New theories and ideas flowed into his mind. Ves faced a very challenging problem, and it took the utmost of his creativity and problem-solving skills to derive a viable solution.
His goal sounded simple. He wanted to increase the individual expression of his chs.
Right now, it took either years of constant use or complete dedication for any ch pilot to mold a specific ch in a unique direction.
Individuality in chs was rather subtle in the first place. Unless soone could match Jannzi's extre devotion, the difference it could make in battle was rather marginal.
His ambition didn't really sound that impressive to be honest. Certainly, making a ch more responsive to the ch pilot sounded like a noble goal. However, a competing ch with twenty percent higher firepower could easily beat the inferior ch despite its excellent compatibility with its ch pilot!
The advantage of a ch that maximized performance was that they delivered a predictable level of performance to every ch pilot. In other words, a well-maintained standard ch wouldn't exhibit remarkably better or remarkably worse performance.
This was less so with his own products. Living chs that possessed the capacity to love or hate their own ch pilots could influence its effective performance by adjusting their fit to their ch pilots.
In other words, by unlocking the capacity for chs to judge their own ch pilots, Ves introduced a new variable that his custors needed to take into account.
This was not always good. As soone who presided over a thousand chs himself, he knew that leaders such as him wanted his chs to be as uniform as possible.
At this scale, chs that perford unexpectedly worse or better threw off his calculations.
Certainly, if a ch perford better than usual, Ves would welco this outco. However, the nature of his design philosophy ant that his chs could accept as well as reject their ch pilots.
If the latter occurred, then that was quite an unpleasant surprise!
As long as the ch buyer bought the most suitable LMC ch for a ch pilot, then the chances of rejection should be low. However, would every ch buyer be as attentive? What if funding and opportunity constraints prevented a buyer to perform proper matching between chs and ch pilots?
"There is also the imprinting issue."
What happened when chs that molded themselves to specific ch pilots received different users?
Would the individuality of a ch prompt it to reject ch pilots they weren't accustod to accommodating?
That would be quite bad! A ch that had developed an individual character that effectively perford twenty or thirty percent worse was a disaster in an actual battle!
The desirability, practicality and longevity of his products would definitely drop if this beca a reality!
However, chs didn't necessarily have to develop in this fashion. What if he designed the individuality of chs with successive users in mind from the very start?
As long as he configured the spiritual foundation of his chs correctly, then they ought to be able to adjust to the next user.
"Perhaps this can even be touted as a benefit rather than a burden!"
The most fitting word that encapsulated this concept was 'legacy'.
Ves wasn't entirely unfamiliar with this concept. Inspired by natural spiritual entities such as Qilanxo, he designed all of his spiritual products with legacy in mind.
In fact, it was even a core feature for his two ancestral spirits! Both the Golden Cat and the Superior Mother were explicitly designed to co into greater power as they grew older. The wisdom and strength they derived from generations of Larkinsons and Hexers constantly allowed them to develop across generations.
Goldie would likely beco a completely different spiritual entity a century from now! At that ti, she might rival or exceed Qilanxo's current level of strength!
If his chs developed in a similar fashion, then as they grew older, they would actually be able accrue value over ti!
This was different from many other consur chs. As technology advanced and tactics evolved, older chs beca increasingly more irrelevant. Their technological constraints caused their performance to lag more and more in relation to more modern chs.
"What if this is not the case anymore? What if my chs are able to develop a unique quality over ti? What if this quality is so valuable and unable to be replicated in any other way that plenty of people would love to use them on an ongoing basis?"
Such a ch would transcend the definition of commodity! A living, growing ch like this would cease to beco interchangeable with comparable chs.
Even if two living chs were derived from the sa design, fabricated from the sa manufacturing complex and worked on by the sa crew in the sa week, they could beco completely different beasts after several years of active use on the battlefield!
His passion for this new category of chs flared up as his imagination went wild with this idea. His design seed loved the concept of legacy chs.
"It's not enough to design living chs. I have to make them desirable to their users in order to ensure they are properly cared for. Older chs shouldn't be discarded like trash!"
Ves fully embraced this new concept! If possible, he wanted to turn this into one of the main characteristics of most of his ch designs from this point onwards.
Aside from chs which demanded a high degree of uniformity or temporary chs such as those designed for single duels, adding the possibility for chs to grow richer in character would definitely bring him closer to bringing his ambition into fruition!
The whole point about designing living chs was to make them more valued. Certainly, he hadn't forgotten that they were ant to be used in battle. They would always remain at least sowhat expendable.
That did not an that his chs should be treated as trash. Just like how he treated his own clansn, those who were alive needed to be nurtured and properly taken care of. How else would he be able to send them off to fight a difficult opponent when it truly mattered?
Though there was an inherent contradiction between these two desires, but Ves was used to holding conflicting thoughts. Ves did not seek an absolute with regards to his products. It was fine if their owners valued them as much as their children, but he wouldn't shed a tear if their owners subsequently lost a bunch of LMC chs in a difficult battle.
Every ch was built for combat. The nature of combat always entailed the prospect of suffering undesirable losses. Any ch designer who couldn't bear the thought of their products suffering ignoble ends weren't suitable for the profession!
His hands twitched. He ached to put his ideas in reality.
Now that Task Force Predator had left Ulimo Citadel and was slowly making its way out of the periphery of the Nyxian Gap, there should be plenty of ti for him to develop a ans to turn this fantastic concept into reality.
He returned to one of his earlier ideas. To develop the character of a ch, it needed to grow. To do so, the ch needed to be fed with a sufficient amount of spiritual nutrients.
A newly-produced LMC ch and an ordinary ch pilot did not possess much spiritual strength. Neither of the two were able to supply the spirituality needed to develop the character of the ch.
At best, an ordinary ch pilot was just able to keep his ch alive on a starvation diet!
Therefore, the only chance to feed the ch with the spiritual energy required to grow at a rate comparable to the evolution of the Shield of Samar was to tap another source.
This was where his design spirits ca in. Most of them possessed too much spiritual energy and weren't able to make effective use of their excess. Instead of throwing their junk away, why not channel it to the hungry little chs they watched over? One spirit's trash was another ch's treasure!
Ves called up the Chiron design on his desk terminal and studied it for a ti.
As a minor design project, his assistants contributed the most to the training ch design. Due to its technical complexity, Gloriana still made sure to solve every difficult problem or give the assistants enough direction for them to co up with solutions themselves.
The entire ch design had already reached a fairly advanced stage. It only needed a month of refinent before it reached the prototype testing phase.
"The entire ch is infused with the essence of adaptability and developnt." He remarked as he studied the ch from a spiritual angle.
Though much of it was due to his deliberate manipulation, the efforts of Gloriana and the design teams assigned to develop the Chiron all added up as well. Each of them constantly thought about increasing the Chiron's fit to the young Larkinson ch cadets who were destined to pilot it in the future.
As he studied the Chiron design further, he suddenly realized a big issue.
Its current designated design spirit was the Golden Cat.
Since the Chiron was exclusive to the Larkinsons, this was a fitting choice. Ves hoped that every young ch cadet who piloted the Chiron would grow up into a skilled ch pilot that completely dedicated his or her life to the Larkinson Clan!
It helped that the Larkinsons explicitly specialized in piloting chs. Goldie may not be able to match the likes of the Solemn Guardian in terms of quantity of bonds, but every ch pilot connected to her was much more skilled than average.
Over ti, the ch pilots connected to Goldie should also develop a distinctive piloting style unique to the Larkinson Clan.
All of this ant that the Chiron under Goldie taught ch cadets how to pilot a ch the Larkinson way instead of the standard way.
The problem that Ves faced at the mont was that Goldie hadn't reached saturation yet. She was only connected to a modest amount of people compared to his other design spirits. She also had plenty of room to grow. Taking away her spiritual energy at this stage would only slow down her growth.
"Hmm, is that true, though?"
Ves didn't necessarily assu that compelling Goldie to expend her energy would affect her growth. It might be that such an exertion might 'exercise' her instead.
Right now, he lacked too much information. The only way to see what would happen was to implent it in reality, and to do that he needed to conduct so tests with so expendable ch pilots.
Knowing that ti was of the essence, Ves began to draw up a quick experint in his mind to test his ideas.
"I should use an existing ch instead of an incomplete one." He muttered.
The Chiron may have developed to an advanced stage, but it was far from ready to be fielded, especially outside of lab conditions.
He needed to perform his experints on a different ch. It should be a mature design and one that wasn't too strong.
"The Desolate Soldier fits."
His fleet had plenty of them lying around. Even if they were fairly weak, their glows were still useful in motivating the ch forces that didn't possess the Bright Warrior. The Living Sentinels were especially fans of the classic.
Ves ordered the Living Sentinels to transfer a spare Desolate Soldier ch to the Scarlet Rose's hangar bay.
He wasn't ready to implent his experints on the entire ch design. That would have been reckless to the extre.
"I only need to try it out on a single ch first, just to see if my direction is viable."
His current goal was to try and find a way to transform a cheap and fairly disposable Desolate Soldier ch into sothing greater!
As long as he could do it with a cheap ch, he could do it with a more expensive ch.
Ves raised his fist. "In the future, all of my chs will turn into legacy chs!"
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