There were a lot of possible explanations why Ves could work faster and more effectively than his fellow competitors.
The most obvious factor that enabled him to work so effectively was that he had augnted himself far beyond the level of a second-class Journeyman!
The sublimation that transford his entire being and elevated all of his cognitive capabilities improved his productivity to the point where his performance started to match that of a first-class ch designer!
"What a rich bastard. Did he have to rub his superiority in everyone's faces? Why can't he move to an Upper Zone and take on ch designers of his own size? There is no need for him to show off in front of plebs like ourselves."
"You're just being jealous. Didn't you read his profile? He used to be a third-rater! For a ch designer from a third-rate state to rise to this point in less than two decades is nothing less than a miracle. Whether he has received help or not, you have to see that no other third-class ch designer is able to make so much use out of the opportunities that he has won. He's the definition of a self-made ch designer."
"I wonder how many chers he has seduced to obtain so many MTA rits to augnt himself to this point. I bet he is called the Devil Tongue for more reasons than the obvious…"
A lot of people had the mistaken impression that Ves had stuffed his body with advanced first-class augntations.
He wouldn't bla them if he heard their remarks. It was his remarkably high productivity that his wife wanted to catch up to him by acquiring her coveted 120 million MTA credits cranial implant!
Although 120 million MTA rits did not sound like an impossible figure to him anymore, in practice it was absolutely remarkable for any human to have that much MTA rits to spare!
Let alone second-raters, many first-raters never had the capability to earn so much in their lifetis. They would have to settle with lesser cranial implants that weren't able to amplify their cognitive functions to the sa degree.
It was rather ironic. Ves' cranial implant was originally an outdated CFA bioimplant that mainly granted him an insanely high amount of mory space.
Other than being able to dump a lot of digital junk inside its astonishing mory banks, it did not actually provide him with a lot of design-oriented conveniences during his work sessions.
Much of that changed during his recent sublimation. During the ti he got hit with lots of inexplicable lightning strikes, his entire brain along with the integrated Archides Rubal bioimplant transford in a direction deliberately established by Ves.
The Archides Rubal had evolved into a radically different product. It still retained its huge capacity to store a lot of data, but also received considerable enhancents to its processing power and other useful functions.
On top of that, his brain as a whole also transcended to a higher level, allowing him to perform ntal calculations and make inferences far beyond the level of a baseline human.
Out of all of the ch designers taking part in this tournant, Ves was convinced that he was the furthest removed from normal humanity!
He normally had mixed feelings about distancing himself from humanity, but at this mont he fully embraced his transhuman advantages.
After going through much of the database of parts and materials, he had perford rapid comparisons and cost-benefit analyses before making the most optimal choices that best matched his vision.
There was nothing particularly special about most of the components and ch systems that he selected for his work. The database did not include anything too remarkable or exotic in isolation. This was likely an attempt to force the participating Journeyn to invest their ti in building up their own custom solutions that could grant their competition chs unique advantages that could not be duplicated by their rivals.
So ch designers invested their precious design ti into formulating better alloy formulas for the armor systems of their ch designs.
Other ch designers sought to increase the mobility of their works by enhancing their legs or ch engine.
Ves spent much of his ti on selecting multiple different weapon systems and upgrading them with the help of his considerable expertise.
He did not start from scratch for the most part. There was nothing wrong with taking an existing weapon system and altering their design in order to quickly squeeze out extra power.
The greater challenge was to integrate them into the fra of the hybrid ch as seamlessly as possible. That was absolutely not a simple task.
He started with the easiest weapon module, which was the shoulder-mounted missile launchers.
The extensive rulebook of the tournant heavily restricted the use of missiles and other explosive weapons.
This made sense as the tournant organizers did not want the matches to devolve into a race of which side was able to saturate the enemy positions with as many explosive missiles as possible!
A lot more competition chs would look like missile launchers on legs if not for this rule!
Ves still went through with adding a pair of small and relatively compact missile launchers because he had no intention of filling them up with explosive munitions.
Instead, he borrowed a page out of so of his previous works and designed these missile launchers to carry a number of utility warheads.
The database offered a selection of EMP missiles, smoke missiles, sensor-boosting missiles and more.
They weren't as useful as they sounded. Ves scrunched his face as he read through the specifications of these utility missiles. Their performance was incredibly weak and could only mildly inconvenience opposing chs at best.
"Hm. I'm not surprised."
The tournant organizers did not want the entire arena to beco filled with blinding smoke or for chs to turn into crippled machines all of the ti.
If anyone wanted to make effective use of these utility missiles, they had to put in the work to upgrade their ager capabilities.
Ves chose to do so. He had worked on chs with comparable capabilities before. The Valkyrie Redeer and his more recent Buzzy Bee both possessed functions that could blind the sensors or disrupt the electrical systems of opposing machines.
He allocated much of his formidable design capabilities into altering the key working chanisms of these utility missiles.
There was no need for him to reinvent the entire wheel. The missiles themselves were fairly basic but serviceable. He just needed to modify the warheads themselves.
For example, he improved the effectiveness of the EMP missiles by reducing its range, increasing its energy density and upgrade horribly basic and outdated components with more modern advancents.
He did the sa for the smoke missiles. He increased the volu of particles the missile could carry while also using the materials at his disposal to formulate an entirely new particle formula that was substantially more effective at its job.
It took a lot of specialized knowledge in ECM systems and materials science in order to be able accomplish the latter. Ves also had to rely heavily on his enhanced cognitive abilities and his intuition in order to solve these problems as quickly as possible.
On top of everything else, he couldn't forget about modifying and upgrading the sensor systems of both the hybrid ch and the light skirmisher!
It would be embarrassing if his own machines would get blinded by their own disruptive asures!
Ves wasn't entirely pleased with his solutions. He knew extrely well that he could have improved the effectiveness of the utility missiles and the sensor system by 20 if not 40 percent if he spent a lot more ti on exploring alternative solutions and optimizing their implentations.
Unfortunately, Ves had chosen to add a lot more systems to his hybrid ch, so he reluctantly moved on to other modules.
The next weapon system he decided to work upon was the wrist-mounted flathrowers.
He wanted his hybrid ch to possess the fighting power of a striker ch, as he expected a lot of enemies to take the speed route like his own team.
Flathrowers were excellent choices because they not only reduced the maneuvering space of light chs, but also dealt fantastic damage to internal components if they could get past the exterior armor layers.
Normally, this was difficult to achieve because the armor systems of modern chs were great at insulating heat and energy. It took a lot of ti for flas to lt through solid heat-resistant armor and expose the internal components that were much more susceptible to extrely hot flas.
The introduction of an obvious frontal weak point had changed the equation!
As long as the flas were able to breach the relatively flimsy material that covered this gap, they could deal all manner of ruinous damage to circuitry, power lines and delicate chanical subcomponents!
The damage potential of flas towards internal components exceeded that of a kinetic projectile or a laser beam in that sense!
The flathrowers that Ves decided to add to the wrists of his hybrid ch were relatively weak in order to save on capacity.
In his opinion, the flathrowers should solely be used to hinder light chs and finish off vulnerable machines by targeting their frontal weak points.
There was no need to add large propellant tanks to the hybrid ch so that it could light the entire arena on fire.
Of course, Ves made a few focused adjustnts to the flathrowers. He added a setting that concentrated its output so that it could lt through light armor plating as long as the narrow jet of fire struck its mark.
He also changed the propellant formula to increase its density and make it more potent. He had to reinforce the components of the flathrower in order to prevent them from lting, but he did not need to make too many changes as the hybrid ch wouldn't be able to spray fires for long.
While he would have liked to increase the longevity of the flathrowers, he could not do so without compromising the mobility of his hybrid ch.
Speed remained a priority for his hybrid ch. He wanted it to catch up to the light skirmisher as best as possible so that the two competition chs could run circles around most of their adversaries.
Once he completed the missile launchers, he moved on to adding two integrated luminar crystal guns into the upper torso of the hybrid ch.
A hybrid ch could not call itself a hybrid ch if it did not feature integrated weapons into its massive torso!
While the addition of these integrated weapons added extra weak points to the hybrid ch, Ves believed that the tradeoff was worth it. The hybrid ch already possessed a huge gap in its frontal defenses, so the addition of two more didn't seem to alter the fundantal equation.
His hybrid ch just had to utilize its superior offensive capabilities to take the initiative and finish off its opponents before the enemy could do the sa!
Unlike the other modules that he had added to his ch design, Ves had to design the compact integrated luminar crystal hardpoints from scratch.
This was one of the instances where Ves truly showed what he was capable of! While he wasn't able to design a version of his latest generation of luminar crystal weapons, he was still able to co up with a simplified variant in record ti.
The dumbed down version of luminar crystals weren't all that powerful, but any additional offense helped a lot in a fight. They were remarkably energy efficient and took up less space than conventional energy weapon systems.
More importantly, Ves was able to fabricate the simplified luminar crystals with the native capabilities of the superfab without relying on any confidential or proprietary technologies, so he wouldn't inadvertently break his deal with the MTA either.
"It will have to do." He sighed as he completed his integrated energy weapon designs in less ti than anyone expected!
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