The Mech Touch

e first place.
With the necessity of keeping the truth of spirituality obscured, Ves faced the same problem as the LMC.
Almost no one except Ves understood his principles!

”If even my own employees don ’t understand the nature of my design philosophy, then other mech designers definitely won ’t be able to appreciate the value I can bring to their designs! ”

Even if Ves advanced to Journeyman on the basis of his unusual design philosophy, he did not expect to be getting much offers for collaboration anytime soon.
If Ves wanted to pool someone else ’s specialty into his own designs, then his only real choice would be to nurture subordinate mech designers from within his own company!

In that light, Ves already began to get Ketis involved into his joint design project.
Even though the Aurora Titan was strictly being developed by Ves and Professor Ventag, that did not preclude them from drawing upon the assistance of their subordinates.

For example, the professor already put one of his design teams to work on performing iterative simulations on the mech design.

Ves learned that the mathematical models employed during these simulations had difficulty predicting the performance of Professor Ventag ’s specialty.

No matter how well Professor Ventag constructed the models, they only approximated reality! The distortions that resulted in certain calculations led to skewed results that needed to be manually checked and corrected by the design team.

All in all, while the professor ’s design team did manage to accomplish some optimizations, the effort put into it was disproportionate to the amount of time and effort they wasted!

”Only a Senior Mech Designer or higher can be as profligate as him in putting an entire design team at work just to achieve some modest optimizations. ”

The difference they made to the performance of the Aurora Titan design barely surpassed a single percent.

Ves did not have an entire design team at his disposal, but he did benefit a little from the assistance of Ketis.
Even though she was still a Novice Mech Designer, she had spent the last few months hitting all kinds of textbooks.

He tasked her with helping him design a suitable sword for the Aurora Titan.

”What kind of sword do you want to pair with your fatty mech? ” Ketis asked.

”I told you time and time again, don ’t call the Aurora Titan a fatty mech. ” Ves sighed.
”Anyway, it ’s a big mech, but also a fairly slow one.
While I don ’t expect it to perform any miracles during the rare instances it is engaged in melee combat, I want to give it a very big sword.
Its overall agility and flexibility is low, so it needs to compensate for it with wider reach and greater power.
The Aurora Titan is able to exert quite a bit of mechanical strength, so I want you to work with that in developing a sword that isn ’t too hard to employ but can pose a big threat to enemy mechs in range. ”

Ketis played around for a bit and eventually came up with a design for a hefty broadsword.
While its mass did not help the Aurora Titan swing it faster, it at least ensured the broadsword hit hard when the weapon connected!

This allowed the Aurora Titan to do quite decently against starships, fixed defenses and other relatively immobile targets.

In effect, pairing the Aurora Titan with a large and heavy weapon turned it into a mobile siege engine on the battlefield.

While both Ves and Professor Ventag possessed some misgivings about doubling down on power at the expensive of agility, there was little point in arming the Aurora Titan with a dagger.

The super-medium space knight simply wasn ’t as fast and agile as a light skirmisher, which could employ daggers to deadly effect!

Professor Ventag did offer Ves with an alternative solution.
”We aren ’t living in a primitive time where melee weapons merely consists of big wooden or metal objects.
There are certain weapon designs that aim to provide a high degree of destructive power while keeping mass at a minimum. ”

”Are you talking about plasma melee weapons? ”

”That ’s a potential solution.
Such hybrid weapons allow you to pair the Aurora Titan with a smaller and lighter weapon as long as you can accept the tradeoffs involved. ”

Eventually, they both decided against the use of higher tech weaponry.
A plasma sword was indeed very fancy and very common in second-class designs, but the designs available to third-class mechs came with a lot more limitations.
The power draw alone would turn the Aurora Titan into such an energy-hungry mech that it would be a wonder if it lasted more than fifteen minutes in battle!

A peak deployment time of only fifteen minutes was way too short!

Therefore, as the final arbiter of all the major decisions concerning the Aurora Titan design, he decided to work with the broadsword that Ketis came up with.
After she finished design a simple and sharp sword with the help of the alloy formulas she found within NORA Consolidated ’s database, Ves tweaked and optimized it even further so that it was up to his standard.

As for the shield, Ves opted to go for a thick curved tower shield made out of uncompressed alloy.

The only distinguishing advantage of the shield was that it incorporated the ability to hold a polarizing field! While this increased the shield ’s complexity and decreased its structural integrity, Ves nonetheless figured this design choice to be worth it because it saved the outfit fielding this mech a lot of money!

”If there is one part about a space knight that gets beat up the most, it ’s always their shields! ”

Ves knew better than to employ the formulas of the Pisaro armor system in the design of the shield.
A tower shield was very large and very expensive and also very hard to repair in the field!

By employing a much cheaper alloy in the design of the shield that benefited from polarization, an outfit fielding an Aurora Titan wouldn ’t cry when the mech returned from battle with a shield full of holes.

”If these outfits really want a tougher shield made out of compressed alloy, then they can damn well buy a separate one themselves. ”

The main advantages of humanoid mechs was that they weren ’t stuck with their loadout of external armaments and equipment.
Customers could opt to skip the sword and shield included in the mech model for a discount.
They just had to pair their new purchases with their own gear.

After several months of work, the joint design project between Ves and Professor Ventag entered the testing phase.

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