The Mech Touch Chapter 6533 Cogs in a Machine

Ketis did not know whether she had made the right decision.

Working for the Cross Clan for a year or so may turn out to be a waste of ti.

Patriarch Reginald may have been overly harsh when he accused the ch designers under his employ to be worthless, but his words shouldn't be completely false.

One of the joys of working in the Larkinson Clan was that Ketis was surrounded by talented and competent clansn.

Even if the ch designers of the Design Departnt were not necessarily high in rank, they were still young and possessed an abundance of ambitious ideas and rich

imagination.

Spending lots of ti with ch designers who possessed a lot of optimism and enough competence to realize their dreams fostered a very positive and encouraging work environnt.

This was probably one of the secrets to the Design Departnt's success.

By deliberately refusing to hire older, more jaded and less imaginative ch designers, the Design Departnt avoided a situation where creativity and imagination beca stifled due to the rigid mindsets of the people who were more likely to hold the most. authority due to their seniority.

Of course, the lack of older and more experienced ch designers also ca with its own fair share of disadvantages.

The LMC's Design Departnt scored relatively poorly in terms of efficiency, volu of output and consistency. It was filled with ambitious and creative minds that did not tend to respond well to monotonous low-level work assignnts.

The Design Departnt therefore reflected the personalities and work approaches of the leaders in charge quite well. Ketis regarded it as an artisan workshop more than a manufacturing room.

From what little information Ketis managed to glean from Patriarch Reginald Cross, the Design Departnt of the Cross ch Corporation was set up like a factory.

Every ch designer had a specific role to fulfill. While they were granted just enough ti to study new knowledge, design their own chs and conduct their own research, their mandatory responsibilities forced them to operate precisely according to the demands of Master Benedict Cortez.

As a ch designer who realized a design philosophy based on the efficient use of energy, he was a man who by his very nature treated his subordinates as cogs in a machine.

Master Benedict had very little tolerance for deviations and tried too hard to force every subordinate to fit into the roles he had designated for them. Showing too much

initiative was discouraged as wasting ti on improvised and original solutions could result in significant delays to the project tiline.

It sounded like a nightmare work environnt that couldn't possibly work, but it was actually quite common in the ch industry.

This was an approach towards ch design that worked best on a larger scale. Thousands of ch designers could work alongside each other without any serious disruptions or delays because everyone remained in sync with each other.

A large design departnt would also offer a huge variety of jobs and responsibilities. Many different ch designers should be able to find role that was compatible with their own inclinations.

As for those that still didn't manage to fit?

They would just get fired.

The ch designers who worked in these large and highly organized workplaces tended to enjoy the stability they offered. Their work was not too stimulating, but there was a very low probability that they would fail to et the requirents.

This kind of Design Departnt offered the best possible support for a ch designer like Master Benedict!

He was the only ch design pillar of the Cross Clan, so he had to shoulder a huge amount of responsibilities by himself. In order to maximize his productivity and increase his output, he needed the help of a large machine filled with ch designers that acted completely according to his needs and nothing more.

This was how Master Benedict was able to juggle dozens of ch design projects and work on them so efficiently that he was able to complete them according to their tight and punishing schedules!

Master Benedict apparently structured his ch design projects in such a way that he only needed to rely on his superior capabilities to solve the most difficult problems in advance. That still left a lot of gaps, but he could delegate all of the remaining grunt work to his subordinates.

As long as Master Benedict was skilled enough to make this work, he had built a pretty good setup for himself.

Unfortunately, this design work model ca with a very big downside. It was hardly the best way to help younger ch designers exercise their creativity and broaden their problem-solving skills.

The situation was entirely different in the LMC's Design Departnt as Ves and Gloriana were much more interested in developing the comprehensive design skills of the talents they carefully selected and recruited into their clan.

It was a waste of ti, money, resources and potential if the talented young ch designers failed to develop any useful design applications!

The less strict and more informal work structure within the Larkinson Clan easily allowed assistant and contributing ch designers to take on a variety of highly stimulating assignnts.

Even if the difficulty and importance of the grunt work was not all that educational, exposing assistants to a larger variety of problems still allowed them to exercise their design skills in a more comprehensive manner.

It was a lot harder for ch designers to keep up with their work schedule, though. There was a higher demand on competence and they always needed to be ready to take on brand new challenges. Their work was never stable enough for them to be able to do the sa work on repeat for months or years.

Ultimately, the two different workplaces tended to propagate very different kinds of ch designers.

Those who did well in climbing up the LMC's Design Departnt tended to be less efficient but more creative. Ketis felt she was a good example of that as she could not stomach the idea of working as a ch designer in the Cross Clan.

That did not an that the CMC's Design Departnt was completely unsuited to develop talents. Those who did well in this kind of workplace were essentially model workers that excelled at getting the most out of the least amount of resources. They were good at producing consistent work and slowly gained the ability to improve technological implentations

Ketis felt very fortunate to have worked in such a stimulating work environnt.

She felt she needed to get a better insight on how the Cross Clan developed its chs, preferably without talking to Master Benedict first.

Ketis and him were old acquaintances who went back a long way, back when Master Benedict was known as the notorious Skull Architect.

Mayra used to be an apprentice of the Skull Architect.

Since Ketis learned ch design from Mayra, that turned Ketis into sothing of a

'grand-disciple' of Master Benedict Cortez.

Not that it mattered all that much. Everything happened a long ti ago in a galaxy that

had beco unreachable.

Ketis had very little in common with Master Benedict, and their approach towards ch design diverged considerably.

However, was precisely because they were so different from each other that an

exchange beca worthwhile.

Ketis would definitely benefit more from an exchange of knowledge than Master Benedict, but perhaps there were other ways for her to make up the difference.

Patriarch Reginald promised to give her a mandate to 'rectify' the CMC's Design Departnt. Improving it would not only make the ace pilot happy, but should hopefully

give Master Benedict more useful helpers to share his growing burdens.

In order to do that, she wanted to question a handful of Crossers in order to get a better

idea on how they obtained their chs.

The swordmaster first decided to approach Saint Linda Cross.

Ketis felt it was a good idea to develop a closer relationship with one of the few ace

pilots that would stay behind the expeditionary fleet.

The Swordmaster decisively shuttled over to the Hemmington Cross and entered a hangar bay where she had an opportunity to admire the Amphis Extremis up close.

"Beautiful."

The Amphis Extremis was a quasi-first-class ace offensive space knight that was clearly based on the original Amphis that Linda Cross piloted as an expert ch. Surprisingly enough, the Amphis Extremis turned out to be a brand new construction.

Ketis was slightly taken aback by this discovery, as she assud that the Crossers would do the sa as the Larkinsons and upgrade an existing expert ch into an ace ch. She soon figured out why the Cross Clan refused to reuse the original Amphis. Different from the Larkinson Clan which tended to value chs as they grew older and more powerful as they aged, the Cross Clan tended to treat its chs as machines that inevitably experienced wear and tear and deteriorated in performance unless special asures were taken.

It was logical for the Cross Clan to discard an expert ch that had beco outdated and depreciated too much in value and develop a new ace ch from scratch. There were huge differences between expert chs and ace chs. Unless the latter was expressly designed to accommodate future upgrades, it was not very cost-effective to transform expert chs into ace chs.

Technology, skills, experience, ch doctrines, material availability, enemy types and more had all changed drastically over the years.

This was why Master Benedict Cortez clearly chose to start from scratch and design a

superior ace ch without the need to preserve any of the outdated baggage that were several decades old.

This was why the Amphis Extremis offered superior performance in almost every aspect aside from the ones that could only be gained from age.

It was a pity that the original Amphis never had an opportunity to beco a living ch, and that the new Amphis Extremis hadn't gained this trait either.

The Cross Clan clearly did not want to depend too much on Ves Larkinson and his

design philosophy.

Their decision was not necessarily wrong. There was still value in non-living chs.

Their growth potential was lower, but there was not much need to be fussy about their production or repairs.

The Cross Clan could more easily switch to using new chs depending on what the situation demanded from its troops.

The older chs could be sent to the recyclers so that their materials could be used to produce more useful products.

This was the conventional approach to handling chs.

Ketis actually felt repulsed by this treatnt, even though these lifeless chs did not. have feelings to care about how callously they were being handled.

This was an indication that she had spent too much ti in the Larkinson Clan, where

everyone treated chs as cherished brothers and sisters!

How the Larkinsons treated their chs was the exception rather than the rule!

Ketis had always known about this on an intellectual level, but it was now that she truly understood what this ant!

She began to smile. To be confronted by a different approach towards managing chs

already expanded her horizons.

She grew excited. She looked forward to what other novelties and culture shocks the Cross Clan would introduce to her. The abundance of lifeless chs parked in the hangar bay continued to break apart the assumptions that shackled her cognition and

caused her to stagnate in her research. "Swordmaster Ketis." The female ace pilot greeted as she left her cockpit and floated

down to the deck. "Welco to the Hemmington Cross. What do you think of my Amphis Extremis."

"It is a fine work of technological essence" Ketis admitted. "I can see how much effort Master Benedict had put into its design. Its shape and parts all scream brutal efficiency to . Every limb should move smoothly and every force exertion should be able to produce a precise amount of force. Perhaps these design choices have made the physical fra a little less tolerant towards chanical damage than what I expect from a space knight, but the powerful SA-DIX Shield Generator should prevent that from becoming an easily exploitable weakness."