The Mech Touch

referred to do so.

As the Flagrant Swordmaiden fleet almost reached Mancroft Independent Harbor, Ves finally completed his design work after investing six entire days into filling up the gaps.
The holes in its engines, power reactor, sensors, internal architecture, legs, arms, and many more had all been filled with parts that seamlessly merged into the existing design.

When Ves finally took a step back and evaluated the finished design, he rubbed his tired, bloodshot eyes and sighed.
”Well that didn ’t go according to plan. ”

The Leiner Grey compelled him to invest increasingly more attention into solving it.
Ves tried many times to restrain himself in order to remain at a healthy distance, but his obsession got the better of him a few times.
Rarely did he get to touch, feel and work with such an advanced mech design that unabashedly exposed all of its secrets!

”This design is like a succubus.
It ’s constantly tempting me into abandoning my own principles. ”

The Skull Architect deserves his infamy.
Even if he stopped chopping up mech pilots to advance his research, he still found a way to screw over others.
Though whether the victims became worse off or not was still in question.

”The less talented mech designers with no hope of forging their own paths will benefit from following in the Skull Architect ’s footsteps. ”

Ves had no such intentions, however.
He aimed for the top, and that required him to learn from others without becoming subsumed by their attraction.
In order for students to surpass their teacher, they needed to step outside the rails their teachers meticulously constructed for them.
Even if staying inside the rails was the path to least resistance, it always led into a solid wall at the end.

”What a profound design.
I ’ve learned so many lessons in these days. ”

Pure satisfaction ran through his tired body and exhausted mind.
As he basked in the joy of completing this perilous but fulfilling challenge, he reflected on his results.

If Ves followed the original intentions of the Leiner Grey, then he would have pushed its limits in terms of energy transmission and other factors.
This allowed it to achieve a greater level of performance at the cost of eating away at its tolerances.

Basically, it turned the Leiner Grey from a dull but stable mech platform into an exciting but inwardly brittle piece.
The gains the original design had achieved in adding extra power and armor were partially negated by the awfully tight state of its internal architecture.

It also made the mech a lot harder to control.
The Leiner Grey gained a boost in performance that went past its stable limits.
The mech basically strained against its own frame with every vigorous action it performed.

If Ves compared it to the exertions of a human athlete, then he could easily develop muscle sprain, culminating to severe injuries if he kept pushing his body past its limits.

A human body was flexible and had the ability to grow in order to cope with the added strain.
A mech frame on the other hand was a static, mechanical construction that was essentially static.
It wore down and broke when it faced continuous abuse.

”This is one of the weaknesses of the Leiner Grey.
It ’s performance is high, but its life cycle is too short.
It can already be written off after five years of intensive battles. ”

That made the Leiner Grey a mech with a poor benefit-to-cost ratio.
Customers paid the equivalent of about one billion bright credits and lasted five years with the mech.

For the same amount of money, mech purchasers could instead buy a similarly priced mech that could easily last at least ten years or more.
The only downside to these alternatives was that their performance was slightly inferior to the Leiner Grey.

Still, faced with this calculus, the most rational option to most customers was to buy a mech that lasted at least a decade.

”The only reason the Leiner Grey isn ’t an outright failure is because there is a market demand for high-performing mechs. ”

The mech markets of second-rate states was completely different from the lesser markets of the Bright Republic.
People had more money to spend, and they didn ’t mind splurging lots of money for a momentary advantage.
Acquiring a new mech was like changing a set of clothes.
A poor benefit-to-cost ratio was no issue to these wealthy customers as long as the performance was high.

The only problem with the Leiner Grey was that the original configuration increased the difficulty of piloting such a machine.
It was like manually driving an aircar that was perpetually moving at its top speed.
The uncontrollable performance of the aircar could easily lead to a crash if handled improperly for just an instant.

The barrier to pilot the Leiner Grey was so high that only advanced pilots with excellent training and above-average neural aptitude were qualified to pilot this beast.
Even then, nobody liked to pilot this berserk mech.
The strain on their control abilities made piloting this high-powered mech a chore at beast, and torture at worst.

It simply wasn ’t pleasant to pilot this mech model, and that proved to be its ultimate downfall.

”No wonder the Skull Architect pursued the X-Factor.
In order to accommodate the extremes he ’s willing to push his designs, he sought a way to compensate for this deficiency by trying to find a way for the mech to strain their mech pilots less. ”

The Leiner Grey design marked a point in time where Reno Jimenez was at the cusp of giving in to his darker urges.
His designs all shared the same problems.
They strained against their limits and were barely controllable by their mech pilots.

This problem must have gnawed at the Senior Mech Designer ’s mind for years.
After being tortured by the same issue over and over without a solution in sight, was it any wonder that he grew desperate?

Either he could find some way to solve the control issue, or he could abandon the design philosophy he painstakingly built up over many decades.

The latter was too painful to contemplate, while the former involved chasing after a unicorn called the X-Factor.

”No wonder he went crazy. ”