The Mech Touch

gines or a bevy of other cheap alternatives.
Combat mechs required something more sophisticated, to better emulate a living being ’s responsiveness when pilot connected to them neurally.
Lucky enough, the technology behind artificial musculature remained stagnant for over a century, so its production went like a breeze.

Next came some of the most difficult parts, the computer chips and cabling that provided instructions and processing power to a machine.
It represented the brains and nervous system of the mech.

The chips demanded the most from the 3D printer, but they weren ’t difficult to produce since they were lastgen technology by now.
The amount of miniaturization and other fancy stuff that went into the production of a chip could only be taken care of by an automated program.
Ves only needed to inspect the 3D printer beforehand of dust and faults before producing the tiny chips.

Ironically, the cables required more finesse.
As if aware his mech required too many cables, Jason chose a special mix of metals and insulators in different proportions depending on the size of the cabling.
A single string of cabling could either be thicker or thinner at certain parts depending on its location.
It made for a fine mess when you added in the sheer number of cabling, and Ves felt he was growing mad at the end.

After a long rest and a good night ’s sleep, Ves continued with manufacturing the specialist components of the Caesar Augustus.
These components differed wildly from each other, as Jason had filled in a shopping list of all the best commercially available components.

The ECM, radar, boosters, gyroscope, cockpit, sensors and all the other components came from wildly different manufacturers.
This meant that Ves had to watch out for certain issues on one set of parts, but needed to pay attention to a different area with another set of parts.
Ves diligently read the documentation while he went over each component, so he hadn ’t been met with outright failures.

However, many parts came off the 3D printer in a marginally acceptable state.
Ves lacked a reserve of raw materials to fabricate replacements for all but the worst parts.
It just couldn ’t be helped.
He could only blame Jason for blindly picking the shiniest toys and rely on his super-duper expensive industrial scale workshop to reproduce them perfectly.

With much of the interior of the mech done, Ves turned to the most expensive part of the mech, its proprietary armor.
Thirty years ago, a manufacturer required a dedicated machine from National Aeromotives to mix a bunch of metals into a highly compressed piece of plating.

Fabrication technology advanced since that time, and now that the armor ’s formula became semi-public knowledge with the release of the CA-1 ’s licensing options, all modern 3D printers could reproduce it as long as they weren ’t too cheap.

The Caesar Augustus required a large amount of plating for a medium mech.
The large, bulky sword and shield also added to its total weight, almost pushing the mech into the heavy weight class.

The production of the plates came with its own challenges.
Due to Ves ’ inexperience, some of its armor plates came out of the 3D printer with higher than normal stress or other issues.
If the virtual 3D printer wasn ’t so good, Ves might get stuck with a number of half-failed plates.

”Damn. ” Ves sighed as he finally finished producing all of the CA-1 ’s components.
”This is more tiring than I thought.
There ’s a world of difference between 1-star and 5-star mechs.
Hundreds of years of technological progress only made things harder to build.
I really miss the simple Fantasia. ”

The challenges he faced with this step alone broadened his vision of what mechs were capable of.
Working on a near-modern mech meant for elites taught Ves what this target segment looked for in a war machine.

”An elite mech has to meet different requirements than regular frontline mechs.
They pack as much armor and punch as possible in a reasonably mobile package.
Energy efficiency isn ’t necessarily a problem when you can swap fuel or energy cells from a support group on the field. ”

Jason wasn ’t wrong to design the CA-1 along those lines.
He just went a little bit too far with it.
Competing mechs could do almost everything the Caesar Augustus could do, but lasted a little longer in the field.
Sometimes that extra time counted, so procurers wanted to be safe than sorry by picking the less exaggerated choice.
The Caesar Augustus was also a bitch to maintain in a chaotic battlefield, so generally only wealthy ace pilots who cared a lot about peak performance bought the models.

”Next up, assembly. ”

To assemble the mech from scratch, Ves first put together the frame.
The parts that composed the mech ’s skeleton were built to be big and robust, so Ves easily got to practice his enhanced assembler sub-skill without much risk.
The skill improved his ability to manipulate the lifters and arms that composed the assembler module.
The parts that he wanted frozen stayed still, while the parts he wanted moved got shifted around just enough but no further.

As Ves already assembled the power reactor and engine by hand, he only needed to place them delicately in the slotted areas of the frame.

After that, Ves added the other components and systems that made up the functionality of the mech.
The biggest piece was the cockpit, followed by the energy storage unit that stored the replaceable energy cells.
All the smaller systems followed, such as the sensors and boosters.

Finally Ves reached the most troublesome stage.
All of the components had been installed on the mech, but they remained isolated to each other.
Ves had to connect each of them together in a mish-mash of cables and pipes.
In between these relatively delicate components, Ves also had to squeeze in a lot of artificial muscles.
Sometimes that led to very tight fits.

The work tested Ves the utmost.
He screwed up many times, having to remove the cabling and do the placement all over again.
Sometimes he had to cram a bundle of cables through a narrow opening between pipes by force.
The stress and frustration caused Ves to slip his fingers sometimes, causing unforgivable mistakes in the assembly.

After a nerve-wracking day of playing plumber, Ves finally reached the end stage of the assembly.
He spent a much more leisurely time putting the armor plates together.
Sometimes the improper cabling caused the plates to fail to adhere in its position.
Ves sometimes had to hammer the problem areas lightly in order to cram the pieces of armor in their place.
It proved the parts he fabricated were of substandard quality.

”It ’s finally done. ” Ves said as he sprawled on the ground in exhaustion.
The diagnostics and debugging still ran in the background, but Iron Spirit took care of most of the issues that popped up at this stage.

”What do you think, System? Did I do a decent job? Why aren ’t you giving me an evaluation yet? ”

[The Mech Designer System only evaluates designs, not copies.
Since you are not the designer of the Caesar Augustus CA-1, you will not earn any Design Points even if you manufacture it a thousand times.
Please work hard and make your own designs.]

That made sense.
The System didn ’t want to bring up a technician or a factory supervisor.
The main job of a mech designer was to make designs.
The act of fabricating a mech in person was only done in order to understand the mech better or to ensure its quality.

Ves could only rely on the numbers given by Iron Spirit in judging how well he built his first Caesar Augustus.
And from what he read so far, the news wasn ’t looking good.