyxian Gap provided Ves with a lot of inspiration. His design style shifted even further towards emphasizing robustness and reliability.

This was an evolution of his design style. He became less hung up on maximizing performance because he had witnessed plenty of times in battle that making mechs last was a much greater priority.

It didn't matter if he could squeeze 5 to 10 percent more performance out of a mech. Ves had to make a lot of tradeoffs to achieve increasingly smaller gains. Just a tiny amount of extra performance could easily cause a mech to reach its limit 20 percent sooner!

Different mech designers had different ideas about the balance they should set. While Ves increasingly leaned towards the side of stability, the problem was that Gloriana went in the opposite direction.

Performance mattered. Many customers evaluated and bought mechs by comparing their prices and specs with each other. When mech designers developed their products, they had to make some very hard choices on how to configure their mechs.

Should they pursue the limits of performance? How much reliability was acceptable to them? To what extent should they account for improper handling?

Ves and his wife were on increasingly opposite ends with regards to these spectrums.

Gloriana followed the direction of typical mech designers. While she knew that offering rugged mechs was important, she believed it was worthwhile to sacrifice a bit of longevity and reliability to increase the peak performance of her designs.

To her, designing the strongest mechs gave her much more satisfaction!

"It's what customers want as well." She clarified her views to him. "I feel bad if a mech degrades by 10 to 20 percent after several years of intensive use, but mechs aren't sustainable products to begin with. It's better to achieve the highest possible performance parameters so that if the mech does degrade over time, it starts to drop from a higher height."

"That makes little sense. We can easily lessen the performance drop over time by making our mechs more robust! Besides, in actual battles, other factors play a much greater role in determining victory or defeat than a measly 5 percent difference in performance!"

"You idiot! This margin is enough to sway the outcome of duels!"

It shouldn't have been a surprise that they leaned towards opposite directions with regards to this profound issue.

Ves was much more attuned to large-scale battles where the complex environment, large quantities of mechs and the combination of different mech models often resulted in lots of chaos and confusion!

Under these anything-but-ideal conditions, plenty of factors that seemed important actually didn't matter as much. Instead, Ves learned to set aside every variable except how long a mech was able to last and how much punishment it could take.

Such an extremely basic and simplistic approach rubbed Gloriana the wrong way.

"If every mech designer adopted your perspective, the mech industry would have been a lot more boring!" She yelled! "Mechs are already designed to take hits and endure damage. You're getting overboard when it comes to maximizing reliability. How will our mechs ever stand out from the competition if they consistently underperform compared to their peers?"

"Our mechs have other advantages that make them strong."

"THAT'S NOT AN EXCUSE TO LET WEAKNESSES SLIDE!"

"A mech that lasts longer always retains a good reputation. A mech that performed great at the start but falls off sooner won't sell as much after a decade."

"That's just because too many mech owners are too unwilling to invest in proper maintenance! If our customers service their mechs exactly according to manufacturer instructions, they wouldn't lose so much value in so little time!"

"You can't expect perfection from your customers, Gloriana! Most people are inherently sloppy and don't understand the value of proper maintenance. Customers are also constrained by how much manpower, resources and capacity they can allocate towards servicing and repairing their mechs."

"THAT'S THEIR FAULT! We gave them the conditions to maximize the value of their mechs. If they don't take our recommendations seriously, then they are unworthy to pilot our mechs!"

Ves looked exasperated at his obstinate partner. Gloriana based her approach from an entirely different background.

While Ves frequently spent time among the lowest class of consumers such as mercenaries and pirates, Gloriana mainly preferred to interact with the upper end of the mech market.

In her formative years, Gloriana mainly designed custom mechs for rich and wealthy Hexers who could easily afford to provide the best maintenance to their products.

Hexers were very vain about their mechs. Their machines not only needed to perform well, but be in their best state as possible in order to show them off without feeling ashamed.

Since actual conflict wasn't very frequent in the highly-secure space of the Hexadric Hegemony, mech designers such as Gloriana had some very different ideas on what constituted the best mechs.

The Hexers placed much less emphasis on the problems that arose when their products were subject to wear and tear.

Ves and Gloriana couldn't ignore their widening philosophical differences any longer. Along with other factors, their opposing beliefs caused their first attempt at fabricating the Valkyrie Redeemer to fall far short of their expectations.

They clashed way too much against each other during the three days it took to produce a mediocre copy by their standards!

"We need a reset." Ves stated to his wife. "We can't possibly go on to fabricate the next mech on the list with such a dark cloud hanging over our heads."

Even Gloriana recognized the futility of proceeding further. The disgraceful result showed how urgently they needed to find a middle ground.

While their assistants carted the completed Valkyrie Redeemer from the mech workshop, the two newlyweds sat on a bench while holding their cats.

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