The Mech Touch

6040 Destroyer Resistant Materials

The two upgrade projects gained a good start by establishing cooperation with different partners.

Soon after making the agreements, Jovy beca regular participant in the discussions and the work sessions centered around the Riot Mark III Project.

Both Ves and Gloriana noticed the differences right away. As a talent of the Red Association, Jovy Armalon brought a degree of brilliance and knowledge that hardly anyone else could surpass!

"As I have mentioned before, designing a mech based on the concept of increasing uncertainty is the opposite of what I am usually trying to achieve." The mech designer spoke half an hour after a shuttle dropped him off at Diandi Base. "Even if I have never worked in this direction in the past, I possess enough theories and inferences to be certain on how I should approach this challenge. The best way to increase the so- called 'chaos factor' as you have called it is to add unstable materials to the Riot's mech frame."

Jovy waved his hand in the air, causing projections of different exotic and hyper materials to appear.

Most of them looked rather sketchy at first glance.

"These are not the typical materials that you add into a mech." Ves remarked with a critical eye. "I don't exactly know what they do, but they all look rather unstable to me. If you attempt to make a mech out of these materials, then the machine is liable to explode as long as it receives a strong bump!"

He was not exaggerating. The more Ves looked at the materials, the more he sensed how much energy they possessed and how precarious they were kept in place.

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Humanity discovered a huge variety of exotics over the ages. From the moment the human race stepped into the stars, countless pioneers and explorers encountered one strange material after another. Scientists had also becaddicted to blending multiple different exotics together to produce even more miraculous materials.

Yet out of the vast majority of the exotics that humans cin touch with, only a very tiny fraction of them were suitable for use on an experimental or industrial scale. It was not an exaggeration to say that 99.99 percent of exotics in the Red Two's humongous database had never really been used in a serious capacity.

People merely discovered them and tried to figure out if they were useful. When they failed to cup with any application that justified the cost of using these weak or difficult materials, they gave up their attempt and moved on to exploring the use cases of other materials.

A similar story applied to the recent emergence of hyper materials. A lot of material scientists eagerly embraced one of the bounties of the Age of Dawn and madly tried to explore and catalog every new hyper material that mutated out of ordinary resources.

However, the most predominant problem with most hypers was that they were not economic enough. Most were fairly weak and unable to withstand the rigor of combat.

There were hyper materials that generated strong E energy reactions, but were so fragile that they essentially broke apart due to their own activity!

Of course, there were a lot of material scientists that were working to develop new hyper alloys that sought to preserve the reactivity of these powerful hypers while massively increasing their ability to withstand stronger reactions.

In short, what Jovy had done was pull a selection of materials that most mech designers and engineers considered defective. No sane person would think that it would be a great idea to add them to any serious products, especially ones that had the power to save or doom the lives of their users!

"There are interesting materials available that not only possess high energetic activity, but also produce a range of unstable phenomena." Jovy spoke with a smile. "Despite their many flaws, their randomness is so great that they should be an excellent fit for the Riot. What I intend to do is procure hundreds of different samples of exotics and hypers and examine them closely. If my experiments confirm that a good selection of materials can increase the Riot's chaos factor, then we can proceed to work on integrating them into the archetech structure of the mech."

Ves glanced over at Gloriana, who looked quite troubled at this approach.

"I have not investigated how stable we can keep these volatile materials if they are incorporated into archemetal components." She spoke in thought. "Well-designed archetech is theoretically able to compensate for at least a part of the shortcomings of these defective exotics and hypers. The tech base is derived from how the arche used to grow their archeshells by devouring all sorts of materials from their lost hplanet. They had little ability to distinguish between stable and unstable resources. Through evolution, the arche species have cto develop their own set of coping mechanisms where they are able to neutralize or compensate for the weaknesses of volatile materials."

"Can you replicate that in a targeted fashion, Gloriana?" Ves asked.

"It is theoretically possible, but I will need to conduct many experiments." She said. "I may also need to consult my archetech tutors. If I try to complete this research by myself, I will probably waste numerous years just to produce an acceptable result."

Fortunately, they were collaborating with a genuine RA mech designer this time. Jovy made a welcoffer.

"There is no need for you to be concerned about that. I can contact a few of those experts and work out a small agreement. I am willing to spend my social capital on this because it is originally because of my involvement that you are burdened with the task of trying to integrate volatile materials into your archemech. Besides, any successful result from your research is of good value to me. I can use the solutions that you have developed on other products of a similar nature."

This was a collaboration effort, so Jovy should not caway empty-handed. Neither Ves nor Gloriana had any objections to allowing the mecher to take away this additional harvest.

The only goal that mattered to the Larkinson was to transform the Riot into the strongest and most suitable battle partner for Venerable Rosa Orfan. Maximizing the chaos factor was more important than retaining ownership over a bunch of research results.

It was not as if the Larkinsons were able to hide their research activities anyway, especially now that Jovy directly worked alongside Ves and Gloriana for the duration of this design project.

Gloriana and Jovy talked a bit more about the exhaustive empirical research they needed to undertake. They needed to do a lot of work in order to successfully produce archemetal compositions that satisfied all of their requirements.

"Even with the help of additional archetech experts, there is no guarantee that we may succeed within a handful of months. You need to be prepared to delay this initiative or give up on it for the foreseeable time." Jovy warned.

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The only female among them shrugged. "I understand. That is research. It wouldn't be so respected if it is easy to produce positive outcomes. Do not worry. If it appears that we have stopped in front of a wall, I can accept the need to rein in my ambitions and make do with more practical alternatives. We can always revisit this effort at a later date when it is tto design the Riot Mark IV."

That was a healthy perspective to take. Ves wished them luck, but he did not dare to assthey would succeed within the stated tperiod. A few months was too short to conduct so much profound research on combining volatile materials with archetech.

"By the way, I have a question for you, Jovy. As you already know, I have recently procured a Terran tier 3 Destroyer spear. If Venerable Orfan manages to break through in the next few years, I will likely bestow the right to wield the Destroyer weapon to her. Is there anything special we need to pay attention to? I have heard that it takes a lot of effort and preparation to properly allow a mech to wield such a powerful weapon."

Jovy chuckled. "It just so happens to be that the Destroyer spear has the potential to amplify the Riot's chaos factor. The high concentration of Destroyer particles in the speartip has a tendency to lash out and attempt to devour any matter in the vicinity. These reactions are often random and can happen at any tif they are not properly controlled for. Normally, the Terrans design their mechs in a way that tries to tthe volatility of the Destroyer weapons as much as possible. This is certainly the safest approach that you can take with the Riot Mark III Project. However…"

It was not difficult to figure out his argument.

"Are you suggesting that we should loosen up on this approach and allow the spear to… go rogue every once in a while?" Ves cautiously asked.

"That is not quite how I would put it, but that is my general suggestion." Jovy answered. "This is an optional idea. What I have just put forward is no different from playing with fire. If you cannot stand the thought of getting burned, then by all means forget what I have said and take the safe approach."

"There is no need to play around with us, Jovy. You wouldn't have taken the initiative to plant this idea in our minds if you did not already have an interest in seeing through. Do you truly think the Riot can handle a Destroyer spear that is less than absolutely stable and controlled? A tier 3 Destroyer spear is already capable of destroying a high-tier expert mech if the pilot becomes even slightly inattentive! Even ace pilots need to maintain constant suppression of the weapon in order to prevent it from damaging their own ace mechs."

"The value of a Destroyer spear lies exactly in its extrvolatility. The lower tier Destroyer weapons are much more stable but also much weaker as a consequence." The RA mech designer stated. "I am not suggesting that Venerable Orfan should wield the spear when she is still an expert pilot. What I am trying to propose is that once she becomes a Saint and gains the ability to wield the tier 3 Destroyer spear, she should pilot a mech that can not only withstand at least sdegree of outbursts from the weapon, but also exploit its dangerous reactions as an additional weapon against her enemies."

Gloriana's eyes lit up as she began to see the value in Jovy's proposal. "I understand! When the Terrans invented Destroyer weapons, the Rubarthans tried their best to develop Destroyer resistant materials. While the latter cannot completely negate the danger of Destroyer particles, they can at least last much longer than the alternatives. I suppose we can blend plenty of Destroyer resistant materials into the Riot Mark III to increase her defense against this specific weapon type."

This was a good idea. Incorporating Destroyer resistant materials into the Riot's mech frmassively increased the living mech's ability to safely handle a dangerous and partially unleashed Destroyer weapon."

Playing with fire was dangerous, but not to the sextent if the person doing so wore a fire-resistant suit!

"Destroyer resistant materials are more expensive, but that should not be an issue for your clan." Jovy mentioned. "The better alloy formulas are all confidential, but I will obtain one for this project. The only issue is that you will need to develop archemetal components that combine Destroyer resistant materials and highly energetic materials. These are two completely different material types, so it will not be easy to marry them together."

"I am not afraid of this challenge." Gloriana said as she becmore fired up. "If we are able to succeed in our research, then the Riot will not only becmuch more difficult to damage, but also possess unparalleled offensive power in melee combat! Not even the Royal Jeem of the Boojay Family can match our spearman mech in terms of attack power!"