It had been a while since he designed a ch all by himself.
When Ves looked back into the past, the last ti he developed a ch by himself was when he designed the Devil Tiger.
The Devil Tiger Project had been the first ti he completely consud himself in his passion. He went so far out of his way to realize his ambitious vision that he did not even realize that he was working his way towards a masterwork ch.
Even without Lucky's gem, finishing the Devil Tiger would have still led to a lot of gains for him! That was one of the few tis he truly felt as if he had vindicated his existence as a ch designer!
Afterwards, he rendez-vouszed with Gloriana at the Rev Indra System and that spelled the end of his habit of isolating himself in his design lab.
Now, he had soone else at his side when he developed this tendency!
Working with Gloriana was a joy. Both of them were very competent and possessed different but compatible views on ch design.
Designs such as the Soldier variants, the Bright Warrior and the Doom Guard exemplified the synergy they achieved.
As Ves and Gloriana both familiarized themselves with each other's strengths, they adjusted their work accordingly.
Gloriana invested herself in the details, having liberated herself from the need to take the big picture into account. As a ch designer who was highly sensitive towards tiny flaws and imperfections, she would much rather spend her ti on resolving these issues than worry about the intangibles.
In contrast, Ves was a big picture guy. He didn't really care too much about the nitpicking that Gloriana often liked to engage in. In his perspective, what did it matter if so tiny flaw caused the acceleration of a ch to drop by 0.01 percent?
Of course, if there were too many flaws, those performance drops all added up to a aningful difference, but Ves did not want to waste too much ti in squashing them all out.
What he wanted to do instead was to co up with a fantastic vision and concept that was so powerful, that it didn't matter if his ch ca riddled with flaws!
"Life isn't perfect!"
The difference between Ves and Gloriana was that the forr liked to have a little chaos while the latter pursued order.
Ordinarily, both of them would never been able to reconcile their respective design outlooks with each other!
In practice, they learned to compromise with each other. They stepped on each other's toes plenty of tis at the start, but over ti they learned to walk around each other more carefully.
All of this caused the pair to focus on different aspects of ch design. They neglected their weaknesses and shored up their strengths, knowing that they could lean on their partner to take care of the issues they weren't good at solving!
Both of them thought that everything would be fine and all was right with the galaxy.
That was until Master Willix popped their bubble.
In her last visit, she easily ascertained the state of their collaboration. As a seasoned ch designer who had traveled the breadth of human space, she encountered nurous wonder couples.
She had also seen how developing a deep interdependence with a partner could lead to disaster.
The mont one half of a couple beca indisposed, the other half beca functionally useless as well!
Thanks to the early warning, both Ves and Gloriana had beco aware of this potential outco. This simple observation was enough to put both of them on guard.
Though neither of them had any intention of breaking their collaborative partnership, they still intended to spend so ti on solo projects!
The design duel that Jovy pressed upon Ves turned into an unexpected opportunity for him to refresh his solo approach towards ch design.
Not only that, but with the implant limiter, Ves felt as if he regressed to his older self.
Over the year since he integrated with the Archides Rubal implant, he made increasingly more use of its versatile functions.
From storing lots of data to performing rapid calculations, the implant had beco inseparable to his life and his work.
Now that the implant limiter interrupted the signal propagation between his natural brain and his artificial bioimplant, Ves felt as if he had regressed to an earlier version of himself.
Relying on his intrinsic brain matter to perform calculations was a lot slower and more imprecise. It was so bad that Ves had to make use of the calculating software provided by the design suite!
"How backwards!"
The lack of direct interfacing between his thoughts and the software slowed him down trendously. He had to input numbers and formulas manually with his fingers. What used to take milliseconds now expended entire seconds or even minutes.
"Too slow!"
At the start, Ves felt very discomfited by all of the inconveniences of designing chs the 'traditional way'.
It took hours for him to gradually get accustod to the old school style of ch design. He already knew what to expect since this was how he originally practiced his craft.
Though Ves initially expected to default to his original approach, he unexpectedly made so alterations.
Ves was not the Apprentice or Journeyman from two or three years ago.
He had matured imnsely, designed more chs, increased his ch affinity and delved his design skills to a greater extent.
All of this and more had pushed him from a starting Journeyman to a rising Journeyman.
Many of the thods he used to employ in the past were crude, outdated or unnecessary.
In a design duel, speed was paramount.
Duels between chs or infantry combatants only lasted for a few minutes to half an hour at most. Rarely did they stretch on all the way to an hour!
Design duels were different. There was no practical way for ch designers up to Senior to express even a fraction of their design ability in just 30 minutes. As for cobbling sothing up in a couple of hours, the resulting chs hardly presented the ch designers in a good light!
A proper design duel had to take at least a day, and each additional day significantly increased the quality of the competition chs.
Ves supposed that Master Willix wanted him to design a decent ch, otherwise the design duel didn't have to stretch on for so long.
A span of 72 hours was never enough to design a proper ch. Ves could never adopt the sa approach he reserved for his serious design projects.
Simply put, designing a competition ch was basically a ga of cutting corners.
He had to rush through many steps and budget his ti in a way that allowed him output to remain as high as possible.
Good judgent was indispensable. He needed to make a very careful choice on which areas to neglect and which areas to invest his ti in. He had to maximize his return on ti investnt!
There were many specific sections of the ch that took days or weeks to get it right, yet only yielded a modest performance boost.
It was a waste of ti for Ves to go over them with a ticulous mindset. Knowing that he would only end up in a quagmire, he sloppily fleshed out his sketch in a matter of hours before moving on, knowing full where that he had left behind a host of flaws!
"Gloriana would probably go mad with rage if she can see my work now!"
Even though he only worked out a third of his ch design at this point, the ch already looked like a hot ss!
One of the benefits of working alongside Gloriana was that he had beco familiar with the way she looked at chs.
Right now, the ch was so sloppily put together that he would probably bash his head against his desk if he was anything like his girlfriend!
He loved it. Nothing excited him more than realizing his vision and making his ch co to life one step at a ti.
The birth of any life was rife with uncertainty and chaos. With no nagging woman by his side to question all of his decisions, Ves freed himself from the shackles that caged his boundless creativity.
He implented nurous solutions that he would have never applied when Gloriana was around. He made unconventional design choices that seed sub-optimal but shed much better with his vision for the ch.
Just because Ves chose to center his ch around superiority didn't an that the ch should be superior in quality.
Gloriana might disagree, but Ves was different! A ch like the Devil Tiger proved that his own approach worked!
So flaws weren't a big deal. Others were rely subjectively flawed to only so people. Even if Ves left behind so gaping vulnerabilities, it didn't matter as long as the overall performance of the ch was up to standard.
This was the essence of his design style! Ves always prioritized big ideas over small details!
With his current ch design, that ant designing a flathrower-wielding striker ch that could scorch the competition before it got scorched in return!
Ves gambled everything on the application and managent of heat. If Jovy happened to design a ch that expressly countered his design concept, then so be it. As long as this was not the case, his ch should have all the opportunities available to turn the tables on its opponent!
Knowing that his competition ch would face another heavily-armored ch, Ves opted to choose a special flathrower system.
"I can't design a traditional striker ch." He murmured.
A humanoid striker ch often possessed articulating arms and made use of an external flathrower.
However, this flathrower was actually a huge vulnerability in a dueling environnt!
At the very least, rifleman chs had ways of keeping their distance against their opponents. The chance of their rifles getting shot was not that big at range, especially if the weapon had been reinforced.
However, no matter how much Ves beefed up the flathrower, it would always be susceptible to attacks. If Jovy's ch happened to bring a shotgun, then it could easily blast the flathrower apart, thereby winning the duel right then and there!
For these reasons and more, Ves decided to apply so frontline ch design principles to his competition ch.
Instead of adding hands to his ch, he instead cut them off and mounted internal flathrowers into them. Due to the space they took up, Ves had to enlargen the rest of the arms themselves, causing his competition ch to resemble an upright gorilla!
These considerable changes altered the entire balance of the ch, but with his keen understanding of Battle chatronics, he easily adjusted the overall fra.
Regardless whether his competition ch would duel against a ch ard with a flathrower or a shotgun, it was a good idea to keep all of the important parts behind a good layer of armor!
Every system had to be internal. From the flathrower modules to the propellant, Ves could not afford to expose any of it to enemies.
His design choices automatically made his ch look fat and bloated. That said, Ves did not actually pile as much armor onto his competition ch as he could have. He wanted to retain at least so semblance of mobility.
He didn't feel confident in his ch if it was too immobile. While his weighed-down striker ch design still boasted weak mobility, at the very least it should be enough to provide more tactical options to Joshua!
After two days, the overall direction of the ch design had already been set. Despite all of the limitations, Ves managed to design a ch that was only moderately worse off than if he could still make use of his implant.
"This ch design is missing sothing." He humd.
While everything went fairly smoothly, he vaguely suspected that sticking to convention wasn't enough to overco a talent like Jovy!
Yet the problem he faced was identical to the one that plagued him while he design the Doom Guard.
His striker ch did not possess enough capacity!
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