Chapter 6609 Energy Balance The comprehensive additions that Ves intended to introduce in the MSTS Version 2.0 caused it to grow far beyond its initial confines as a training system. This was why Ves saw enough reason to rename it into the Elemental Universe. He wanted to give his customer base the impression that it had turned into a more complete virtual universe where mech pilots and their battle partners could take refuge in when they wanted to retreat from their harsh reality. It was not meant to serve as a playground. Much of the Elemental Universe still retained the core training function that was meant to prepare mech pilots to fight against their real opponents with greater skill. However, the institution of a currency as well the option to purchase and own virtual objects turned it into more than just a place to polish their piloting skills. Ves actually did not have a complete plan for the Elemental Universe, but that was okay. He could set it up first and see how his customer base reacted to its changes. His plan to create a Personal Habitat and Living City for the Elemental Universe could not be completed in a short amount of time. Ves and Ketis had better things to do with their time than to design an entire virtual city. It was better to wait until they completed their marathon and exited the System Space before dumping this responsibility onto Vulcan and other workers. "How will you arrange the training sections of the Elemental Universe?" Ketis asked. "I intend to divide them into 4 discrete facilities." Ves answered. "The Mech Pilot Training Grounds will serve as a place for mech pilots to train specific skills under optimized training conditions. For example, there will be a targeting range for ranged mech pilots, and there will be a simulated swordsman mech for melee mech pilots. I could use your help to program the latter. It is best if you can divide its combat prowess into multiple levels so that everyone can experience a suitable challenge." "No problem. This is one of my strengths. Will you charge EC to make use of these virtual training grounds?" "Most of these training sessions will cost EC in order to access, but not too much. The training facilities are fairly small and limited in scope, so they do not cost too much energy to run." "What is next?" "The Cultivation Grounds are the entire purpose of renaming the MSTS into the Elemental Universe." Ves replied. "I will come up with many different training rooms where mech pilots can experience an E energy attribute and either meditate on it or whatever. I may even devise a few more interesting training exercises that can help people increase their comprehension of different concepts or elements. Every training opportunity will cost EC. I do not want mech pilots to look down on this facility, or devalue it in their minds. Only when stuff is costly will people learn to appreciate its value." "What can also happen is that people will think that you are doing them a disservice by overcharging for your services." Ves shrugged. That will undoubtedly happen, but as long as no better alternatives were available, then he would rather overcharge than do the opposite. "Do you even know how to design the Cultivation Grounds so that it can provide focused training environments that are conducive to promoting the affinities of mech pilots?" "Not completely, Ketis. My comprehension of the earth element is too low to construct such a training environment. That is what design spirits are for. I will design a few basic training grounds myself, but I will leave the ones that I am not able to develop myself to external helpers. If nothing else, I will use my connections with the Red Collective to convince their cultivation experts to assist with the designs." That sounded like a decent plan, though it will take more time to make the arrangements and wait for the third-party developers to complete their work. "Aside from that, what else do you intend to create?" "The Trial Grounds will encompass much of the current training scenarios. It will offer individual mech pilots or a small team of mech pilots the ability to pay EC to enter into simulated training sessions where they can fight against virtual mechs, virtual phasefighters or virtual alien battleships." Ketis grew a little more interested. "Will you attempt to simulate a phase lord as well? It would do mech pilots a lot of good if they can get used to confronting phase lords on the battlefield in advance." That caused Ves to look a little more uncertain. "I can't deny the benefits of doing so, but I fear that I will do a bad job at this. Sure, I may be a phase lord myself, but I am very different from the more developed and battle-hardened ones that appear on the battlefield. I think I will probably have to approach the Phase Lord Department of the Red Collective to enlist the aid of experts to accurately portray dozens of powerful phase lords and maybe even phase whales. The Elemental Universe will also charge a hefty amount of EC just to be able to confront such a powerful opponent once. It will be difficult for Vulcan to accurately simulate their auras, their spatial abilities and more." Standard mech pilots were not supposed to fight against phase lords in the first place. Their mechs were simply too weak to pose serious threat to these alien monstrosities. At most, they could rely on massed firepower to deter the phase lords from persisting in their attacks. Capturing or killing them was out of the question. Oh well. Perhaps mech pilots might be able to keep their morale up whenever they fought in a battle where phase lords were close enough to intimidate entire mech armics. "What about the multiplayer features that you talked about earlier?" "I intend to create the Combat Dispatch Center to accommodate the mech pilots who want to satisfy that specific need. This is where large groups of mech pilots can sign up for big simulated matches that pit them against each other. This facility is not meant to help mech pilots devise specific tactics and solutions against native aliens. It instead serves to temper the courage, refine the application of combat skills and increase the overall combat experience of our customers. Mech on mech combat involving actual human pilots on both sides is a homage to the Age of Mechs. I think it will do these mech pilots a lot of good if they can compare their skills against each other." Ketis saw another benefit to the Combat Dispatch Center despite the fact that it had nothing to do with the aliens. "Mech pilots are highly competitive. They want to be the best. At the very least, they want to outperform their direct peers. Giving them a venue where they can enter into simulated battles against similar mech pilots who also make use of living mechs is a great way to stoke their competitive streak. Those who lost against an identical mech to their own will work harder in order to produce a better outcome next time. Those who won will not only boost their confidence, but also gain more fame and other benefits." Virtual reality mech simulation games also created a competitive dynamic between players. The companies who developed these games knew exactly how to profit from the customers who wanted to defeat their opponents in the virtual arenas of battlegrounds. Ves summed up his overall setup for the Elemental Universe. "In short, my new vision for the future of the MSTS is a comprehensive virtual training and relaxation destination where every customer can participate in activities to raise their Heaven and Man scores. Mech pilots have a good amount of agency in doing both. They merely need additional guidance and training venues in order to improve in a targeted and more effective manner." The only factor that most mech pilots could not improve on their own initiative was their Earth score. The Elemental Universe may be able to improve the growth and development of living mechs, but it could not apply any material upgrades to their designs. This could only be done by the party who owned or fielded the LMC products. While Ves found it regretful that the Elemental Universe was not complete enough to address this need, the current plan was already comprehensive enough to help mech pilots a lot more than before. The Cultivation Grounds should help his existing customers gain a much better connection to the five classical elements as well as various other attributes. This should remain the case even if they were already practicing auxiliary qi cultivation methods. The two could even be combined to produce a compound effect that would allow them to gain better results! The only price that mech pilots needed to pay was to continue to make use of living mechs and to exchange their spiritual feedback with Elemental Credits. "The blueprint that you have created for the Elemental Universe sounds attractive." Ketis commented. "I have a feeling that many mech pilots will soon grow frustrated by how much everything costs. What you have described is not cheap in terms of energy consumption. If the only way you can support all of these activities is by fueling it with the spiritual feedback of your customers, then most of them will probably be able to partake in a few activities a week or less." Ves sighed. "It can't be helped. I need to make the Elemental Universe attractive enough to increase its usage rate. This statistic a bit too low for my liking at the moment, so I really need to bring out the big guns in order to lure more customers into using the evolved version of the MSTS on a regular basis." He actually gained inspiration for this idea from learning about the mysterious prison that sustained the Nyxian Gap. The Elemental Universe was a partial recreation of the mysterious prison. Of course, instead of capturing unwilling souls and forcibly squeezing them in order to produce spiritual energy across eons, Ves merely wanted to earn spiritual feedback from his customers through honest work. While he could not guarantee that he could retain enough customers in the long-term, he did not mind it because he felt confident enough in his work to continue to bring them back again and again. In other words, as long as Ves continued to do his job as a mech designer, he should never be afraid that the Elemental Universe would cease to maintain a positive energy balance! Vulcan might even be able to reinvest the surplus income into accelerating his own personal growth and development! The Elemental Universe had the potential to become a huge phenomena. Red humanity may be able to derive so many benefits from it that it could become a public service that was almost as helpful to all of his customers as the Red Kingdom! Of course, the gap between the two was far too great at the moment. Ves did not hold any unrealistic expectations in the short term, but who knew what might happen in the long term. If Ves wanted to, he could come up with additional energy income sources for Vulcan. He refrained from exploring them further. Each of them introduced additional risk factors, thereby increasing the possibility that his external incarnation could become compromised. The additional functions of the Elemental Universe would also impose a much greater burden on the design spirit. Just maintaining the Elemental City that could potentially accommodate millions of mech pilots was a heavy burden that would persistently prevent Vulcan from spending his energy on other activities. Ves still remained committed to it, though. Mech pilots did not just pay for accessing the Elemental Universe with their spiritual feedback. They also paid with their information. Vulcan would be able to grasp their piloting skills, their interpretation of different E energy attributes and more. This would subsequently allow him to enrich his understanding and apply his newfound gains onto his increasing number of artifacts!