The Mech Touch novel Chapter 4988

4988 Theory of Masterworks

Every MTA faction had their strengths and specialties.

The Survivalist Faction possessed an open mindset and mastered a high degree of eclectic alien and unconventional technologies.

The Transhumanist Faction conducted the deepest studies in the field of human transcendence.

The Mech Supremacist Faction sought to make mechs as ubiquitous as possible by increasing their value proposition with the help of more effective technological advancements.

Much of these factions actually overlapped with each other. None of them were extreme enough to exclude technology that was more aligned with the other factions of the Meeh Trade Association.

This was because every faction was formed by large coalitions of like-minded high-ranking mech pilots and mech designers.

Each of them may have gathered together in order to advance their common causes, but they were individually quite diverse and comprehensive.

For example, the Polymath might align herself with the Survivalists for ideological reasons, but her extensive works were also highly desirable to the Transhumanists and the Mech Supremacists.

While it was indeed the case that every faction was comprehensive enough to possess basic competencies in most fields, they still retained a strong advantage in their main priorities.

For example, out of all of the factions of the Mech Trade Association, the Mech Supremacists possessed the greatest understanding of masterwork mechs!

Professor Gina Cavendish did not actually specialize in this field, yet she studied it extensively enough to provide Ves and Gloriana with a lot of useful tips and insights!

"Many mech designers have a great obsession towards masterwork mechs." She explained to the two as her team continued to examine the Phobos from top to bottom. "Their preoccupation is understandable. Masterwork mechs allow us to qualitatively increase the effectiveness of our products relative to warships. The Common Fleet Alliance has never invested nearly as much resources into them because it cannot possibly exploit masterworks to the same extent."

Warships were too big and complex to be made by a single individual in a short amount of time. They also had to be produced over longer stretches of time, which made it a lot harder to rely on serendipity or an inspired mood to elevate the quality of an entire vessel.

"So one of the reasons why your Association puts so much emphasis on masterwork mechs is because you want to beat the CFA?" Ves questioned.

"Exactly. Our rivalry with the fleeters may resemble a childish squabble to you, but the stakes are enormous. If we cannot make our mechs more effective through quantitative means, we can only excel through qualitative means. The difficulty of doing so is ten times, a hundred times or even a thousand times more difficult, but that means that mech designers such as ourselves will also have to be much better than the researchers and the engineers employed by the Common Fleet Alliance."

Ves had never heard that the Common Fleet Alliance employed any transcendent creators comparable to Master Mech Designers and Star Designers.

It appeared that the fleeters truly stuck to the conventions of the past by relying on purely mortal scientists to advance their technologies!

They might not be as brilliant and inspired as high-ranking mech designers, but they could easily be trained and educated en masse. The CFA could raise so many of them that it was easy to form a huge number of research groups that collectively invented a lot of useful new tech over time.

Ves understood only recently that the fleeters did not possess anything comparable to the Kingdom of Mechs.

This meant that the warship lovers did not develop a dependency on external conditions!

Their tech worked under every circumstance!

Their warships could easily be mass produced by any well-equipped and well-supplied shipyard!

Any scientist could follow-up on the research completed by others!

The Common Fleet Alliance truly embodied a focus on quantity over quality in all of its aspects.

That was not to say that the CFA neglected quality, but it only did so selectively whenever it could afford to care about such matters.

"Since you understand so much about masterworks, can you explain where they come from?" Ves boldly decided to ask a more fundamental question. "I mean, it is not really natural that creations like my Phobos suddenly transform in ways that I cannot explain just because it has passed a certain set of criteria. Who has set them? Why do they exist? What is the reason that high-quality products undergo such a transformation in the first place?" Professor Cavenish crossed her arms and adopted a serious question. "These are deep and profound questions that you are not yet qualified to ask. However, on account of you and your wife's contributions to our Association, I am willing to share a small part of my own understanding of this subject. Perhaps you may have already touched these subjects due to your own extensive track record of producing masterwork mechs."

She turned around and gazed up at the Phobos.

"Our universe is old. Our astrophysicists and other scientists are constantly debating about the true age range of the environment we live in, but the point is that an enormous amount of time has passed since the creation of everything and the present day. We are far from the first race to conquer the stars and harness the power of nature. There are many races and population groups that have preceded our rise. Many of them only managed to build a brief interstellar civilization before they inevitably became lost and forgotten with the passage of time. The only traces they have left behind are rotting ruins and faded monuments that remind the few of us that they once existed."

Ves thought about two distinct groups when Professor Cavendish spoke these philosophical words.

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