The Mech Touch

ile average mech pilots with more modest genetic aptitudes could only settle for simpler mechs.

Some might scoff at lesser-skilled mech pilots and dismiss them as ants.
Yet they also happened to comprise the majority active mech pilots, with a much greater number of untalented potentates in reserve.
This was a huge market for mechs, one which Ves had guiltily ignored when he grew his mech business, but intended to fix that in the future.

”Designing elite mechs all the time will unnecessarily narrow my reach.
There are only so many elites to market my mechs. ”

Ves didn ’t have much experience with designing a mass-market mech, but his duties as a head designer for the Flagrant Vandals taught him much.
He became intimately familiar with the traits of cheaper mechs, and knew what to look out for when designing these kinds of machines.

Out of the three internally-developed designs, the Hellcat and the Akkara mechs catered to the cadre of the Vandals.
Powerful, expensive and difficult to master, they served as the mainstay of the Vandal mech roster.

In this sense, his Blackbeak and Crystal Lord designs shared the same DNA.
Elite mechs only came up to their full potential when matched with an experienced, talented mech pilot.

”It should be different for a light skirmisher like the Leiner Grey or the Inheritor models. ”

Though one operated on land and the other in space, they served the same role.
They served as the scouts, flankers and ambushers of a mech force.
They worked best in battle when deployed in packs or in greater numbers, so they should ideally be accessible to mech pilots.

”If there ’s one thing I ’ve learned from toiling over the Inheritor mechs, it ’s that there ’s only so much performance you can squeeze out of a skinny mech frame. ”

The lightweight class tended to be a poor platform for elite mechs.
There simply wasn ’t enough room to stuff in enough goodies.
Anything that mech designers wanted to add to the frame needed to be lighter and take up much less space than an equivalent component to a medium mech.

This instantly magnified the costs and reduced the benefits of those expensive additions.

So in short, it wasn ’t cost-effective to elevate a light mech to the performance standard of an elite.
For better or worse, they felt most at home when they served as expendable mechs.

”Expendable mechs are easy to lose, so the mech pilots that bring them into battle shouldn ’t be too valuable.
Limiting the skill range of a light skirmisher model to elites is a tone-deaf response to the demands of the market. ”

That didn ’t mean a market didn ’t exist for premium light mechs.
Many veterans and talented mech pilots grew up with light mechs and had come to favor this weight class over the others.
These mech pilots needed light mechs that could keep up with their skills.
In that sense, the difficult but promising Leiner Grey fit their needs.

This was where his take on the Leiner Grey came in.
”If I have to describe my own work, I ’d call it the Leiner Grey Simplified Edition. ”

Of course, he would never publish his design with this unflattering name, but it aptly described what he ’d done to the puzzle presented by the Skull Architect.
Though Ves was only limited to filling up the gaps in the design schematic, it provided him with enough leeway to steer it away from its original configuration as a powerful but barely controllable mech.

He pretty much did so by dialing back the energy being provided to the different parts and to program hard limits on the amount of power they exerted.
Perhaps one or two changes in this vein wouldn ’t affect the design by a drastic amount, but when Ves performed the same tweaks over and over again, it all added up.

The changes he implemented throughout the design flattened the performance curve, smoothing out its peaks and valleys.
This had the effect of tempering a wild, bucking horse into a calm and docile mount.

Unfortunately, this also resulted in a comprehensive loss in performance.
The Leiner Grey turned from an exciting, high-performance mech into a boring but reliable workhorse.

It still maintained some of the strengths and of the original version, but became extremely accessible.
Ves in fact slanted towards the other extreme when he put his own stamp on the mech.

”Comfort and pilot accommodation has always been a priority to me.
A mech functions best when the mech pilot is at ease with his own machine. ”

A key factor that helped him turn the Leiner Grey into an accessible mech was that Ves borrowed the insights from his Masteries.
Though the System only threw him into the cockpit of a knight mech and a rifleman mech, Ves easily applied the common lessons learned from those valuable first-hand experiences to the light skirmisher design.

From his detailed studies of the Leiner Grey design, Ves keenly realized that the Skull Architect lacked the special touch that came with acquiring a Mastery.
As far as he was aware of, the Senior Mech Designer based all of his design work on second and third-hand experiences.

In some way, that was a huge shame, since the Skull Architect ’s designs would never mesh completely with his customers.
On the other hand, his callous attitude towards the mech pilots that were supposed to depend on his products also led him to his current path of pursuing an extreme in performance through maximizing energy transmission.

”If the Skull Architect experienced at least a single Mastery, he would have felt a lot more empathy to mech pilots.
He ’d be a different man right now. ”

Ves stayed true to himself when he solved the puzzle in his own way.
Now he had to submit his work to the man he sought to earn his approval.

”Will he be pleased to find out that I ’ve taken the opposite approach? ” Ves grew nervous all of a sudden.
”I don ’t have any other choice.
There ’s no way for me to hide my principles when I design a mech. ”

Just as Ves learned a wealth of information about the Skull Architect from the Leiner Grey, so would the Senior be able to read through Ves.