Ves faced numerous obstacles when it came to pushing the Final Drive Project. They questioned its timing. The Design Department was too busy to divert time and resources to a side project of questionable usefulness. They questioned its necessity. Why design a mech that was nothing more than a suicide vessel with a few added parts that were unique to Carmine mechs? They questioned its value. If a population of a planet that had come under the threat of annihilation wanted to convert local resources into a means to strike back at the native aliens one last time, they could easily resort to more efficient alternatives such as plain surface-to-orbit rockets or fixed gun turrets. The skeptics all raised good points, but their perspective was not as complete as that of Ves. As someone who had lived through similar though not identical circumstances, Ves understood the helplessness of being reduced to a captive on a planet that had fallen to an invading enemy. When people saw no way out, they wanted to go out with a bang. What better way for them to do so than to supply them with a mech that could do so better than any other product? Rather than loading a shuttle with volatile fuels and other explosive materials, the Final Glory Project was designed to do the best possible job with the least amount of resources. The suicide mech not only converted the obvious explosive materials loaded into its mech frame into its payload, but also turned the spiritualities of their mech pilots into accelerants! Ves had no idea whether this would make a substantial difference in the final results. He had no data or proof to back up his expectations. However, he felt that the results should be substantial enough to make it worth pursuing this idea. This should especially be the case if the pilots in question had made significant attainments in qi cultivation. Every Carmine mech pilot that had made the solemn decision would essentially be conducting a ritual that was designed to prime their entire being into a ritual fueled by sacrifice! Ves even thought about including an expanded ritual that called for hundreds if not thousands of people sacrificing their lives to pump his upcoming mech with as many spiritual combustibles as possible. He also thought about converting the human spirits into demons in order to make them even stronger than before. However, none of these ideas sounded reasonable or practical to implement in a short time frame. He could have explored them further if he had more time at his disposal, but he had no choice but to keep his project as tight as possible. When he thought about what he could add to the Final Glory Project that could make a significant difference in its effectiveness, he knew that he could only resort to E-technology. Imposing heavy demands on tech and materials would only make it more difficult to mass produce the sacrifice mech. Each handy feature and each tech that relied on specific materials such as phasewater or other rare resources reduced the practicality of this last resort. Only E-technology was exempt from this limitation. A mech did not become more expensive if Ves expanded it with additional E-technology applications. This was the perfect solution for circumstances where local producers were short on high-quality resources. Of course, Ves could not pile a huge amount of E-technology onto a mech design without encountering limitations. Over the years, he had gotten pretty good at estimating how much E-technology he could get away with in a mech design. A more complicated mech design that was being worked on for a longer period of time by multiple mech designers always acquired the most expansive spiritual foundations. The quality and properties of materials used in the design also played a significant role. The more expensive the mech, the more E-technology it could accommodate. Hyper materials especially helped to expand a mech’s spiritual capacity! High-ranking mech designs such as the Dark Zephyr Mark III, the Amaranto Mark III and the incomplete Minerva Mark II fell into this envious category. The Final Glory Project was shaping up to be completely unlike those high-end projects. While Ves was able to rope in multiple mech designers to his side projects, they only amounted to one more Senior Mech Designer and two additional Journeyman Mech Designers. They were unable to provide as much growth to the spiritual foundation as a Master Mech Designer. The difference between Masters and the lower ranks was vast. Ves could not even fathom how much more a mech designed by a Star Designer could encompass. In any case, Ves had a strong desire to load the Final Glory Project with as much E-technology as it could fit, but this would be challenging as the sacrifice mech had to be a low-end product. The inclusion of any hyper material would definitely amplify the performance of Final Glory Project, but this presented its own problems. Low-grade hyper materials were very abundant in most star systems. The problem was that their attributes were all over the place. There was very little consistency of what sort of hyper materials were available that aligned with specific attributes. One star system could be packed with metal-attributed hypers, but be completely devoid of earth-attributed hypers. Another star system could feature an equal mix of fire and wood-attributed hypers, yet miss out on the other three classical elements. The cultivation scientists of the Red Collective had conducted extensive studies on hyper material distribution. As far as Ves knew, these clever figures failed to discern a clear pattern. One of the few solid conclusions that came out of these studies was that no single attribute was prevalent in every star system occupied by red humanity. Ves therefore faced a difficult design problem when it came to the Final Glory Project. He could include the use of hyper materials, but make its attributes variable somehow, which made it a lot more difficult to design the mech templates. Jovy might not be up to the task. He could also choose to leave hyper materials out of the mech design. This would substantially weaken the explosions generated by the suicide mechs. Another option would be to design multiple variations of the same suicide mechs. In addition to designing a second-class and a third-class version, he could also split them into variants aligned with each of the 5 classical elements. Ves at least managed to learn from the aforementioned studies that practically every star system had at least one prevalent grouping of hyper materials that was aligned to fire, water, metal, earth or wood. A handful of researchers even proposed a theory that every star system was defined by a single ’dominant’ element. This element essentially determined what other hyper materials could emerge among the planets, moons and asteroids floating in orbit of one or more stars. This was the most ideal solution of the options that Ves considered if not for one crucial fact. Designing additional variants took up more time. Yet time was his most precious resource. He sighed. "Gloriana will hate me more if I expand the scope of my project further." Ves was unable to make up his mind. He decided to contact Jovy as he had agreed to take up the responsibility to convert the mech designs into more general mech templates. "So what do you think, Jovy? Which direction is the best?" The physical projection of the Survivalist mech designer paused in thought. "Considering the limitations that you are working under, you have no other choice than to settle for the simplest and most expedient choice. Just leave hyper materials out of the mech designs entirely. Their absence will weaken the results of the Final Glory Project, but it will preserve its universality, which is more important at this time." "I see. I agree. I just feel bad that we can’t do more for the poor chums that will soon find themselves trapped on their planets. They don’t have any good options to defy their enemies for the final time." "You are wrong, Ves." "What am I missing?" "We cannot do more for them due to time constraints, but what about others?" Jovy began to smile. "We are not alone. When we design a universal mech template, it is expected for others to adapt them into localized mech designs. We can completely leave it up to other mech designers to do the hard work of integrating hyper materials in the mech designs. In order to make it more convenient for them, we should deliberately open up gaps in the mech templates that can be filled with any hyper materials." "That… actually sounds similar to one of the other options that I have presented." "That is true, but instead of doing the work related to hyper materials ourselves, we outsource it to other mech designers. Do not underestimate the mech industry. Even if there are no good mech designers on a rural planet, the residents can still get their hands on a variant that just happens to integrate hypers of an attribute that is abundant in their environment." Jovy’s description reminded Ves that he did not have to bear all of the burdens. There was an entire community of mech designers and other professionals. By approaching the Final Glory Project as a work that actively invited others to contribute to its body of work, the project gained greater significance. Ves liked it. Ves liked it a lot. "Great idea. Your solution is much better than the ones that I have devised. Let’s do it like this, then. The biggest complication that I can come up with is that if other mech designers try to be too fancy with implementing their own hyper technology applications, it may conflict with the sacrifice-based E-technology that I intend to implement into the mech templates." "Well, solving a problem begins by identifying it. You are already on the correct track by becoming aware that this can degrade the performance of your mechs. The next step is to think about how you can mitigate or solve this problem." Explore more stories with freewebnovel "I guess I will have to figure it out. I already have a few ideas, but I will need to research it further." Ves spoke a bit more with Jovy. He felt truly grateful to his old mecher friend for backing him up in a project like this. The Final Glory Project would have been much more troublesome to implement without the assistance of a highly educated and highly talented mech designer like Jovy. This dependency also highlighted the fact that Ves was not as versatile and capable as he would have liked. Mech templates were usually the business of Master Mech Designers, but that was not an absolute rule, or else Jovy would not be able to cover this area. Now that he had become involved in two projects that relied on mech templates, Ves felt it may be time for him to address this shortcoming. "Can I learn how to design mech templates, Jovy?" "No." His friend immediately responded. "You are not ready yet. You have to meet many requirements in order to earn the qualifications to design by template. You already satisfy several major criteria, but your grasp of materials science and metallurgy is… below average, especially when it comes to first-class materials. You cannot properly design a mech template that takes into account the enormous variety of similar materials known to our civilization if you do not possess a deep understanding of this field." That was a fair assessment. "So I just need to improve my knowledge in the field of materials science and metallurgy?" "Yes, but do not forget other related fields. You must also increase your comprehension of the materials that are relevant to phasewater technology, hyper technology and in the future superdimensional technology." That was a lot. Ves could not figure out a way to make up for the relevant gaps in his knowledge in a short amount of time unless he made use of the Tree of Possibilities. That would cost him a lot of AP, which he did not have. "Forget about it, then. I will wait until I have advanced to the rank of Master Mech Designer before revisiting this topic." Ves grumbled.