The Mech Touch novel Chapter 6041

Chapter 6041 Exchange Stability for Power

6041 Exchange Stability for Power

With the help of Jovy's input, the Riot Mark III was shaping up to become an increasingly more interesting Larkinson expert mech.

Ves couldn't help but develop a greater interest in the outcome of this upgrade project. The recent changes to the planning of the Riot Mark III Project vindicated his decision to invite Jovy to collaborate with him and his wife.

If they managed to succeed in meeting all of their goals for the Riot Mark III, there was a good chance that the resulting end product might actually be able to match the magnificence of the Amaranto Mark III!

"I like what we are doing with the Riot Mark III." Gloriana admitted to Ves after they concluded another in-person meeting with Jovy. "I never imagined that it would become so much easier to gain access to the resources and expertise of the Red Association. The scope of the project has increased by a large extent, but your friend is conscientious enough to offer solutions to the problems that he has raised. It is quite… comfortable to work alongside such a helpful and thoughtful mech designer."

"I know, Gloriana. Don't get used to it, though. It is okay to borrow from outside expertise every now and then, but if we want to become better mech designers, we constantly need to hone our problem solving abilities. No Master Mech Designer is able to reach such a high rank by relying on handouts all of the time."

"You do not need to remind me of this lesson. I will still undertake a large amount of work myself. Do you think it is easy to combine Destroyer resistant materials and unstable energetic materials? I also have to design an all-hyper material archemetal frame for the Amaranto Mark III, which is a completely different challenge altogether. I barely have any time left to design the low-tier expert mechs for the latest demigods of the clan."

It was a good thing that Gloriana had already decided to reduce the clan's commitment to designing low-tier expert mechs. The reduced requirements along with delegating a lot of work to a handful of the many Journeyman Mech Designers of the Design Department allowed her to cope with her workload.

Everyone immediately became a lot busier than before. Both the Amaranto Mark III and the Riot Mark III demanded a lot of time and effort in order to make substantial progress, but none of the mech designers involved had any reason to complain.

The work was fulfilling as they yearned to fulfill their dreams for the two high-end upgrade projects!

Ves found it fascinating to alternate between the two different projects.

While the Amaranto Mark III and the Riot Mark III shared a lot of similarities, their designs radically diverged in many areas.

What Ves loved about the Amaranto Mark III was that her design attempted to turn her into an absolute beast in terms of firepower.

Gloriana's attempt to design an archemetal frame that consisted almost entirely out of hyper materials would make the high-tier expert mech and potentially ace mech a lot more fragile than equivalent machines. This forced her to be careful about any design choice she made as the unusual material composition amplified the consequences for any faults and weak points in her work.

Yet when she thought about how much more power the new and improved Amaranto could channel in either of her soon-

to-be-upgraded weapons, she gained another burst of motivation and worked with greater gusto than before!

In contrast to the extreme performance profile of the Amaranto Mark III, the Riot Mark III demanded a completely different response.

The high-tier expert spearman mech needed to exemplify the role of an assault mech. This meant that aside from ranged attack capabilities, the Riot needed to perform well in both offense and defense.

Oh, his mobility needed to be decent as well, otherwise a lot of powerful opponents would simply be able to counter the Riot by maintaining their distance from a relatively powerful but sluggish mech!

Mech design was a process of making lots of compromises and tradeoffs. It was difficult to design a mech that scored well in multiple areas. The original Riot was patterned after a spearman mech, which was largely considered an offensive mech archetype.

However, in order to strengthen the living mech's ability to trade blows with threatening enemies, Ves had chosen to put a lot of emphasis on the Riot's armor system and other defensive measures.

This resulted in a package that sort of fulfilled his requirements, but did so in a clunky and imperfect fashion.

The Riot was able to inflict a considerable amount of damage up close, but he could never compete against the First Sword in terms of pure lethality.

There was no need to hold a contest because Venerable Orfan would probably be the first to admit that she was not able to keep up with Venerable Dise when it came to inflicting the most damage in the same amount of time!

The disparity was just that obvious!

Of course, Venerable Orfan would also be the first to crow about her machine's much better ability to withstand abuse.

Unlike the First Sword whose relatively lighter and less armored mech frame was designed for evasion and maneuverability, the Riot functioned like a defensive mech without looking like one.

Anyone who thought they could make quick work of the expert spearman mech would definitely become unpleasantly surprised by how long the hardy machine was able to last, all without relying on a physical tower shield like the Bastion!

Of course, no one was willing to bet that the Riot could absorb more damage than a heavy space knight like the Bastion. The former might possess a surprising amount of defensive strength, but the spearman mech was ultimately limited by his original archetype.

The Riot Mark III did not completely inherit this original pattern.

Instead, the myriad of suggestions painted a vision that exceeded many of the compromises of the earlier iterations of the expert mech!

That was indeed a major problem. "Are you recommending that we should dial it back?"

"Not yet, Ves. I think that the Riot Mark III can still become a highly effective asset, but the premise is that the power of the mech vastly exceeds the damage produced by backlashes. Every time the expert spearman mech deploys into battle, Venerable Orfan will have to take a gamble on how often her mech suffers an accident and how severely the damage will impair the machine."

In other words, the Riot Mark III would always be a machine that would regularly incur damage. Ves pitied the poor maintenance team that would become responsible for servicing the dangerous living mech in the future.

Ves crossed his arms in thought. "Once we complete the Riot Mark III, we will have to monitor his performance closely. I suppose we are doing that for every expert mech we have recently worked upon, but we need to take this a lot more seriously for Rosa Orfan's expert mech. If it turns out that the costs exceed the benefits, we need to be prepared to rework the Riot Mark III into a more stable iteration at the cost of giving up a bit of power. The goal is to design a chaos machine. It is not our purpose to design a literal torture machine."

Hopefully, it would not come to that. As long as Venerable Orfan broke through early enough, Ves believed that her improved strength should be adequate enough to keep a handle on most danger factors.

As Ves and the others resumed their design work, a few major developments occurred that represented a break in routine.

First, Gavin Neumann was finally scheduled to return to New Constantinople VIII.

Second, the Interim Leadership Council held a second meeting.

The latter caused Ves to head down to the underground Hyper Chamber once again where he attended another virtual meeting in the same opulent circular meeting hall.

As Ves and many others who attended the meeting by remote took their seats around the enormous round table, they all waited for the Evolution Witch to arrive and open a discussion on the next topic in contention.

One curious change compared to the last meeting was that less people attended than before.

Some of the missing councilors sent substitutes to represent their voice, but others just kept their high-backed seats empty.

"Where are the rest?"

"They are subject to communication lockdowns." Master Vayro Goldstein helpfully explained to Ves. "There are signs that the native aliens are on the verge of launching a large offensive. Our soldiers must be ready to respond and fight at any moment."

"Oh…"