The Mech Touch

Chapter 6532 Deeper Development

Everyone knew what Patriarch Reginald Cross was like.

He was largely unsuited to be the leader of a large and growing clan. He was an ace pilot who was obsessed with earning glory. He was an impulsive man who put relatively little thought in all of his words and deeds.

It was easy to interpret the Crosser ace pilot's offer as a poorly conceived attempt at poaching Ketis from the Larkinson Clan.

However, the swordmaster thought about it from a different perspective.

Journeyman Mech Designers were supposed to be people who had initially found their design philosophies and needed to expand on its starting foundation by enriching it with design applications.

There were many ways in which Journeymen could develop their design philosophies. Ves had once explained the tree model to her in the past. He was an archetypical example of a mech designer who preferred to explore many different ideas, causing him to develop a broad but relatively short tree of skill sets and design applications. Ketis herself limited her output in many ways, choosing to limit her core work to swordsman mechs. That meant that her tree was destined to be narrow.

That did not mean that there was no need for her to travel around and gain new inspiration from different ideas.

The challenge of mech designers who wanted to develop like Ves was not to blindly pursue quantity by developing lots of unrelated design applications. They instead needed to find a way to tie all of these weaker solutions to each other so that they could produce powerful synergies.

A qualified mech designer must always design a mech that offered superior performance or value to their target audience!

There was no point in designing mechs if the output contained a lot of dubious gimmicks that did not offer any meaningful improvement on the battlefield.

As such, broad and adaptable mech designers had to be able to combine multiple design applications together so that the whole was always greater than the sum of its parts! Strictly speaking, Ves was not a typical broad mech designer. His most notable design solutions had already reached a degree of advancement that they could put a lot of narrow mech designers to shame.

It was just that his personality and the nature of his design choices reflected an attitude of not being afraid to explore drastically different subjects. Even if no existing synergy existed, he could always find a way to make it fit into his own design approach.

Ketis was a different mech designer. She purposefully focused on developing a narrow tree out of a clear understanding of her strengths and weaknesses.

As a woman who split her time between mech design and swordsmanship, she could never devote as much time on fanciful explorations like Ves. She had to ration them a lot more carefully.

She understood quite early that if she still wanted to make decent progress as a mech designer, then she needed to minimize her distractions and focus solely on developing her core strengths.

This was why she had no qualms about developing into a narrow mech designer and imposing multiple limitations on her work and research activities.

While narrow mech designers might have it easier on the surface, they still had to endure their own set of challenges.

One of them is that it was quite difficult to develop a narrow tree to a tall height. Ketis had to continually explore and advance her core specialization so that it became notably more effective than the design applications of broad mech designers.

Broad mech designers relied on combining multiple different weak solutions to produce a powerful result through synergy.

Narrow mech designers only relied on a single highly developed solution to outright dominate in a single aspect.

Not everyone was able to succeed in doing the latter. Even if they understood the research direction they needed to explore, they still had to rely on a lot of ingenuity, opportunities and hard work to make continuous breakthroughs and elevate a design application until it clearly overpowered compared to the alternatives!

This was difficult because the rest of the mech industry was not incompetent. There were many Masters and Star Designers that had furthered the development of mechs in so many different ways.

It was impossible for a Journeyman like Ketis to outcompete her most successful predecessors by beating them at their own game.

The only viable way for Journeymen and especially ones that chose to commit to narrow development strategies was to blaze a new trail!

By pioneering a new research field, a mech designer was able to avoid a lot of competition from the established market leaders.

The goal was to fulfill the demands of customers in a different way than usual.

Ves had managed to do so in a magnificent way. He successfully fulfilled a demand that had been left unmet for multiple centuries, which was to give norms way to pilot

mechs.

There were also mech designers who relied on different technologies to fulfill demands that had previously been met by established players.

What enabled them to stand out from the competition was to solve a problem at a much more affordable price, or find a way to increase the performance of their own

proprietary solutions!

Originally, Ketis sought to develop a design philosophy based around designing swordsman mechs armed with swords that offered superior sharpness.

That had gradually changed as Ketis started to shift her emphasis on sharpness to developing a design application based on imbuing the swordsmanship she mastered into her own swordsman mech designs.

It was not that Ketis had lost her passion for sharpness. It still served as the foundation of her personal sword style.

She just felt that she could not bring much value to the mech industry as sharpness was a common specialization to many existing mech designers.

While their methods may differ from her own, she could not deny the fact that the mech market already sold plenty of swordsman mechs armed with blades that could cut

through thick and resilient alloys.

Instead of thanklessly trying to improve a parameter that offered no real unique benefits aside from maybe making her own solution cheaper and more accessible, she would rather break new ground and offer her customers a benefit that they could never attain

from her competitors!

This was why she decisively chose to reorient her design philosophy towards a gimmick that only she could do, which was imbuing her swordsman mech designs with the custom swordsmanship styles developed by herself in the guise of a swordmaster! No other mech designer possessed a combination of professions like Ketis, and she would be a fool if she did not neglect the obvious synergies.

She had clearly made the right bet, because all of her products had been very well received by her target audience.

The Red Association currently registered her specialization as a Class VI design philosophy based on Skill-Imbued Swordsman Mechs.

Her root still remained the same. She wanted to design the best swordsman mechs in

the universe. She just chose to shift her emphasis from sharpness to the imbuement of superior weapon skills. This was why she was successfully able to get away with such a major change in specializations.

She was rather lucky as well that she managed to make this transition early in her career as a high-ranking mech designer.

The later she changed her specializations, the less room she had to make any course

changes.

At that point, too much of her original design philosophy had already become solidified, thereby locking their cognition to the point where they could no longer accept radical changes in their design approach.

In other words, older mech designers had basically locked themselves in their chosen

directions!

They could only effectively explore radically different research directions if they were broad and versatile enough from the start.

The only other solution was to raise disciples who were willing to explore different but related research directions.

Ketis had yet to reach the point where she seriously needed to think about training disciples to do this kind of work.

She was still a Journeyman Mech Designer who had made decent but not too many attainments in her new research direction.

She instinctively felt that she still retained enough flexibility to make further course changes if she wished.

Not that she wanted to. She was happy with specializing in Skill-Imbued Swordsman

Mechs.

The challenge that she currently faced was that she found it difficult to devise new ways

to improve her core design application any further.

She recognized several shortcomings about her design philosophy that she could

address.

The 'memory capacity' of every swordsman mech design was limited. She could only

imbue so much information into her works. This severely limited her ability to pass on thorough and complete swordsmanship styles into words such as the Monster Slayer model and the Storm Sword model.

The teaching of swordsmanship styles was also rigid and non-interactive. Every copy of her mech designs taught the same set of sword techniques and principles without making any adjustments based on the circumstances of individual mech pilots! A true swordsmanship teacher would tailor his lessons to each individual student. Certain moves were not suitable to be employed by a different swordsman due to incompatible physiques, mindsets, habits and convictions.

Other sword techniques could still be taught, but needed to be altered to accommodate

the unique circumstances of individual swordsmen.

This was why true swordsmanship could never easily be learned by studying books or

watching a video guide.

Those that possessed the capacity to learn new sword styles through non-interactive study materials were already highly skilled and successful swordmasters themselves! What Ketis could do, the vast majority of her customers could not do. They lacked the skill, experience and other competencies to truly master unfamiliar sword styles. The most common feedback she received from her customers was that the sword styles taught by her mechs forced them into becoming swordsmen that they did not identify

with. The lack of adaptation and responsiveness to the unique circumstances of every customer limited the usefulness of sword styles that synergized well with their associated swordsman mechs.

Ketis eagerly wanted to solve these problems and more, but she lacked the imagination

and inspiration to come up with viable solutions.

This was why Journeymen occasionally had to leave the environment they were familiar with and venture to different places in order to gain new ideas.

While she hadn't really thought about it before, now that she received an offer from

Patriarch Reginald Cross, she finally saw an opportunity to enter a different environment and enrich her views on mech design.

Of course, accepting the offer to become a guest worker at the Cross Clan was not her

only choice.

She could easily think of other groups located in more distant and exotic locations that would gladly host a mech designer of her pedigree and caliber!

As the first student of Professor Ves Larkinson, establishing a connection with Ketis was a good way to form an indirect connection with the Father of Carmine Mechs!

Ketis rejected this alternative because she wanted to be valued by her own merits, not

by her benefactor.

She was also familiar with the Crossers and found them to be upright and trustworthy enough to work together on a deeper level.

Master Benedict Cortez was also a lot older and more experienced than her. He could

offer her a lot of guidance and help her figure out how to develop her design philosophy further.

"Patriarch Reginald." Ketis spoke up after a long moment of thought. "Your offer sounds...

interesting. Give me time to consider your offer. I may end up taking it. If I do, I hope you will prepare a guest position for me in your Cross Clan."

The ace pilot looked surprised. It was as if he did not actually expect for the

swordmaster to accept his spontaneous offer.

That was no reason to look at a gift horse in the mouth, though. Patriarch Reginald

quickly responded with a wide grin!

"Of course! I will tell Master Benedict to reserve a place by his side right away! If he

doesn't do what I tell him to, then feel free to beat him up until he relents! He has promised to rectify our mech designers for multiple years, but I have yet to notice any differences. Maybe you can do a better job by applying the methods used by the Larkinson Clan."

This was a win-win proposition for the two parties.

Ketis wanted to work in a different environment in order to broaden her horizons and

gain new inspiration.

The Cross Clan wanted to bring in an outside 'consultant' to rectify the Cross Mech Corporation's Design Department!