The Mech Touch

tic resources that drastically increased their maximum capacity.

As far as Ves was aware, the overcharge phenomenon didn ’t discriminate between materials.
Both cheap and expensive cells suffered from the same problem, though with slight differences in magnitude.

Another correlation he found was that certain structures resulted in a less drastic overcharge than other structures.

Ves focused on the latter for a possible solution.
”If I can play with this structure, I might be able to achieve a drastic difference. ”

He figured that most scientists and mech designers that had tagged along with the forces here would focus on the materials instead.
With the abundant amount of exotics dug from the ground, they may be able to figure out an effective new alloy that could mitigate the phenomenon.

From the moment they heard about the Glowing Planet, the Mech Corps would have certainly brought along a lot of specialists who dedicated their lives to understanding exotics.

In contrast, they probably didn ’t think of bringing any mech designers or engineers who specialized in energy cells.
In truth, much of the innovation with regards to energy cells had been kept in the hands of the large trans-galactic corporations.

Hardly any mech designers decided to specialize in something as boring as energy cells.
They ’d rather license an affordable ready-made design.
After all, specializing in other components yielded easier performance gains and saved them a lot of money in licensing costs.

”What kind of Skills and Sub-Skills do I need to specialize in designing energy cells? ”

The worst part about working on the Glowing Planet was that the Whalers didn ’t set up a quantum entanglement node.
Neither did the Blood Claws do so for that matter.
The Mech Corps forbid any communication with the rest of the galaxy and strictly prohibited the activation of any nodes on the ground.

Only the Mech Corps themselves enjoyed that privilege.

”I don ’t have the right to access the galactic net from their access points. ”

Ves shook his head and decided to explore another way.
He returned to his barracks and entered his private bunk.
After sealing it up, he activated his Privacy Shield and activated the Mech Designer System before navigating to the Skill Tree.

”Let ’s see what you ’ve got. ”

With over 50,000 DP to spend, Ves had plenty of points to spend on various Skills and Sub-Skills.
The basic ones didn ’t take too much DP to unlock.

”I ’m already a Journeyman in Electrical Engineering, but I don ’t have a lot of Sub-Skills related to this field. ”

To be honest, he hadn ’t found a use for that Skill outside of coming up with new internal architectures for his designs.
Ves made very little gains in this field ever since he forcibly upgraded it by spending his DP.

”It ’s time to make better use of you. ”

He found a couple of related Sub-Skills that sounded relevant to the issue at hand.

[Energy Storage I]: 400 DP
[Energy Storage II]: 800 DP
[Energy Storage III]: 1600 DP
[Energy Storage IV]: 3200 DP

Learning these Sub-Skills all at once gave Ves a much deeper understanding on the physical makeup of energy cells.

Ves understood what each safeguard did and how they prevented any shorting or accidental discharge.
He knew why mech designers came up with a single size and format of an energy cell.

He learned the basics of how an cell could pack more energy by using different materials or incorporating them in different structures, alternating between conductors, superconductors, exotic conductors and nonconductive materials.

”This is a lot. ”

He turned from a novice to an amateur expert with regards to energy cells.
Previously, Ves treated them like black boxes, something that was independent from his designs and should not be tinkered with.
Now that he gained all of this new knowledge, he finally gained the basic confidence to tweak an existing energy cell.

”It ’s not enough to design a new one, however. ”

Ves lacked too much of the underlying science and engineering to develop a new energy cell from scratch.
Fortunately, that had never been his goal from the start.
He didn ’t need to reinvent the wheel.
He just had to modify an existing one to the point where it stopped acquiring an overcharge.

New knowledge brought new understanding.
Combined with his previous experimentation, be realized how impossible it was for energy cells to hold more charge than they had been designed to store.

”It ’s impossible.
It simply doesn ’t work that way. ”

Yet somehow, it did.

He shook his head.
Ves would get a headache if he kept obsessing about the impossible nature of an overcharged energy cell.

Now that he received a crash course about energy cells, Ves figured out the kind of Sub-Skills he needed to design or modify different structures.

[Conductors I]: 1000 DP
[Conductors II]: 2000 DP
[Conductors III]: 4000 DP

Ves gained a much better insight into conductors, superconductors and exotic conductors with this cross-discipline Sub-Skill.
It elaborated on the Energy Storage IV by going into detail about the properties of different conductors and how modern energy cell designers squeezed more energy density out of the materials they had at hand.

”It doesn ’t help me too much with finding a solution. ”

As far as he knew, regardless of the material, as long as they conducted energy, they all became susceptible to the overcharge phenomenon.
It would take a deeper dive into Metallurgy to come up with a conductive material that might be immune to the energy field.

”That ’s not the focus of my research. ”

Learning about conductors didn ’t just help him design better energy cells.
It also benefited his insights on how to design a more efficient internal architecture for mechs.
In that regard, he didn ’t waste his DP.

”It ’s not that relevant, though. ”

Still, he needed it to understand the actual energy storage portion of an energy cell.
Combined with his other knowledge, Ves began to see the light.