Patricia set down her data pad that displayed the Herald’s interview with Ves. She sat back on her perch overlooking a peaceful garden at a private island on Leemar. The woman glanced at the projection of a familiar ch as it endured a ferocious missile bombardnt.
"Now that you have studied the Young Blood, what are your thoughts, Patricia?" A female voice asked from the side.
Lyri Reywind, a foreign Journeyman ch Designer under the employ of Master Null, popped a cultured grape-like fruit in her mouth. Since Patricia acknowledged the fad ch designer as her master, Lyri brought her up to speed. Patricia improved remarkably as she supplented her solid foundation with a couple of interdiate skills.
"The construction of the Young Blood is not remarkable, though it is well-built." Patricia answered after organizing her thoughts. "The overall complexity of the knight type is fairly low, so it is not a large accomplishnt for an Apprentice ch Designer to achieve this result. I can only say that Ves has a strong foundation."
"Is that all you can perceive from his ch? If it is rely a good construction, then it shouldn’t be generating the modest amount of buzz in the news."
"The weapon is solid but nothing special. The augnts have been improved, but only marginally. The armor’s contours have changed and the internal structure is a lot more flexible. Any pilot who steps into the Young Blood’s cockpit will appreciate the vastly improved handling."
"These are factual statents that any decent ch designer can make when they compare spec sheets." Lyri admonished her junior while she shook her head in disappointnt. "You are a talented ch designer, but you are still too sheltered. Don’t look at the design with your brain. Instead, look at it with your heart."
Patricia looked befuddled. Her elegant eyebrows furrowed as she set aside all the numbers and statistics and focused solely on the projection of the virtual ch in battle. She did not know the ch pilot on display, but thought that he or she perford like a natural on the battlefield. Was she looking at a professional?
No. The pilot’s skill fell short. Instead, the ch moved fluently and decisively. Patricia did not spot the characteristic pauses and second-guessing of a pilot of this caliber. Now that she thought about it, many of the replays she reviewed had shown that every pilot perford close to their optimum without being burdened by various ntal distractions.
"Is there sothing funny going on with the neural interface?"
"No." Lyri responded. "I’ve checked the design myself. The neural interface is a bog-standard model that hasn’t changed a bit from the original Hoplite design. Think. What can affect a design’s performance that does not show up in the schematics or spec sheets?"
"Design philosophy? That’s impossible! He’s only an apprentice, far from the level where a design philosophy should manifest!"
"The human race is endlessly varied. There are many exceptions to the rule. We lump in everything unexplainable into a concept called design philosophy because only few of us are able to exhibit phenona beyond our understanding. Master Olson has a good eye for her to spot such a gem in the wild."
Normally, novices and apprentices have only vaguely heard about design philosophy. From their basic textbooks, design philosophy embodied a ch designer’s understanding of ch design and signified their unique insights that no one else could imitate.
In truth, design philosophy embodied much more than simple understanding. Patricia knew a little more about the concept. Only those who developed their design philosophy past a certain point broke through to Senior and Master ch Designers. All others stopped their advancent once they reached the limits of Journeyman.
"Don’t be discouraged, Patricia. Design philosophy cos with experience and learning. One must first learn to crawl before they can learn to walk."
"At what stage is Ves right now?"
"I’d say he’s actually running the hundred ter sprint right now. There’s no way he can keep this up without damaging his foundations."
"Then we should warn him!" Patricia yelled and brought up her comm.
Lyri cut the air with the palm, shutting off all signal traffic on the island. "Stop!"
"Why?!"
"Do you think his Master is unaware? A lesson only hits ho when it hurts. When little Ves inevitably falls and trips, Master Olson will be there to pick up the pieces."
Despite her concern, Patricia had no right to interfere. Every ch designer had to seek their own truths and find their own path to greatness.
Back in Cloudy Curtain, Ves prepared to resu his efforts to revamp his outdated production design.
"This next step is going to be a pain."
The second phase of his redesign project consisted of revamping the internal structure or architecture of the Marc Antony. Ves did not intend to replace any of the existing components stuffed inside the chs, though they were also the source of the problem. The Caesar Augustus used so of the best currentgen componente available for licensing.
The engine, power reactor, weapons and more perford quite well compared to the competition. However, performance often correlated with size, so they all took up more space than average. For a dium ch trying to stay within its weight class, this created an awful situation.
What Ves learned from his newly gained Structural Pathway Configuration sub-skill helped him understand the issue at hand. He got a sense of what the base model tried to accomplish.
ch designers learned fairly early in their studies that they were brought up to design war machines. These chs not only had to perform at their optimum when fully maintained, they also had to endure various debilitating conditions.
If a ch got its arm cut off, its systems adjusted by enacting so form of damage control. For example, the ch adjusted its balance and cut off any feeds and systems designed to interact with the missing arm.
If a shot snapped an important power feed to the arms, then the ch adjusted by routing power through an alternate path. These backup lines may not be able to bear the full load, but it at least insured the limb maintained a basic amount of functionality.
Both ch pilots and ch designers consider redundancy important. An easy but misleading way to determine a ch’s overall redundancy was to look at their redundancy factor. Expressed in percentages, the RF summarized how much damage a ch could take before it started to lose performance.
Any ch certified by the ch Trade Association had to et a minimum standard of redundancy.
Heavy chs always reached a minimum of 100% RF. This proved that all of its basic systems could be run on a parallel internal structure with no loss of functionality. This took up a lot of a heavy ch’s internal space, but since they often acted as punching bags, pilots always wanted more.
dium chs only had to et a 50% RF. The ch’s critical systems such as its basic feeds between the power reactor, cockpit, engines had fully functional backups that could take over the transfer of power and data. Less essential systems had to make due without these redundancies.
Light chs always had to do more with less, so a 25% RF already strained an average light ch. These kinds of paperweight chs relied entirely on speed and evasion, so it did not have much use for redundancy in the first place. A single heavy hit could easily wipe out the main feed and all of its backup feeds at the sa ti.
Other factors also mattered when it ca to mitigating damage, the most important of which was compartntalization. When a particular section of a ch sustained a hit, ideally the damage only affected that portion. A well-designed internal structure contained the spillovers from both the source of the damage and any cascading faults such as follow-up explosions.
Sa as redundancy, an MTA-certified ch also had to et a minimum standard of compartntalization, expressed in CF.
Unlike RF that for so heavy chs reached as high as 300%, CF only had reached a theoretical maximum of 100%. The MTA mandated a CF of 10% for light chs, 15% for dium chs and 50% for heavy chs.
Regardless of CF and RF, the MTA-mandated minimum only barely t the needs of ch pilots. Those who wished to purchase a more secure ch always sought out chs with significantly higher margins of safety.
What Jason Kozlowki decided to do when he ran out of internal space astounded Ves. Instead of addressing the root of the problem by replacing his core components with more compact versions, he started cutting into his CF and RF.
Between the two, Jason evidently valued redundancy more. He tried to keep as much redundancy intact as possible by optimizing his design’s internal architecture for space.
He basically removed a lot of internal dividers and active suppression systems that localized the damage. He also filled up the buffer space with more junk, causing many cables and feeds to squeeze together.
"What a self-obsessed idiot." Ves quietly cursed. "If Mr. Kozlowski’s design team only had one fellow ch designer with a spine, then this travesty might never have co into being."
He had to make due with what he got. With the sa core components already taking up a substantial chunk of space, Ves had to puzzle out an entirely new architecture that could sowhat raise the base model’s dismal 17% CF while maintaining its 85% RF.
"A dium knight is considered decent if its redundancy factor is 100%. A hybrid knight is also expected to draw the enemy fire, so it a 50% RF is wholly insufficient."
Ves allocated three full weeks to co up with a cleaner internal structure. He got to work by drafting the basic pathways around the ch’s internal fra and core components. Cables, feeds, artificial musculature and support structures slowly filled in the contours of his design.
Even this simple chore turned strenuous due to his need to maintain three images at once in order to nurture the X-Factor. He shortened his sessions to forty-five minutes in order to prevent his mind from slipping into an abyss each ti he overdrafted his focus.
The changes in the routine succeeded in lowering his stress. Ves tentatively added more details to the schematic when he overlaid the primary channels with additional ones. He only started straining his mind once the gaps started filling in. Ves had to be a little more inventive and a lot more patient to figure out his solutions.
Most of the work at this stage involved a lot of trial and error. Every ti he ca across a bump, he had to try out 999 different solutions before obtaining one that didn’t suck.
It also happened to be the ideal whetstone for Ves to get used to holding three images at once. As two weeks slowly went by, Ves beca more proficient in flexing his mind.
He did not increase his Intelligence or Concentration attribute in any asurable way. Instead he learned to utilize his existing strengths closer to their full potential.
In the final week, Ves finished over 98% of his desired end state. Sadly, the final two percent seed incredibly tough to complete. His completely revamped internal architecture looked neat, clean and incorporated a lot more buffer space. Along with employing so other tricks, his design used up about five percent less space while raising its overall endurance.
Ves managed to raise its compartntalization to 29% while maintaining a redundancy of 81%. The vastly increased CF ensured that any damage his chs sustained remained limited to the affected portion.
The original Caesar Augustus did not have to worry so much about this issue due to its excellent compressed armor. Since the Marc Antony incorporated the cheap and disposable HRF armor system, Ves had to ensure it kept running if the ch sustained severe damage.
"After hundreds of thousands of simulations, I’m finally done with this matter." He sighed as he released his concentrated state. By now, had beco accustod to holding three thoughts at once, though it always remained sowhat challenging.
He already invested much of himself in this project. The Marc Antony Mark II had to exceed everyone’s expectations in order to generate sufficient sales. Only through selling physical chs could he earn enough money! No matter how many virtual chs he designed, they never earned him more than a million credits.
User Comments
0 comments from readers