Chapter 6532 Deeper Development

Chapter 6532 Deeper Development

Everyone knew what Patriarch Reginald Cross was like.

He was largely unsuited to be the leader of a large and growing clan. He was an ace pilot who was obsessed with earning glory. He was an impulsive man who put relatively little thought in all of his words and deeds.

It was easy to interpret the Crosser ace pilot's offer as a poorly conceived attempt at poaching Ketis from the Larkinson Clan.

However, the swordmaster thought about it from a different perspective.

Journeyman Mech Designers were supposed to be people who had initially found their design philosophies and needed to expand on its starting foundation by enriching it with design applications.

There were many ways in which Journeymen could develop their design philosophies. Ves had once explained the tree model to her in the past. He was an archetypical example of a mech designer who preferred to explore many different ideas, causing him to develop a broad but relatively short tree of skill sets and design applications. Ketis herself limited her output in many ways, choosing to limit her core work to swordsman mechs. That meant that her tree was destined to be narrow.

That did not mean that there was no need for her to travel around and gain new inspiration from different ideas.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

The challenge of mech designers who wanted to develop like Ves was not to blindly pursue quantity by developing lots of unrelated design applications. They instead needed to find a way to tie all of these weaker solutions to each other so that they could produce powerful synergies.

A qualified mech designer must always design a mech that offered superior performance or value to their target audience!

There was no point in designing mechs if the output contained a lot of dubious gimmicks that did not offer any meaningful improvement on the battlefield.

As such, broad and adaptable mech designers had to be able to combine multiple design applications together so that the whole was always greater than the sum of its parts! Strictly speaking, Ves was not a typical broad mech designer. His most notable design solutions had already reached a degree of advancement that they could put a lot of narrow mech designers to shame.

It was just that his personality and the nature of his design choices reflected an attitude of not being afraid to explore drastically different subjects. Even if no existing synergy existed, he could always find a way to make it fit into his own design approach.

Ketis was a different mech designer. She purposefully focused on developing a narrow tree out of a clear understanding of her strengths and weaknesses.

As a woman who split her time between mech design and swordsmanship, she could never devote as much time on fanciful explorations like Ves. She had to ration them a lot more carefully.

She understood quite early that if she still wanted to make decent progress as a mech designer, then she needed to minimize her distractions and focus solely on developing her core strengths.

This was why she had no qualms about developing into a narrow mech designer and imposing multiple limitations on her work and research activities.

While narrow mech designers might have it easier on the surface, they still had to endure their own set of challenges.

One of them is that it was quite difficult to develop a narrow tree to a tall height. Ketis had to continually explore and advance her core specialization so that it became notably more effective than the design applications of broad mech designers.

Broad mech designers relied on combining multiple different weak solutions to produce a powerful result through synergy.

Narrow mech designers only relied on a single highly developed solution to outright dominate in a single aspect.

Not everyone was able to succeed in doing the latter. Even if they understood the research direction they needed to explore, they still had to rely on a lot of ingenuity, opportunities and hard work to make continuous breakthroughs and elevate a design application until it clearly overpowered compared to the alternatives!

This was difficult because the rest of the mech industry was not incompetent. There were many Masters and Star Designers that had furthered the development of mechs in so many different ways.

It was impossible for a Journeyman like Ketis to outcompete her most successful predecessors by beating them at their own game.

The only viable way for Journeymen and especially ones that chose to commit to narrow development strategies was to blaze a new trail!

By pioneering a new research field, a mech designer was able to avoid a lot of competition from the established market leaders.

The goal was to fulfill the demands of customers in a different way than usual.

Ves had managed to do so in a magnificent way. He successfully fulfilled a demand that had been left unmet for multiple centuries, which was to give norms way to pilot

mechs.

There were also mech designers who relied on different technologies to fulfill demands that had previously been met by established players.

What enabled them to stand out from the competition was to solve a problem at a much more affordable price, or find a way to increase the performance of their own

proprietary solutions!

Originally, Ketis sought to develop a design philosophy based around designing swordsman mechs armed with swords that offered superior sharpness.

Other sword techniques could still be taught, but needed to be altered to accommodate

the unique circumstances of individual swordsmen.

This was why true swordsmanship could never easily be learned by studying books or

watching a video guide.

Those that possessed the capacity to learn new sword styles through non-interactive study materials were already highly skilled and successful swordmasters themselves! What Ketis could do, the vast majority of her customers could not do. They lacked the skill, experience and other competencies to truly master unfamiliar sword styles. The most common feedback she received from her customers was that the sword styles taught by her mechs forced them into becoming swordsmen that they did not identify

with. The lack of adaptation and responsiveness to the unique circumstances of every customer limited the usefulness of sword styles that synergized well with their associated swordsman mechs.

Ketis eagerly wanted to solve these problems and more, but she lacked the imagination

and inspiration to come up with viable solutions.

This was why Journeymen occasionally had to leave the environment they were familiar with and venture to different places in order to gain new ideas.

While she hadn't really thought about it before, now that she received an offer from

Patriarch Reginald Cross, she finally saw an opportunity to enter a different environment and enrich her views on mech design.

Of course, accepting the offer to become a guest worker at the Cross Clan was not her

only choice.

She could easily think of other groups located in more distant and exotic locations that would gladly host a mech designer of her pedigree and caliber!

As the first student of Professor Ves Larkinson, establishing a connection with Ketis was a good way to form an indirect connection with the Father of Carmine Mechs!

Ketis rejected this alternative because she wanted to be valued by her own merits, not

by her benefactor.

She was also familiar with the Crossers and found them to be upright and trustworthy enough to work together on a deeper level.

Master Benedict Cortez was also a lot older and more experienced than her. He could

offer her a lot of guidance and help her figure out how to develop her design philosophy further.

"Patriarch Reginald." Ketis spoke up after a long moment of thought. "Your offer sounds...

interesting. Give me time to consider your offer. I may end up taking it. If I do, I hope you will prepare a guest position for me in your Cross Clan."

The ace pilot looked surprised. It was as if he did not actually expect for the

swordmaster to accept his spontaneous offer.

That was no reason to look at a gift horse in the mouth, though. Patriarch Reginald

quickly responded with a wide grin!

"Of course! I will tell Master Benedict to reserve a place by his side right away! If he

doesn't do what I tell him to, then feel free to beat him up until he relents! He has promised to rectify our mech designers for multiple years, but I have yet to notice any differences. Maybe you can do a better job by applying the methods used by the Larkinson Clan."

This was a win-win proposition for the two parties.

Ketis wanted to work in a different environment in order to broaden her horizons and

gain new inspiration.

The Cross Clan wanted to bring in an outside 'consultant' to rectify the Cross Mech Corporation's Design Department!