The Mech Touch novel Chapter 683

The older structure worked when the entire Vandal mech regiment moved in a single fleet. Lower-ranked mech designers could turn to plenty of Apprentices or Journeymen for assistance.

It worked best with better-funded mech regiments. Unlike the Vandals, the other mech regiments employed an ample amount of mech designers. With up to a hundred higher-ranked Apprentices and up to twenty Journeymen employed at a time, a mech regiment did not lack for design muscle. _{frёewebηovel.cѳm}

Even if most of them would spend their time on tinkering with actively developed mech designs, that much mech designers may still be useful even as tech support from a distance.

Besides, Ves bet that the other mech regiments also employed a lot more lower-ranking mech designers as well. Perhaps ten or twelve of them might be assigned to each combat carrier. If they were allocated in a clever manner, their diverse specialties enabled their team to cover a wide spectrum of possible problems.

"Something like this simply isn’t possible with the Vandals. We don’t have enough mech designers."

Every combat carrier in the Vandal fleet hosted a handful of lower-ranking mech designers. They were barely competent enough to propose and apply some rudimentary modifications. The real work needed to be done by Apprentices who were actually competent, of which the Vandals barely had enough to go around.

With only one high-ranking mech designer stationed aboard most ships, this meant that the variability of mechs between each ship would only diverge over time.

Perhaps one ship hosted a mech designer who knew how to work a flight system like magic. However, he was bad at everything else. The mechs aboard that combat carrier would therefore degrade in performance over time as that mech designer made a mess out of things. The only part about the mechs that didn’t suffer a slide in performance was the flight system, which performed significantly better after he had a hand in their improvement.

Ves drew up an entirely new allocation scheme for his subordinates. His solution was simple. The mech designers needed to rotate to different ships every once in a while.

"The low-ranking mech designers can stay. Their adaptability is much more limited. They won’t be able to adjust to their new working conditions so easily. Keeping them there will also enable some portion of continuity among mech designers to persist aboard each ship. Replacing one batch of mech designers with an entirely new batch of strangers will lead to too much wasted time in getting them all up to speed."

By rotating the higher-ranked Apprentice Mech Designers, Ves ensured that everyone’s specialties would proliferate among the entire fleet.

For example, that expert in flight systems already finished his work on upgrading the flight systems of the mechs aboard his current posting. One day later, that mech designer transfers over to another ship.

She immediately came face-to-face with a different set of mechs with upgraded armor and an improved internal structure. The previous mech designer obviously emphasized their durability, but the ripple effects of his changes affected many other parameters as well, mostly in a negative direction. The entire flight system of these heavier-protected mechs strained to keep them moving agilely in space.

The flight system needed an entire overhaul to keep up with the changes to the rest of the mech, and that recently transferred mech designer came at the right time.

"Moving around the mech designers with different expertises and specialties will prevent the mechs from transforming into one-dimensional variants that is only good at one thing but bad at others."

The fundamental problem at work here was that most mech designers employed by the Vandals didn’t possess the foundation or experience to design a mech by themselves. They spent so much time in design teams or collaborative projects that they neglected to shore up their complete ineptness towards certain areas of mech design.

"Every independent mech designer has to be an all-rounder to a degree. Their weakest link can literally drag down their career through the mud."

This was also why collaborative projects became the norm when it came to mech models with higher sales volume. The mech manufacturer that sold the mechs had to guarantee that they could fight and win, and to do so they needed to employ additional mech designers to cover the blind spots of their lead designers.

As Ves only possessed real experience with designing mechs by himself, he looked down on this dependence on others to cover for your weak points. He understood the logic and the merits of these methods, but he figured that the lead designers could easily become complacent about the gaps in his design skills.

A mech designer that became complacent was a mech designer that stopped advancing to a higher rank.

"All these mech designers have gone off the beaten path." Ves shook his head.

His disapproval aside, his fellow colleagues needed to eat too. Starting their own businesses may be a step too far for them, and Ves would have probably failed as well in his own attempt if not for the gift that changed his entire life.

Ves drew up a chart that listed out the available higher-ranked Apprentices at his disposal. He attached their names to their current berths, then shifted them around.

"Hmm, that’s too simple. There are some cases where mech designers with similar specialties are visiting the same carrier."

He shuffled the allocation around and developed it into an increasingly more detailed periodic transfer schedule. After at least seven different transfers, each vessel received a mech designer that covered all of the major specialties that their mechs could benefit from. Not a single blind spot in their designs would remain if everything worked as planned.

After finishing this transfer schedule, he wrapped it up into a proposal where he explained the reasons why he thought was necessary to implement. Once he prettied up the words, he sent it on to Major Verle for him to decide whether to go through with it or not. This decision was way too big for Ves to unilaterally decide upon.

Ves smiled and leaned back in his chair. "Now that I’ve done my work for the shift, the rest of the day is mine."

Right now, the standard time reached the evening hours. The next shift came into force, freeing Ves and Ketis from their duties. Ketis pretty much ran out of the hatch of the office compartment as soon as possible, ostensibly to eat dinner, but really to escape her dreaded homework.

Ves shook her head at her eagerness to escape studying. "Mayra must have sat on her every time she tried to get Ketis to do her homework."

Many servicemen moved to the mess hall at this time. Ves decided to skip eating one of the mess hall’s reconstituted meals this time.

"I’m way too short on time."