The Chiron and the Ferocious Piranha Projects both demanded a lot of ingenuity. Despite their third-class nature, Ves knew he needed to invest quite so ti on spiritual engineering in order to establish their distinctive spiritual chanisms.
This wouldn't be easy at all. Ves had to tackle many new problems and invent novel solutions. He had to explore his newly-discovered ability to create spiritual constructs and find a way to realize his desired outcos for the very first ti.
On top of that, Ves had to perform all of this work while also investing most of his ti on his major projects! No matter what, the Valkyrie Redeer and Cat's Paw Projects were simply too important to his interests.
This was why he decided to fill up the remaining slots with less ambitious minor projects.
That didn't an the remaining two ch designs beca less worthy. Ves could still figure out plenty of useful ch designs that didn't require too much work to be useful.
Of course, if he was willing to invest more ti and resources into them, they could easily beco more powerful, but there wasn't much pressure to do so to be honest.
Gloriana presented the first minor project that he and Ves had decided upon.
"With the increasing prevalence of LMC chs in the Komodo Star Sector, glows have beco more and more ubiquitous. Aside from the Doom Guard, the glows are generally supportive and helpful. However, that does not an that their presence in an area is necessarily desirable. The LMC has received an increasing amount of complaints that the glows are too obnoxious or aren't welco despite the ntal boost they can provide."
Public spaces, ship interiors and so on often beca disturbed when an LMC ch ca near. The more LMC chs showed up, the more disruption they caused, especially when different kinds of glows successively affected the sa area.
One minute, a ch technician trying to service a ch suddenly felt dutiful. The next minute, he might beco swollen with pride! After that, he gained a very strong urge to protect his fellow comrades.
This was a typical example of what happened in the hangar bays of many carriers that held different LMC ch models.
In fact, a fair amount of complaints even erged from within the Larkinson Clan! As one of the most prolific users of LMC chs, almost every carrier hosted a bunch of glows.
Though the existence of the Larkinson Network partially mitigated the effect of glows on their minds, so Larkinsons simply wanted to obtain a reprieve!
Therefore, Ves and Gloriana decided to design a ch that could offer these people a defense, for a price.
Gloriana activated a projection that depicted the proposed ch design. "The Sanctuary Project is a third-class offensive space knight. From a technical standpoint, the ch doesn't co with any notable bells and whistles. It needs to be resilient enough to endure focused attacks, but it also needs to be mobile enough to be at the right place at the right ti."
"Most of you are wondering why the Sanctuary Project is necessary when the LMC already sells the Aurora Titan." Ves spoke. "The Aurora Titan is a great ch that can shield the ch pilot and nearby friendlies from the effects of hostile glows, but it is not designed to block friendly glows. In fact, the Aurora Titan's glow is also distinctive and therefore disruptive in certain situations. In order to address the growing complaints, there is a need for another product that can provide the succor that our existing space knight model isn't able to address."
"The Aurora Titan is also too impractical of a ch design to most custors. It's not only incredibly slow, but also very heavy and costly." Gloriana added.
Ves nodded. "This is why we have conceived of the Sanctuary, a ch designed to mitigate or neutralize the influence of any glow in the vicinity. No matter if the other glows are supportive of harmful nature, the Sanctuary can offer so protection no matter their nature."
To be honest, he spontaneously ca up with this ch concept after he slept with a B-stone on his bedside table. He truly felt refreshed when he woke up after enjoying an entire night of rest without his mind getting affected by the spiritual disturbances in the Nyxian Gap.
This caused a lot of assistants to look thoughtful. So of them even began to frown.
Miles asked a question. "Sir.. doesn't that an you will design a counter to your own specialty? A ch like this might be able to negate everything that you have managed to design up to this point!"
This was a question that Ves worried over right away. Fortunately, he already ca up with so answers.
"It's not as severe as you think, Miles. First, the primary effect of the Sanctuary is very difficult to achieve. No matter what, it is difficult to suppress a glow."
Ves manipulated the projection to showcase several scenarios.
An offensive space knight that represented a Sanctuary floated opposite to a Doom Guard.
"In a typical case, the Sanctuary may be capable of suppressing the glow of the Doom Guard. Both of their effects are very strong, and the exact effectiveness depends on how good the ch pilots are and how well they have bonded with their chs.
The crimson third eye of the Doom Guard dimd a bit, which signified that its ch pilot experienced so difficulties in lding with the machine.
Two semi-transparent fields appeared into view that visually simulated the expected performance of the glows of the chs.
The field surrounding the Doom Guard weakened and made way for the field surrounding the Sanctuary.
When the third eye of the Sanctuary glowed brighter, the field surrounding the proposed new ch completely overpowered the glow of the Doom Guard!
"If an excellent ch pilot such as Joshua Larkinson pilots the Sanctuary, then its protective glow will absolutely be able to assert itself. If he pilots the Doom Guard instead, then the opposite will happen."
This was already a known glow interaction to Ves. The Aurora Titan only managed to overpower the Doom Guard most of the ti because Qilanxo was not only powerful, she also didn't have to waste most of her strength on fending off a rival design spirit.
The projection changed to display multiple Sanctuaries and multiple Doom Guard. Both of them had been equalized so that the overlapping fields that represented their glows entered into a stalemate.
"Numbers play a role as well." He said, and swiped his finger a few tis to remove so Doom Guards off the board.
The change quickly caused the Sanctuaries to beco more overbearing. Their neutralizing glows completely pressed back the harmful influence of the Doom Guards!
"As you can see, as long as the ch pilots are all the sa, if a single Sanctuary can't neutralize a Doom Guard, you can bring a second one. If the enemy fields two Doom Guards, then you can bring three Sanctuaries, and so on! This glow interaction alone will ensure that releasing the Sanctuary will not no matter how many Sanctuaries we sell, there is still a rationale for fielding other LMC chs. In fact, our more dedicated custors will buy even more copies in order to guard against the appearance of a number of hostile Sanctuaries!"
Even if a lot of custors might decide to give up on other LMC chs entirely, they still needed to buy a lot of Sanctuaries just to guard against glows!
"Sir, how.. accessible will the Sanctuary be? Will you make it as expensive as the Ferocious Piranha?"
Ves shook his head. "No. The service provided by the Sanctuary has to co with a price, but not one that will evoke too many complaints. For now, I have settled on a price and budget that is similar to that of the Doom Guard, so it will sit firmly in premium territory. Any other questions?"
"Will you design a landbound variant of the ch?"
"It's in consideration. We can develop after we publish the base model."
Catherine Evenson asked a question next. "Mr. Larkinson, as far as we are aware of, the power and potency of glows is not necessarily dependent on the cost and class of ch. Is it possible for a single Sanctuary to neutralize the glow of a Bright Warrior, which costs at least an order of magnitude more money to build?"
"Make that two orders of magnitude." Ves chuckled. "I have already thought of this possibility. The effectiveness of a ch has to be comnsurate to its price. If this is not the case, I will make sure to correct it. The glow of a third-class ch should never overpower the glow of a second-class ch. This isn't sothing that I have considered too much, but every ch that we publish from now on will adhere to this principle."
Perhaps before, it would be difficult to ensure this would happen, but all kinds of possibilities opened up after the discovery of spiritual constructs.
In order to develop a ranking of glows, Ves intended to program a special spiritual construct that grouped the glows into tiers corresponding to their price and class.
For now, Ves mainly wanted to prevent the Friday Coalition from buying or producing his Sanctuaries en masse in order to counter the Hexer ch designs that he intended to design!
So concerns still existed. Ketis frowned and raised a worriso possibility.
"Our clan depends heavily on the chs that you have designed. What if the enemy fields our own ch models against us? Even if the Sanctuary can't neutralize the glows of all of the chs, what if they field so of the second-class chs that you have designed?"
That.. was a very realistic possibility. It was a good thing that Ves was already paranoid enough to take this possibility into account. He theorized on it imdiately after he ca up with a priority ranking for his glows!
He smirked. "Anyone who thinks they can beat at my own ga will never succeed. As the inventor and creator of glows, do you think I haven't developed any counterasures to them? The Sanctuary design is rely a lesser solution that I have decided to release to the public in order to assuage so of their complaints. I have many other ways to deal with my own products should they turn their weapons against our clan!"
He did not elaborate any further. Though he trusted everyone to keep their mouths shut, the less they knew, the better.
In truth, aside from manually asking his design spirits to deprive their glows from the chs in question, Ves also intended to bake this function right into the design of his upcoming chs.
It all ca down to the priority ranking construct. Aside from ensuring that the glows of third-class chs would never be able to overpower the glow of a second-class ch, Ves also intended to add so hidden instructions.
One of the hidden rules stated that any LMC ch piloted by a Larkinson possessed the capability to hard override the glow of a hostile LMC ch.
Another hidden rule stated that as long as an LMC ch directly deployed against a Larkinson or the Larkinson Clan, its glow directly turned against its own ch pilot and any compatriots!
Just like how Ylvaine actively rejected any non-believer from piloting a ch aligned with his faith, every other design spirit was more than capable of rejecting and hindering ch pilots they did not like!
By baking these two rules into every LMC ch design, Ves did not need to be afraid his products would ever cause his own downfall!
Overall, designing the Sanctuary represented another mark of progress to Ves. The invention of spiritual constructs truly enabled him to control and fine-tune the spiritual characteristics of his chs to a much greater degree.
For the first ti in a very long ti, Ves finally felt he had regained a lot of control over his own products.
After treading the path of life for years, he finally corrected his course towards the middle by making so progress in the path of determinism.
This was true spiritual engineering!
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