[401-600] THE MECH'S TOUCH

Chapter 443: Lack of Appreciation

The old mech technician's claim sounded very absurd to Ves. Perhaps the reason why this fellow hadn't made it as a mech designer was because he constantly came to weird conclusions like this. How could a design of a disposable mech like the Inheritor be a variant of a high-end mech design?

Ves turned to Chief Carmon. "Have you ever seen a superior version of the Inheritor?"

"Not even close." The chief shook her head. "I've been a Vandal for over twenty years and been posted on more than eight different carriers and I've never seen any other version of the Inheritor than the one we're currently looking at. I know this model like the back of my hand and there's no tolerance for improvement besides using better materials."

That caused Ves to look at the frame of the Inheritor in a different way. The design might not be all that good, but what would happen if he replaced the low-quality materials with better ones.

He performed a brief visualisation of the result. His conclusions led to the a similar route to the road that his Crystal Lord design had taken.

"What is the Inheritor design is clad in compressed armor?" He asked. "The main advantage of the Inheritor is that it's fast even for a spaceborn light skirmisher. The downside to that is that its armor is extremely flimsy. Replacing its lightweight armor with compressed armor plating will substantially negate this disadvantage."

"That's exactly right." The former mech designer said. "You can also replace the core parts with better versions."

It would be a completely different design. The performance of such a machine would be a multitude of times more effective than the cheap hunk of alloys the Vandals relied on as one of its workhorse models.

Yet none of it mattered.

"This design you're describing doesn't exist." Ves said. "Not if what Chief Carmon said is true. It might be that the original designer had a quality mech design in mind when he originally developed a premium mech, but he never made it into fruition. Afterwards, when the Vandals commissioned him to design an affordable light skirmisher for space battles, he must have recycled some of his old work."

Every mech designer created more designs than they could put to use. They usually archived their unused designs and utilized some of its elements in other projects to cut save a lot of time and effort.

The more Ves thought about it, the more this conclusion resonated to him. Maybe that was why the Inheritor was a little unsuited in its role as a disposable mech.

"It sounds possible, but without any proof, we're guessing in the wind. Besides, even if it turns out to be true, that doesn't make this model any better."

Ves wanted to get the conversation back on track. He steered the conversation away from baseless speculation and turned back to his original job of gathering feedback on the Inheritor mech.

He didn't learn much new after talking with all of the mech technicians. Sometimes, they described some problems concerning the difficulty in assembling or repairing certain sections, but fixing those issues required a lot of time and didn't measurably strengthen the mechs at all.

Still, in the back of his mind, Ves could fathom the reason why the Vandals possibly utilized a heavily downgraded version of an excellent design. It made no sense. Someone as skilled as Professor Velten or any of the Senior Mech Designers that used to work for the Vandals should have been able to design an optimal spaceborn light skirmisher from the ground up.

Ves left that question to the side and concentrated on his work. He also didn't forget about observing his surroundings. He hadn't forgotten his earlier desires to figure out what made the Vandals tick.