The Mech Touch novel Chapter 5983

Chapter 5983 Difficult Archetech

After closer inspection, Ves and Gloriana confirmed that the Dark Zephyr Mark II was not in the best physical shape.

The Unending alloy plating had protected the expert mech for a long time, but it was impossible procure more of it after it had been destroyed in battle.

This forced the maintenance crews to make use of armor plating made out of entirely different materials in order to restore the expert mech's armor coverage.

While the Larkinsons had done their best to match the mass and density of the replacement plating, it was impossible to make everything as congruent as before. The inconsistencies produced multiple misalignments and slightly reduced the fluency and the reliability of the expert mech.

This was just one of many ailments that affected the Dark Zephyr's performance!

Trying to repair it all was a massive endeavor. Gloriana estimated that she would have to spend at least 3 weeks to carefully reconstruct and restore the Dark Zephyr Mark II to his original form.

Fortunately, that was not necessary this time.

"I am glad that we do not have to restore the Dark Zephyr to his old state." Gloriana said after she had studied all of the data readings. "Once we commence our upgrade run, we will have to test the Ship of Theseus concept much more extensively than before. Hardly anything of the current mech will be retained once we are done with our work."

The Dark Zephyr Mark III was superior in every way, but all of that demanded a much more extensive reconstruction as a result.

Replacing conventional metallic parts with archemetal equivalents was such a massive overhaul that it was impossible to retain so many outdated and inferior parts.

Ves and Gloriana did not even like any of the materials that made up their oldest expert mech.

Back when they originally designed their first batch of expert mech under the supervision of Master Moira Willix, the Larkinson Clan used to be in a much poorer position.

All of that changed drastically over the years. The Larkinson Clan of today was in a much better position to design and fabricate high-end mechs.

The LMC, the Open Consortium, the T Institute and many friendly business partners all possessed the capacity to supply rare and valuable strategic materials to the Larkinson Clan.

Ves also had the luxury to spend his MTA merits on a lot of exclusive goods from the Red Association's Merit Exchange.

His tier 3 galactic citizenship combined with his many contributions opened up access to a large selection of materials that ordinary mech designers could only dream of obtaining!

Neither Ves nor Gloriana held back all that much when they selected a lot of powerful and expensive materials to elevate the physical parameters of the Dark Zephyr.

Even though his slim frame prevented him from piling up a lot of armor, the advantages of archetech meant that his effective ability to resist damage had increased by a huge margin!

This was especially the case when the structure of the mech frame consisted of first-class alloys that were harder and tougher than Unending alloy!

So long as enough hyper materials were added to the archemetal, Ves believed that the new and improved Dark Zephyr should still retain his spiritual prowess. It might even improve due to the use of superior and more specialized hyper materials!

However, Ves and Gloriana could not say for certain whether the Dark Zephyr's parameters would improve as much as they anticipated.

After all, ever since the Age of Dawn had commenced, many simulation programs became inaccurate and unreliable. The Red Association had yet to publish a comprehensive new set of formulas and data sets that could be used to accurately model the performance of hyper technology.

Simulation programs already struggled to predict the performance of high-ranking mechs, especially when the extraordinary willpower of expert pilots and ace pilots came into the picture.

Vulcan had been working to improve the realism of the MSTS, but it was very hard to account for phenomena that were difficult to reproduce.

In short, every mech designer including the Larkinsons had no ability to fully predict the actual performance of a hyper mech in advance.

Additional complications such as archetech and the Dark Wind Module made it even more difficult for anyone to have a solid clue of how good the Dark Zephyr may become at the end!

This was incredibly frustrating for the people involved. Tusa and his battle partner had little idea what was in store for them. The lower and upper boundaries of the possible boost in performance were so far apart that it was pointless for them to think about it any further.

Tusa only roughly understood the point that the two mech designers were making. Instead of worrying himself sick over this complicated issue, he turned his attention to the two recently recruited Journeymen that were standing right behind the Miracle Couple.

"Will the two of them participate in the upgrade run?"

Gloriana nodded. "They shall, but not in a capacity that you expect. Neither Adrien Marceau nor Ariana Roux have become proficient enough in archetech to fabricate the parts by themselves or under supervision. They shall act as our assistants instead. They will be responsible for moving parts and materials around. They will also be responsible for scanning the archemetal parts to verify that their quality is up to standard."

That was the most that the pair of newcomers could do. The basics of archetech were just too difficult to learn in a short amount of time.

Perhaps the story might be different in a few years, but that required a lot more time.

"Will you be able to produce archemetal parts, Ves?"

"Somewhat. I am not as good as Gloriana in this aspect, but I have learned enough from her to gain the qualifications to fabricate simpler archemetal components. I will still have plenty of work to do, but my involvement is not as great as you think. My wife is responsible for fabricating the vast majority of archemetal parts. We will all be working at her pace and schedule."

That was anything but ideal, but there was nothing they could do about it. The success of this project largely hinged on Gloriana's mood and performance during the upgrade process.

Though his wife was under a lot of pressure right now, she did feel nervous about it. She had studied archetech and worked with it for so many months that she was extremely eager to realize her latest mech design!

Even if her performance disappointed her in the end, she would at least gain crucial experience that she could use to increase the success rate of her next archemech project.

"There is one more thing I have to inform you about." Ves spoke up. "Before we begin the fabrication process, I plan to conduct a ritual. It will be a little weird, but just play along. Who knows whether it might make a difference in the end. Are you okay with this, Tusa?"

"It is fine as long as it isn't too weird. I will not do anything that I personally disagree with. I hope you won't test my tolerance."

"Don't worry. It won't involve any human sacrifice or other lurid stuff. I still have standards."

Ves needed to pay more attention to his optics. With the passing of the sect proposal, Ves needed to make sure to keep his act clean and avoid giving the Red Collective reasons to deprive him of a sect quota.