Whatever Lady Romanda Devos did at the secret Terran research institution, she clearly ca away with a few odd ideas in mind.
After she got released from her contract, she imdiately set up a small design studio and ch boutique that was ant to showcase the benefits of her design philosophy.
This was not a completely unfamiliar career choice for first-class ch designers who aspired to beco entrepreneurs.
It was too difficult for them to gain any traction in the highly competitive first-class ch market. Terran Journeyn had it especially hard as the ch market was completely dominated by established market leaders that were always led by Master ch Designers.
Journeyn with enough confidence and ideas would start small companies and publish ch designs that would never see any practical use in reality, but would showcase their specializations and as well as potential.
Major ch companies were constantly on the hunt for new talents and lucrative investnts. A number of Terran ch companies obviously developed a slight degree of interest towards Lady Romanda's work, as they allowed her to contribute on so of the lesser and more niche product variations.
What Romanda brought to the table was not a first-class ch that struck its targets harder, nor was it capable of withstanding more attacks. Her products did not possess any remarkable endurance and did not co equipped with an advanced technological gadget that allowed them to take their enemies by surprise.
Instead, she focused on improving — or better phrased as reinventing — the cockpit of a ch.
Originally, ch designers envisioned the cockpit of a ch as the human control center of the machine.
It was an essential but rather undesirable addition to the ch fra. The reason for that was that the cockpit occupied precious space that could have been used to increase the hard performance of the machine in many different ways.
The cockpit space could have been devoted to fitting a larger and more capable power reactor.
The cockpit space could have been used to implent additional weapon systems to the ch.
The cockpit space could have been replaced by additional armor and structural components that vastly increased the robustness of the ch.
In short, there were many choices that ch designers would rather use up the capacity occupied by the cockpit.
They had no choice, though. A ch was defined by its ability to interface with a human ch pilot. Where else could the human in question go if not inside the upper torso, which was usually considered the safest part of a ch fra?
Any other choice was unworkable, or else it would have beco a lot more common!
In the early years of the Age of chs, a few adventurous ch designers tried various alternate configurations, but they usually ended up in disaster.
For example, one ch designer who placed the cockpit in the head saw many of her products getting targeted in the head just to take out the pilot and render the machine inoperate in an instant!
Even though the head was a relatively small component of a typical humanoid ch, that did not change the fact that it protruded out of the torso and looked awfully exposed!
It was impossible to wrap the head with too much armor, or else it would unbalance the machine and unjustifiably increase the cost of the product.
At most, the ch designer who ca up with this concept was only able to make certain adaptations such as shaping the head into an angled do or pyramid that did not look as obvious as a target. The thickened and angled layers of armor also helped with blocking and deflecting incoming attacks more easily.
Ultimately, the ch industry ca to a consensus that the only place this idea belonged was in the trash bin.
Another idea was to attach the cockpit as an external module that could be affixed to the upper or lower back of the ch.
This proposal worked great as long as the ch faced the enemy from the front and from the sides to an extent.
However, a lot of ch combat tended to be mobile and dynamic. chs presented their rear sections to enemies plenty of tis. As long as an enemy unit managed to get a clear shot at the back of this unusual ch, the cockpit and the pilot could easily be eliminated.
Light skirmishers in particular just loved to kill enemy soldiers and disable the corresponding chs at the sa ti by sneaking behind such a machine!
Another idea that gained traction for a ti was to completely control the chs by remote.
Different from turning a ch into a completely automated battle bot, the ch instead replaced the cockpit for more compact communication systems.
As long as a nearby mothership or base could establish a strong and secure connection with the cockpit-less ch, the latter could easily be controlled remotely with hardly any dip in performance!
Unfortunately, this idea crashed and burned as well as enemies that understood what they were facing simply amplified their jamming efforts.
All kinds of jamming, interference and ECM technologies quickly experienced rapid developnt for the sole purpose of giving people an easier way to defeat these remote-controlled chs!
Once these techs reached a scary degree of developnt, remote-controlled chs quickly turned into a failed experint!
In the end, the ch industry ca to a consensus that the current approach of installing a small and relatively moderately armored cockpit inside the chest cavity of a ch was the best all-round choice.
It was not perfect, but it protected the ch pilots from attacks coming in each direction pretty adequately.
The only vulnerability was to the rear, but that was because most humanoid chs did not really bother to layer their backs with too much armor.
This compromise solution hit the sweet spot and beca the established standard for the entire remaining duration of the Age of chs and beyond.
It beca so ingrained that the vast majority of ch designers never even questioned this design choice anymore!
Not even Ves bothered to question why the ch industry set the standard for cockpits this way.
While ch designers were allowed to vary the cockpits a bit by increasing their armor, adding extra thrusters or even applying a stealth system around the shell, the mont they took it a step too far, people would begin to ask incessant questions about the point of all of these changes!
That was exactly what happened to Lady Romanda Devos. The side branch mber of the Devos Ancient Clan enjoyed a good start and managed to earn quite a lot of recognition for excelling in her studies and working for two decades in a secret Terran research institution.
However, her star instantly dimd when she boldly presented her design philosophy to the public.
Of all of the tech that she could specialize in, why did the descendant of the Devos Ancient Clan choose to dedicate her craft to turning a normal ch cockpit into a weird oversized contraption that behaved like a starfighter when separated from the ch fra?
It was an absurd idea!
It was a solution that was looking for a problem!
Officially, the ch Trade Association designated her specialization as a Class IX design philosophy centered around Ultra-Large Enhanced Cockpit Systems.
This was a rather sophisticated description of an approach to ch design that broke several rules and contradicted nurous core principles of the ch industry!
The most egregious violation that Lady Romanda Devos committed with her works was the fact that she designed her work with failure in mind!
Before she thought about how her chs would fare if they attained success in the battlefield, she already began to add features designed to mitigate the damage in the event of a loss!
There was nothing fundantally wrong with this design approach. Beginning the design process by thinking what would happen if the machine broke down and the ch pilot was left to his own devices could lead to drastically higher survival rates for the user in question.
However, most of the ch community rejected this approach because they thought that Lady Romanda Devos was being overly defeatist whenever she designed her machines!
ch pilots loved to be winners, and they did not really spend that much thought on what would happen if their chs endured catastrophic damage that forced them to eject their cockpits.
They especially did not like to think what would happen if the enemy struck their machines so hard that their fragile cockpits got breached!
Whether these pilots were in denial or not, they would rather imagine themselves as the heroes of their own stories and make use of chs that better enabled their fantasies.
A ch designed by Romanda did the opposite! It tore down their unrealistic fantasies and brought them back to reality in a brutal fashion by reminding them how safe they would be if they piloted her work.
All of these factors and more caused Romanda and her work to gain a rather infamous reputation in the Terran ch industry and community.
Due to the huge amount of space occupied by the ultra-large cockpits that characterized much of her works, any first-class ch that incorporated such a massive module tended to perform significantly worse than other equivalent machines!
The conventional first-class multipurpose chs reserved more space for additional weapon modules, energy cells and all kinds of other useful parts and systems.
While their cockpits were admittedly not that capable of defending the life of the ch pilot once it got ejected into an open battlefield, the best way for ch pilots to make themselves vulnerable like this was to utilize the strong combat capabilities of their machines to win their fights outright!
As long as they defeated the enemy faster with the help of the superior performance of their first-class chs, there was no need to worry about the inadequacies related to their cockpits!
In contrast, the first-class chs designed by Lady Romanda perford worse on the onset due to the inclusion of her ultra-large cockpits. Though the Terran ch designer had taken steps to mitigate this performance reduction by sharing functions between her special cockpits and the rest of the ch, there was only so much she could do to avoid overlap between two fundantally different craft.
Perhaps the only strong point of her work was that her specialization indeed delivered on its promises. Her first-class chs offered an enhanced cockpit experience that allowed ch pilots to feel safe no matter the circumstances.
If their weaker and less impactful first-class chs eventually fell in battle, the ch pilots could gain a 'second life' on the battlefield by continuing to pilot their enhanced cockpits like ultralight fighter craft.
They could either choose to persist in battle in an attempt to finish off their weakened opponents, or they could turn their fighter craft around and blitz back to their base or mothership with unparalleled speed and maneuverability!
It was due to the excellent performance of her ultra-heavy cockpits that Lady Romanda was still able to earn a living despite her tarnished reputation among the Terrans.
She was even able to build up a small but dedicated clientele of ch pilots who could essentially be described as cowards!
These ch pilots did not possess a warrior's heart. They feared combat, but were pushed into it due to circumstances outside of their control.
These were the ideal custors for Lady Romanda as they were willing to pay quite a premium to pilot a decent first-class ch that attained the highest pilot survivability rates out of all of the other products on the market!
Perhaps these scaredy cats would never be able to beco greater than life and exceed their mortal limitations, but they didn't care. At least they were much more certain that they would live long enough to retire in comfort, unlike many of their other colleagues whose daredevil behavior often caused them to suffer mishaps over their careers!
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