The Mech Touch

It was impossible for Ves and Jovy to properly design a complete juggernaut mech in less than 4 hours.

They were working so far outside of their comfort zone that they couldn't directly reuse any of their old design solutions.

Juggernauts were just too different. The 300-meter long mechanical monstrosity possessed a volume that was comparable to a starship.

The quantity of parts that made up a juggernaut was an order of magnitude greater than that of a conventional mech at the very least!

While Ves and Jovy were able to skip a lot of additional work by multiplying the size of parts by a lot, they weren't able to apply this approach on every single part.

There were still a lot of functions that couldn't be solved in this manner. The pair of Seniors had to tackle a lot of design problems the hard way.

In order to shave away a lot of time, the two mech designers resorted to several expedient solutions that they normally eschewed because it would put their professionalism under question.

Jovy spent a lot of time browsing the expansive library of existing mech designs in the Red Association's internal database.

The database was one of the most precious assets of the Mech Trade Association and its Red Ocean off-shoot. It contained hundreds of years worth of accumulation from a huge amount of mech designers.

Although the database was understandably lacking in juggernaut designs, Jovy received special permission to access the full design schematics of almost every relevant entry.

This gave Jovy a lot to work with. He could easily borrow ready-made parts and design elements from thousands of unique landbound humanoid juggernaut designs.

While it was never proper to straightforwardly copy parts of an existing design and paste them into your own design, nobody was complaining at the moment.

If the Survivalists were willing to exhibit more patience and give Ves a few months of time, then he and Jovy would have been able to whip up a much more acceptable juggernaut design based on their own efforts!

"Are you doing alright, Jovy?" Ves asked with a touch of concern.

"lam not experiencing any issues worth mentioning for the time being." The other Senior replied from his own station. "The borrowed design elements that I am reworking will not be pretty, but they will do the job. The juggernaut will be substantially slower and less resistant to damage, but it will function without losing its balance or misaligning any of its movements."

"Good."

While Jovy was busy with reworking bits and pieces from other juggernaut designs, Ves ended up using a tool that he had used only once.

He never expected that he would end up utilizing the auto designer once again. Just the thought of depending on this highly automated design tool caused him to question his principles as a mech designer!

Still, whatever objections he held towards the auto designer program were irrelevant in the face of the demands from the higher ups of the Survivalist Faction.

At least Ves was able to work on his juggernaut design in his own name. He could employ his own design style with its usual flair and quirks without needing to hold himself back.

The auto designer program developed by the mechers was a lot more elaborate and tailored for professional use compared to the one utilized by Alexar Streon a long time ago.

The older and outdated program that Ves used to design the Ouroboros in a rush could aptly be described as a toy. It was designed with laymen in mind and presented a user-friendly design interface that was simple enough to be used by teenagers.

The Red Association developed a much more robust and advanced automation tool for its own mech designers. Although it was capable of automating almost every design task, Ves was able to access a seemingly endless list of settings that he could use to finetune the behavior of the powerful AIs.

He could tell them to selectively automate specific design tasks while making sure to leave other design tasks for himself.

The degree of specificity and granularity could be as low or high as he wished. If he was feeling really lazy, then he could automate almost every aspect aside from a few settings. That would allow him to input a few data points before pressing a button that resulted in a nearly complete and usable mech design!

However, this was the most shallow application of the Association's version of the auto designer program.

The auto designer program could turn into a powerful tool in the hands of a real mech designer. Apprentices, Journeymen and even Masters could easily shave days, weeks or even months worth of design work while still preserving much of their unique characteristics in the final output!

This was not just due to the extreme degree of customization and specification of the auto designer program.

It turned out that the auto designer had access to the very same database that contained all of the mech designs that the Red Association had on record!

This included mechs designed by Ves over the course of his career!

Ves actually grew quite annoyed when he saw that the database contained more than just the design schematics of the commercial mechs that Ves had designed for the mech market.

He did not mind the fact that the database contained the designs of commissioned mechs such as the Valkyrie mech line that were never formally submitted to the Association in order to get validated.

Those mechs were so widely used and produced throughout different parts of human space that the mechers had to be incompetent if they couldn't get their greedy hands on those designs.

What really pissed Ves off was that the mechers had actually intruded into the core of his clan and obtained copies of the full designs of all of his Larkinson-exclusive mechs!

His expression grew more and more cross as he browsed through the extensive list that had no right to exist.

The Bright Warrior. The Rigid Wall. The Rigid Spine. The Stingripper. The Signal Bearer. The Transcendent Punisher. The Transcendent Charger. The Redlance.

All of his standard mechs for the Larkinson Clan were on the list, including the ones he barely contributed to.

The files in the database included more than just the essential design schematics. It also included his logs, his informal notes, the raw calculation output as well as the complete recordings of his fabrication runs of the listed designs!

Yet as much as Ves felt pissed that the mechers got their hands on the full design files of the aforementioned mech models, he grew really angry when he looked further down the list!

The Amaranto. The Riot. The Everchanger. The Minerva. The Bastion.

They even stole his Phobos!

Ves recalled that he had been extra careful about information security when he designed this highly strategic expert stealth mech!

Yet for all of he and his clan's attempts to keep its design along with all of his other files and documents secure, the mechers easily defeated his efforts and retrieved his work anyway!

Though Ves was filled with rage, his better senses soon caused him to feel a chill of fear.

He did not think it was a coincidence that he managed to gain access to this list. He would rather assume that it was a deliberate ploy rather than an accidental oversight.

Ves became brutally reminded by the power of the Association.

No matter how much he had improved and no matter how much his status had risen, he must never forget that he was far from the top dog.

The Red Association was led by multiple god pilots and Star Designers. It also had access to a lot of remote support from their much greater parent organization in the Milky Way Galaxy!

Even if Ves had his mother in his back pocket, that was far from enough to defy the Association!

If Ves ever wanted to distance himself from the mechers in the future, he at least needed to ensure that they couldn't steal his files willy-nilly.

In hindsight, it hadn't been the best idea to let the mechers upgrade the Spirit of Bentheim to a quasi-first-class factory ship in one of their very own shipyards.

"What the hell can I do?"

Nothing.

"I should move on." He muttered.

While Ves was not happy about this unwelcome discovery, he soon discovered the benefits of all of this theft.

The auto designer was actually capable of absorbing all of the aforementioned data and tailor its automated design processes to simulate his own design style!

Ves watched on with amazement as a procedurally generated mech design looked awfully similar to how he would have approached this project.

The auto designer somehow understood his decision-making well enough to include all of the appropriate design quirks and preferences without adding anything that was inappropriate in this context!

When Ves altered the instructions in order to make changes and corrections, the deviously clever auto designer perfectly accommodated his intentions and spit out new mech designs that just happened to match his demands!

He couldn't hold himself back.

"Jovy?"

"What is it now, Ves?"

"Can you tell me more about this auto designer? Why is it so good, and why does it seem that it is exceptionally suited to be used by high-ranking mech designers?"

His friend smirked. "I'm not surprised at your reaction. The auto designer used to be neglected by us as we rightfully considered it to be a crutch. It was only when the Polymath rose up and made a pass at the auto designer program that it gained several powerful new uses."

Ves almost froze at the mention of a certain name. "The Polymath updated the auto designer program in person?"

"She practically reformed it from the ground up." Jovy proudly replied. "Her Excellency excels in this sort of work, you know. She is able to draw on so many disciplines at once that she can turn any piece of trash into treasure. Under her concerted efforts, the auto designer has gained at least three new uses. The most basic one is to employ it as a teaching tool. Several of our mech design schools have adopted a teaching method that gives young mech design students access to the auto designer and allow them to complete their assignments at a high degree of automation."

"Oh! Those schools are using it as a set of training wheels!"

"Indeed. The concept is not difficult to understand. Students can automatically generate a wide variety of designs. There are only a few variables left untouched that they need to solve through their own efforts. Once they grow older and learn more and more theories, the auto designer will gradually disable one automated setting after another. The student must gradually take on more and more responsibilities, but never to the point where they get overwhelmed. Once they have reached the final years of their studies, they can remove the last training wheels and design complete first-class multipurpose mechs from scratch. This new teaching method has attracted a lot of criticism, but it has proven to be highly effective at teaching less talented and augmented mech design students."

Ves could easily see why this was the case. There was a lot of handholding, so much so that the students might grow too dependent on external help to design their works. It would be hard for them to fully shake off this persistent habit after years of using the auto designer.

"What about the second use?"

"The more traditional use of the auto designer program is to use it as a time saver." Jovy replied. "That is what we are supposed to be doing at this time. While it is anything but ideal, mech designers are occasionally pressed to deliver a fully functional mech design in exceedingly short time frames. A properly configured auto designer that has access to an extensive library of your own works will be able to simulate outcomes of your more superficial design tasks with an impressive degree of accuracy. The more of your mech designs in the database, the more faithfully it can reproduce your work. It isn't able to replicate your design philosophy, so you don't have to be afraid that it will replace your job... for now. Who knows what the Polymath can do if she makes a second pass at the auto designer program?"

Ves shuddered in fear at the thought. The power of this Star Designer was too great!

"I get it. 1 have to admit that the Polymath has succeeded awfully well at giving us a tool to save a lot of time. What about the third use?"

"Well, I am sure that you have discovered that it can replicate your design style extremely well. It can do that for any mech designer whose works are on record. Rational mech designers are able to use the auto designer as a research and learning tool by simulating the work of other professionals. This was probably the function that the Polymath had in mind when she upgraded and expanded the auto designer program. A lot of rational mech designers have become especially grateful to her after this. Many of them took the initiative to join her camp."

"I see."