Chapter 5657 Gradual Tech Transition
5657 Gradual Tech Transition
Ves ultimately gave his wife the benefit of the doubt.
He could tell that she was genuinely fired up and passionate about this issue. It would crush her a lot if he refused to support her on this important venture.
Her timing happened to be apt. Ever since she came back recently with a cutting-edge hyper cranial implant set in her body, she eagerly sought a way to unleash her boosted cognitive capabilities and test her high-tech learning tools!
Archetech was still a field that was in its infancy in the mech industry. The Red Two undoubtedly possessed a considerable head-start in deciphering and mastering this exotic tech, but it had yet to proliferate to the general mech community in any fashion!
This meant that the Larkinson Clan still had a chance to become one of the early movers and build up a considerable head-start in this exotic but highly promising field!
If Gloriana started much later, then a lot more competitors would have built up a lot of competence in this field. It would be virtually impossible for her to catch up to them, especially when they continued to produce new results through their own research endeavors.
This may be the only window of opportunity for her to become a genuine pioneer in archetech.
"You have your luminar crystal tech, and I shall have my archetech." Gloriana shared her aspiration. "You are already familiar with the advantages of selectively adopting alien tech that is highly compatible to you. I am simply learning from your example. Archetech speaks to me in a way that I cannot describe to you. Just looking at Lucky's current form makes me appreciate his excellent construction and seamless fusion of two different tech bases."
"Meow?"
The aforementioned gem cat raised his head just as he finished off his expensive meal.
Ves grew cautiously optimistic.
"I support you, Gloriana. I look forward to seeing what you can do once you have gotten started in this field. The only thing I am not so certain about is how much MTA merits I need to spend in order for this investment to pay off. What you are asking for is not cheap, and I only have a finite amount of MTA merits to spend. A part of me regrets that I have turned down the offer to receive an award of 10 billion MTA merits earlier. If I knew you had this ambition, I might have changed my mind about my earlier choice."
"No. You are being stupid again. 10 billion MTA merits are not as valuable as the right to call upon the assistance of 3 Star Designer. You can earn MTA merits in many different ways, but this is the only time you have received this favor! You need to cherish these opportunities and use them wisely. I already happen to have an idea how you can make effective use of your first minor request." The initial instance of this chapter being available happened at N0v3l.Bin.
Ves groaned. "Not so fast, Gloriana. I know what you have in mind, and my answer to that is no. Expending 1 of the 3 requests to get the Xenotechnician himself to personally tutor you on the essence of archetech is a disproportionate trade! It is no different from importing water from Bridgehead One just to quench my thirst. There are much more cost-effective alternatives that we can choose from! You might not be able to gain access to the best teachers and confidential research results by spending MTA merits alone, but it should be more than enough for your current needs."
It remained to be seen whether the Larkinson Clan would make this eventful transition.
"It may be better to limit the use of archetech to our first-class mech designs." Gloriana proposed to her husband. "The threshold is too high. It is too difficult for ordinary second-raters to understand the exotic tech thoroughly enough to conduct independent repairs on a damaged machine. It should be considerably easier for Larkinsons who have completed EdNet training or native first-raters such as Alexa Streon to gain a basic level of proficiency in archetech."
She made a good point. Ves became taken by this idea.
"Limiting archetech to the Premier Branch simplifies a lot of stuff. Our fleet is still in its infancy, so we can set it up to accommodate archemechs and all of the related infrastructure from the ground up! As long as it doesn't take too long to train competent first-raters in handling archemechs, we can make it so that we can field an entire force of first-class archemechs by the time we are ready to take part in the first wave of deep strike operations!"
In the meantime, the expeditionary fleet could keep using conventional mechs as usual. It was not that Ves gave up on the second-raters, but he did not want to make their lives too difficult by forcing them to adopt advanced technology on a wider scale.
Now that Ves was willing to support Gloriana's effort to become a master archetech, they needed to decide on a sum.
This provoked another argument before Ves finally agreed to reserve 300 million MTA merits for her expensive endeavor.
"It's a good thing that I already have a lot of MTA merits in reserve." He tiredly said. "Don't make me regret this. Just because I haven't spent all of these merits doesn't mean that they are worthless. It is just that I have no acute need for them for the time being."
Gloriana looked gratified now that she had received a handsome promise from her husband. "I can assure you that you will not regret your decision. The greater my proficiency, the more I can contribute to our clan. The mech pilots who are fortunate enough to pilot my works will thank you for your farsighted decision. Archemechs possess numerous advantages over their conventional counterparts. The most important benefit is there much greater fault tolerance. They are much harder to damage and cripple, so the ultimate benefit is that more of them will be able to survive the battles to come than before."
She was right. Archetech offered unprecedented degrees of redundancy for mechs. Even if half of their frames got blown to pieces, the remaining half would still be able to limp back to its mothership!
Aside from that, an archemech could theoretically offer much thicker protection to the mech pilot due to the reduced requirement for functional parts that were much more vulnerable to enemy attacks than armor plating.
An archemech component typically served both functional and defensive purposes at the same time!
That was the beauty of archetech. It was why archeships could remain small and compact while also delivering excellent performance for their sizes.
The metallic shells used to serve as a form of defense for the arche. They succeeded in resisting all kinds of dangerous exobeasts that derived strength from the same rich mineral deposits and ultimately won their evolutionary struggle on their home planet!
When Gloriana whipped up a concept design of the Dark Zephyr as an archemech, Ves became impressed by how much more resilient it became.
Defense had always been the most dubious trait of light mechs. If the Dark Zephyr was able to withstand twice or thrice as much damage before shutting down, then that could mean the difference between victory and defeat!
Of course, that was assuming that Gloriana actually succeeded in her venture. The performance of the Dark Zephyr Mark III hinged on whether she was able to master archetech quickly enough!