After explaining the rules, the executive retreated and allowed others to direct the first round. A guide brought every designer to their allocated QuickForge system.
A marvel of engineering, every QuickForge cost as much as a hundred ch workshops. Its impressive capabilities allowed for almost instant fabrication of any device as long as its complexity did not exceed a certain standard. Though insufficient to mass-produce any currentgen chs, it had no trouble in pumping out two-hundred year old designs.
"These are the toys that the students of Leemar can polish their design skills." Ves guessed. The Carnegie Group didn’t design these QuickForge units for a simple competition. "How I envy those who gained the chance to study here."
Designers who spent a lot of ti with these miraculous systems could gain a lot of proficiency in working with real chs. Though the assembly process was massively simplified and sped up, it still provided much more hands-on experience than working with simulations and projections.
Once everyone reached their assigned stations, they waited for the signal to start.
"Three, two, one, go!"
Everyone rapidly engaged the QuickForge system. The students from Leemar had a distinct advantage. They used their familiarity with its systems to imdiately start fabricating a fra. Sophisticated assembly arms flash-produced the alloys in midair, kept aloft by the most precise antigrav emitters.
Impressed by the speed of which these systems produced a fra, Ves hurriedly tried to catch up.
"Right. If I want to finish a fra at the fastest speed possible, I’ll have to go for a light ch."
Though he preferred to design a versatile dium ch, its larger mass and size ant it took more work to get it running. A light ch not only had a reduced material requirent, its limited loadout ant it only needed a couple of small components to make it fully functional.
As Ves wanted to make his ch count in the first half of the round, he focused on improving his ch’s peak capabilities. It needed all the performance it could get in order to remain competitive with the chs submitted a few hours later. The battlefield fortunately featured small resupply depots where chs could supplent their ammunition and energy, so chs with shorter running tis still had a chance.
After a brief consideration, he therefore picked a sprinter ch. He rapidly scanned the list of pre-made components and picked out a laundry list of limbs and internal parts. He particularly paid attention to the legs. Drawing from his experience with the Octagon series, he focused on prioritizing agility instead of top speed, though not to such an extre extent this ti.
"In the early stages of the free-for-all, it’s more important for a ch to be able to avoid damage. The less damage it incurs, the longer it will last."
So ch designers chose to go for the opposite strategy. They built a crude heavy ch brimming with armants. Such a heavy brick relied on its imnse armor and firepower to deter others from taking it on even as it sluggishly transported a coin. The tiny light chs like what Ves had in mind gained no advantage in taking on such monsters.
Though fairly safe, their limited speed and mobility ant that these lumbering oafs had a lot of difficulties finding coins. They could only cover a limited area. Even if they spotted a coin, any rival ch could easily snatch it before the heavy ch reached the spawning point.
"Heavy chs are just a dead-end in this mode." Ves concluded. Only heavy ch specialists had a way to make it viable. Anyone else only risked their downfall if they played with sothing they didn’t fully master.
Now that he developed a concept, he had to attach the proper image to his design. In a contest like this where his entire future was at stake, he had to pull out all the stops. Even as his slower rivals all began to fabricate their parts, Ves still remained unmoved. He closed his eyes and sharpened his intent.
"My ch will be a steed fit for the most talented pilot. A proud machine, it cherishes its freedom to move. Any location is within reach. None may blasphe its integrity. Violators will be speared by its horn if they are weak. Those who are stronger can never touch its surface, for my ch is fleet of foot and can depart whenever it wishes."
Ves envisioned a unicorn in the form of a humanoid light ch. Proud, inviolable and fleet of foot. The new design he had in mind combined all three aspects into a coherent whole. He felt empowered by his vision.
"Let’s go."
He started to design and fabricate his ch. Though the interface of the QuickForge system was complex, it basically functioned as a monstrous amalgamation of a design terminal, a 3d printer and an assembly system. As Ves was quite familiar with each system, he had little trouble adjusting to the combined controls.
He put his full attention into getting his light ch assembled properly. Though the QuickForge system accelerated the fabrication and assembly process to a ludicrous speed, it also risked the amplification of any unaddressed faults. A tiny misalignnt between components could snowball into a massive cascade of structural instability. Ves had to keep his eyes peeled and work with utmost precision in order to maintain control.
The only snag he faced was that he had to tune out the comntators.
"...Look at the beauty Cris Adrian has in mind!" A male announcer pointed out. "From how many components he has in mind, he’s definitely going to make his splash in the mid-ga!"
At least the ch designers had so asure of privacy this ti. Opaque screens blocked their view of their rivals. In addition, each designer had access to a function where they could obscure all of their actions to the entire audience. This allowed designers to hide their proprietary techniques, though they were only allotted an hour of privacy in total.
A female announcer complented her colleague. "Cris Adrian is one of Leemar’s top graduates of this year. He has graduated cum laude in ch design, so his foundation is top notch! He recently accepted an invitation to work for the Carnegie Group directly, so he’s certainly the man of the hour at this mont!"
"While Cris is a talented lad, look at his self-declared eternal rival! Mortir Presutti is on fire! Having climbed from a life from the slums in a dusty planet at the edge of the Carnegie Group’s sphere of influence, he quickly gained appreciation from everyone due to his remarkable intelligence. Now that he’s reached this stage, I’m certain this one-in-a-century talent will dazzle us all with his nimble design!"
That caused Ves to stutter a bit, which almost screwed up his work on fusing a leg to a torso. If not for his quick reaction, he might have wasted a lot of ti.
"This Mortir sounds like trouble. If he’s going for a light ch, then he’ll be releasing his ch in the sa ti fra as mine. I can’t let him get the better pilot."
With this new information in mind, Ves began to work more recklessly. Though he started to slip up now and then, most of the errors were too inconsequential to bother addressing. He pushed his assembly skills to the limit by speeding up as fast as possible while maintaining control. He felt as if he was balancing on a knife edge. Instead of slowing down to catch his balance, he instead moved faster, causing him to wobble harder.
"We’ve tallied all five hundred in-progress designs and put our brightest minds to work. The preliminary results are in! About 93 are light chs, 320 are dium chs, and the remaining 87 are heavy chs."
"That sounds about right. There’s always an even proportion of light and heavy chs every year."
"How many of them are aerial chs?"
"A staggering 78 designs show openings for flight systems. It seems like a significant amount of them are built to hunt for coins."
"The cowards! Don’t these designers have any confidence in their work! I want to see so action!"
Ves slowed down when he reached the arms and legs. In order to preserve his design’s offensive power, he had to pay particular attention to the musculature in the limbs. The default sche of the limbs were sorely outdated. With the advantage of two hundred years of progress, he radically tore out the old layout and began to swiftly implent a crude but modern musculature. Though not as good as a proper sche, his improvised work still raised the specs of all four limbs by a significant amount.
He optimized his ch for wielding spears, though he also added in a laser pistol to deter any fliers. While the pistol did not amount to much of a threat, it was sufficient in holding off opportunists who wanted to pick off an easy target.
Though the rules did not reward a kill, one of the viable strategies in this mode was to eliminate as much competition as possible before they accumulated a lot of coins. The best targets were those who were in the middle of transporting their own coins.
"Enough about the boys. Let’s check out how the girls are doing! Just look at Cynthia Barakovski’s fearso light ch. It’s only partially but it already looks like a maneater. It certainly possesses the most bite out of all the light chs."
"Oh I don’t dispute that, but she could certainly speed up a little. By the ti she finishes this monster, the battle will already progress to the middle stages."
Ves idly noted Barakovski’s ntion. Despite her average skill in chanics, her ch should still be a formidable machine in terms of armor and weapons. If she intended to take her ti, then she was certainly designing a light ch killer. That was bad news for him.
"Looks like our chs might clash." He muttered. If he allocated more ti on his ch, he could close the gap, but that ant he’d miss out on the best pilots in the pool. In order to reach the finals, he had to give up a lot of toys and settle for sothing fast and cheap.
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