While Ves happily inspected the latest batch of gems produced by Lucky, all the way out in the Milky Way, a certain Cyborg Cat just concluded her latest design session. Veronica let out a tired breath as she sat back on the floating pillow that served as her seat. The biochanical feline incarnation had been working almost continuously on a single ch design project ever since the Evolution Witch unveiled the Oblivion Gates.
The Oblivion Empress personally commanded her daughter to design the first
Carmine ch for a massive human society that was frankly not ready to adopt it on a larger scale.
It was too bad that the Oblivion Gate Consortium had no intentions of prepping the masses for the imnse disruption that would ensue after the mass proliferation of chs that could be piloted by norms.
There were tis where Veronica felt bad about becoming complicit to the outbreak of war and conflict on a scale that original humanity had never witnessed since the start of the Age of chs.
Her creation may very well serve as the first inciting factor that could ultimately lead to the downfall of the Big Two!
The Age of chs may finally co to an end in the Milky Way Galaxy!
Could Veronica bear the responsibility for contributing to these man-made calamities?
She didn't know.
Her mother gave her no choice but to work, so she did her best to set aside her misgivings and do her job as a ch designer.
One of the main factors that made the days and weeks so much more bearable was the company of an old friend from the Survivalist Faction.
Master Moira Willix served as a true heavyweight in the Rule Breaker Project.
While Veronica contributed her unique Carmine System, Master Willix practically excelled in taking care of everything else.
She made it possible for Veronica to tackle the high-level challenge of designing a series of modular ch platforms for every tech level that could also be localized to every region of human-occupied space.
That last part was especially tricky to do for a relatively young and inexperienced ch designer like Veronica.
Unlike red humanity which only occupied a single corner of a dwarf galaxy, original humanity had expanded its reach across half of a main galaxy.
This ant that it was not that simple to reproduce a single ch design in every region of human space!
The quantity and type of resources available in the Komodo Star Sector was much different than any of the star sectors in the galactic center!
In order to make a ch design work across almost every region of the galaxy, high-ranking ch designers developed a special approach to make it possible.
"It is called design by template." Master Willix explained to Veronica at the start of the Rule Breaker Project. "Have you heard of it before?"
"No." The silvery cat responded. "I never needed to resort to such ans in the Red Ocean."
"I am not surprised. It is an advanced thod that is beyond your scope normally. Design by template is an interdiate design process that introduces additional complexity, delays and cost. There is more room for error, and it is a nightmare to maintain consistency of a product line throughout the entire ch market. The only groups that can earn a profit while designing by template are the major trans-galactic corporations. They have the funding, reach, manpower, scale and infrastructure to develop detailed ch templates and use them to design localized ch designs that perform very similar to each other despite their diverging material compositions." Master Moira Willix gave Veronica an example of a ch template by presenting the younger ch designer with one of her older works.
A projection appeared that showed a ch design... or at least it looked like one on the surface.
Veronica's artificial eyes glowed brighter as she beca fascinated by how the template differed from a ch design.
The two possessed a lot of similarities. They consisted of a very detailed set of instructions on how to reproduce a ch.
The divergence ca in the level of detail and specificity.
A ch design might demand that the head of a ch must be made out of Unending alloy.
A ch template would demand that the head of a ch must be made out of a tallic material that should closely match the mass, density, toughness, conductivity, flexibility and more.
The latter was not a ch design, but it could help ch designers make one
themselves.
The simplest way to describe a ch template in this professional context was that it was a do-it-yourself kit of a ch design.
It was a rather interesting way to solve the lack of universality of the old galaxy's
sprawling ch sector.
"I get it." The Cyborg Cat said as she studied the ch template of a first-class multipurpose ch design that was a few generations old. "These ch templates are preparatory works that are ant to instruct regional design teams on how to localize a ch line so that it can be produced and sold within a single star cluster. This will reduce the dependence on long-distance shipping and thereby make the product line more competitive in terms of pricing and local market adaptations."
"That is a good summary of this approach. While it has beco the established design approach for every ch design that is intended for distribution across the entire galaxy, the design by template approach cos with many disadvantages. Can you na them, Veronica?"
"Well, you have already ntioned them earlier, so I only need to expand on these factors." Veronica said. "The most obvious downside is that the ch template is not an exact ch design. Unless the original designer is willing to sit down and design hundreds of localized variants in person, the last stage of this expansive process must be completed by regional design teams that understand the market and supply conditions of their star clusters the best. These ch designers are usually not as good as the lead designers of the ch template, and they may occasionally misinterpret or make outright mistakes in trying to preserve the original intent of the ch template. That will not only cause the localized ch designs to be inferior in quality and performance, but also have difficulty reproducing the original design philosophies."
Master Willix nodded. "That is a good analysis. Adding an additional step between ch template and ch design introduces errors and mistranslations. This is an unavoidable consequence, but well-organized ch corporations try to minimize the deviations as much as possible by training the localizers as best as possible. The leaders in charge of them have usually worked directly under the lead designers for at least a decade. Even then, localized ch designs will still not be perfect."
"I take it that this is a big deal."
"It is, Veronica. ch templates are notoriously sensitive towards deviations. If a localized ch design diverges a little too much from its original template, the end product no longer holds the empowernt of the design philosophies of the lead and contributing ch designers. That is regarded as a failure as the botched ch design is no longer competitive on the market. Other trans-national corporations will ruthlessly try to fill up the gap in the market with their own localized ch designs if they sll an opportunity."
Much of the ch market of the old galaxy was hypercompetitive. What Master Willix described was more than plausible!
"Does this happen a lot?" Veronica wondered as she rubbed her paw against her smooth tallic chin.
"I do not have access to the statistics, but according to my own unreliable estimates, it is likely happening on a fairly frequent basis. The trans-galactic ch corporations simply refuse to publicise these failures, preferring to delay the galaxy-wide release of their new product lines so that they can quietly redy the problem. In the most egregious cases, the mbers of the original design team may have to serve as consultants in order to ensure that the localized ch design truly represents their
philosophies."
That indeed sounded like a troubleso issue.
"This is probably why the design work must be done inhouse." Veronica remarked. "It
is not a good idea to farm out these designs to third-party design studios. The ch designers for hire are likely unfamiliar with the design philosophies of the original design team, so they will do a much worse job and fail to complete a fully functional
ch design. Wait."
The Cyborg Cat looked increasingly more disturbed as she began to apply these descriptions to her own situation!
She and Master Willix were supposed to complete the Rule Breaker Project without.
the benefit of all of that manpower and infrastructure!
How the hell were they supposed to imitate those gigantic trans-galactic corporations and release a ch line throughout the entire old galaxy?!
"Calm down. Designing a ch template is challenging, but it is not as intimidating as you think." Master Willix said. "The simplest and crudest approach to forming a ch template is to design a normal ch design first. After that, you can steadily convert it into a ch template by replacing concrete material selections with more ambiguous material requirents. This is an imperfect thod as the conversion from a ch design to a ch template will cause small but significant details to get lost in translation. It is best to design a ch template from the onset."
"That is too advanced for , Master. I have no experience with this stuff. I don't think
I can get it right the first ti."
"It is not a mistake to admit your lack of competence. It is good that you recognize your limits and be willing to inform about it. We will adopt the simplest approach if that is the case. You can go ahead and design a ch with the exotics and alloys that
you used to work with in the Yeina Star Cluster. Once the design is complete, I will uphold most of the responsibility of translating it into a template, though you should be involved as well in order to accrue experience in this process. You will need to learn how to create qualified ch templates by yourself if you want to release other
Carmine chs across the Milky Way Galaxy."
Veronica definitely harbored that ambition!
She did not want the Rule Breaker Project to be the only major work that catered to the demands of her custors across the old galaxy.
"If we do this, the ch template will most certainly be flawed. If we subsequently release it onto the galactic net and allow third-party ch designers to play with it,
they will soon co out with a huge quantity of even more imperfect ch designs. It will be a wonder if they still manage to retain my design philosophy which is essential to making the Carmine System work."
Master Willix did not appear bothered by these problems.
"We are working under highly suboptimal circumstances. It is a dream to design a high-quality ch template. You should accept our less-than-ideal working conditions and focus on doing your best to put actual working Carmine chs in the hands of many humans. The machines do not have to match the performance of market leaders. They just need to work well enough to give norms a chance to transform their lives and fulfill their fantasy of becoming ch pilots. Trust , these custors will not think too badly about the inferior performance and the imperfect localization efforts. There are no other competitors in this galaxy aside from yourself, so you can completely capture this market regardless of quality and performance
issues." The RA Master ch Designer made a good point. Veronica fell silent for a while. She obsessed too much about the quality of her
products when the norms of original humanity frankly didn't care about that kind of
stuff! Even if her Carmine chs ca in the form of shambling rust buckets, there would still be an astronomical amount of norms willing to bond their lives to these machines! If that was the case, then Veronica might as well not worry about this issue anymore and focus on eting the most essential demands of her future custor base.
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