Turning the Valkyrie Redeer into the second coming of the Lady Death’s Heel was impractical.
It may have worked in the simplified setting of virtual reality, but modern chs were considerably hardier.
It took quite so effort to pierce through the armor of second-class chs. When Ves perford so quick calculations and simulations with his implant, he realized that a dive attack with a weaponized pair of legs would more likely crumple the Valkyrie Redeer than its target!
This was because the Valkyrie Redeer was too light!
Ves would need to reengineer the ch’s entire fra to withstand the imnse forces that ca from underneath. While he estimated it would be possible to do so, it would co at the cost of almost every other advantage of the ch.
He resolutely shelved this idea aside. From a practical standpoint, such a ch was too specialized and monotonous for his liking. As a ch designed to fight as an independent flanking elent, the machine needed to possess at least so versatility in order to respond to various threats.
Even if the current configuration did not give his marauder ch a lot of pronounced advantages, its current toolkit at least boosted its survival rate, which was very important for independent chs.
Speaking of survival, one of the most precarious monts the Valkyrie Redeer could end up in was when it had just completed a charging dive attack. Once it stopped on the ground, it would take at least a few seconds for the marauder ch to leap back into the air!
He turned to Gloriana’s physical projection. "I think it’s best to add a disengagent tool to the ch. You know as well as I do that our ch is at its most vulnerable when it is stationary, and that happens to be the mont when it has just ramd its spear through a target or the ground."
His partner gazed towards the incomplete design schematic. "We’ve used up all of the capacity of the ch. If we add an extra module, its mass and power draw will increase to an unacceptable degree."
"It’s a tool of last resort. Against weaker targets, the Valkyrie Redeer shouldn’t have to make use of such an ability. I only want to provide our ch with so additional help in case it has landed in hot water."
As a ch designer, Ves needed to know his audience. Though he couldn’t claim to know Hexer ch pilots in depth, he perford enough study and made enough observations to know that female Hexer ch pilots tended to be aggressive by nature.
Their upbringing, training and combat doctrine all caused them to grow overconfident. Certainly, the won would probably learn to respect the Fridayman properly once the Komodo War dragged on, but until then Ves expected many of these female tyrants to die ignoble deaths on the battlefield!
Ves did not believe he could single-handedly stop this foolhardiness. He rely wanted to avoid bla when the Valkyrie Redeer finally began to fielded. He was sure that the Hex Army would assign so of its most hot-headed female Hexers to pilot this ch. If those idiotic won began to drive themselves to their deaths in droves, it would definitely lead to a strong degree of pushback towards his involvent in the Komodo War!
After a bit of persuasion, Gloriana ca around to the idea. She added so caveats, however.
"Let’s limit our selection to a smaller auxiliary module. I don’t want to ruin the sweet spot that we have already managed to settle upon."
Finding a good balance between offense, defense and mobility was crucial to the Valkyrie Redeer. Adding so utility to the mix would disrupt this beneficial balance.
Ves did not look worried. "We don’t need a module that needs to be active every ti, so it doesn’t have to be too big. What we do need is sothing that is potent in the few tis it’s activated. This is a lifesaving tool that needs to work in the most dangerous monts."
"We’ll have to find sothing that is based on cartridges. The endurance and energy efficiency of our ch is not that great and the value of our ch will drop considerably if its effective deploynt ti is lowered even further."
Independent flanking chs were designed to roam in the sides and outskirts of an active warzone. They needed to remain in the field for at least several hours to half a day in order to be worthwhile.
Ves and Gloriana proceeded to search through the Hex Army’s internal ch catalog. Though they did not have access to the full range of exclusive Hexer components, the list of auxiliary components provided them with sufficient options.
The pair eventually settled on the Starburst S*tc 343x-z. Odd model na aside, the Starburst was a disengagent module that worked similar to a flashbang and a smoke bomb.
Upon activating it, the Starburst released a strong but short-ranged ECM pulse around the ch. At the sa ti, it also released a burst of short-duration interference particles.
Due to its small size and capacity, the Starburst was only effective for an instant, and its disruptive effects only worked at short range. It was only effective on land and would not do much in aerial clashes.
This was sufficient. What the Valkyrie Redeer feared the most was getting struck by a strong blow shortly after landing.
Adding the Starburst module to the Valkyrie Redeer resulted in few issues. Its small size and limited capabilities did not fundantally alter the current ch design’s sweet spot.
Sadly, the new auxiliary feature ca with a very restrictive limitation. It could only hold three cartridges. Once the Valkyrie Redeer activated the Starburst module three tis, it could only replenish this function by going back for resupply.
"Three tis is enough." Ves affird.
If the Valkyrie Redeer had to activate the Starburst three tis, its energy reserves should have probably dipped considerably. Without sufficient energy, the ch wouldn’t be able to fly much longer.
There was no cooldown to the Starburst module either. If the Valkyrie Redeer just needed to obtain so extra assurances, it could just activate this function once.
If the marauder ch happened to land straight into a prepared ambush or sothing, then the ch pilot could always expend all three cartridges at once, thereby producing an incredibly bright and confusing spectacle!
There was another downside to the Starburst module, though. Since much of its effectiveness depended on consumable cartridges, their cost was considerable. Each activation of the Starburst module consud a considerable amount of hex credits, though the exact cost varied depending on where it was produced.
Supplying them to the front was another issue. Ves wasn’t sure how widespread the Starburst module was being used in other Hexer ch models, but he didn’t believe it was ubiquitous.
"You don’t have to worry about this problem." Gloriana reassured him. "As long as the battle effectiveness of our ch design is good enough, the Hex Army will definitely invest enough logistical capacity."
If the Blessed Squire was any indication, the Hexers might embrace the Valkyrie Redeer with just as much enthusiasm. From what Ves had learned of Hexers, they were similar to the Ylvainans in their reverence for design spirits that affird their beliefs.
Whether the Hexers were secular or religious, they all revered the Superior Mother as a symbol and an ideal.
The particularly strong reaction among the soldiers of the Wrathful Doves towards the Blessed Squire proved that the Superior Mother strongly resonated with them. The nature of design spirits ant that Ves would always be able to achieve more results with people who held distinct values! Religion was one of the easiest ways for him to find common ground with a specific target audience!
Therefore, even if the Valkyrie Redeer design did not imdiately stand out performance-wise, Ves still believed the Hexers would still embrace the distinctive ch design.
With all of the design choices they made, the direction of their ch design was pretty much set. From a technical perspective, the remainder of the design process did not require any further pivotal decisions. Ves and Gloriana could pretty work on it on autopilot as they only needed to solve the smaller, more imdiate problems.
At this stage of the design project, the Valkyrie Redeer acquired enough of a spiritual foundation for Ves to mold so spiritual constructs.
He grinned. The experints he perford on his test subjects vastly expanded his understanding of spirituality and spiritual constructs. He gained a lot of clarity on how spiritual energy behaved and he discovered many useful interactions that produced specific effects.
Even though the spiritual foundation of a ch design was different from the spirituality of a living human, they were based on the sa building blocks.
Plenty of ti had passed since the start of the Valkyrie Redeer Project for Ves to co up with so good ideas on how to develop its triggered abilities.
Though Ves wanted to discuss them with Gloriana, he was very reluctant to do so through the Darkbreak module. He would definitely reveal too many secrets to Master Willix and the MTA if he began to ntion anything about spiritual engineering!
Fortunately, Gloriana understood him quite well. He only had to give her a slightly aningful look for her to respond with a trusting smile.
They did not need to exchange any words.
With Gloriana concentrating on integrating and perfecting the technical elents of the ch design, Ves proceeded to manipulate the Valkyrie Redeer’s spiritual foundation with an open mind.
All of this was still new to him. What troubled him most was that there wasn’t a convenient way to test his implentations until the prototype phase. The mathematical models that supported the virtual simulations were only able to calculate defined variables.
Against sothing that was as obscure and unknown as triggered abilities, not even Ves could co up with an accurate mathematical model! He still hadn’t developed a sufficient theoretical foundation of spirituality!
Even so, it was not as if he had been doing anything different in his previous designs. He usually possessed enough confidence that his spiritual implentations would work out as expected.
It was just that the stakes were very high and the uncertainty was greater than usual. He could not afford to botch his additions. They played such a key role to the battle performance of the Valkyrie Redeer that their absence would instantly cause the ch to lose 10 to 20 percent of its value!
As Ves initially envisioned, he added the Marked For Death ability first. The implentation of it was fairly simple. Instead of radiating the ch’s glow around it like a sphere, the ability sought to concentrate this output and turn a blazing sun into a concentrated laser!
He hoped to increase the intensity and range of the Valkyrie Redeer’s death-oriented glow in this fashion.
To form this triggered ability, Ves created a ticulous spiritual construct that looked like a strong and straight spear. He molded its surface and proportions in order to create a specific impression of a thrown spear that would spell death to anyone who had been struck with its tip!
His mind went a little fuzzy during this spiritual design session. He relied on intuition, feeling, his shallow understanding of spirituality and plain old trial and error to achieve the outco he wanted.
When Ves believed the spiritual construct ca into form, he took a step back and evaluated the death spear.
It radiated supremacy, control and death. The spiritual spear actually contained three spiritual attributes instead of one. This was because it did not consist of one spiritual construct but actually three of them put together!
This was another innovation he ca up with during his previous experints. While it was all well and good to develop spiritual constructs that embodied a single spiritual attribute, what if he wanted to develop sothing more complex? What if he wanted to make use of several spiritual attributes?
The solution seed obvious. He could just form several spiritual constructs and assemble them together into a compound construct!
The result this ti was a speartip that represented death, a shaft that contained supremacy and a grip that embodied control!
With three of them combined, Ves believed he nailed the first triggered ability of the Valkyrie Redeer!
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