The Mech Touch

6039 Chaos Factor

Gloriana looked surprised once again.

Her husband again made a decision that contradicted his insistence on secrecy.

Why had he changed so much? Why was he suddenly okay with involving outsiders in the development of the most strategic military assets of the Larkinson Clan? He had always been careful about maintaining at least sdegree of separation in the past.

While it hadn't always been possible to keep outsiders completely away from the Larkinson expert mech designs, Ves and Gloriana could still take measures to limit the exposure of sensitive information.

That might not be possible this time. Implicit in Ves' latest proposal was to turn Professor Jovy Armalon into a full collaborator in the Riot Mark III Project!

This went far beyond providing limited consulting advice or developing an isolated mech system such as a fancy mech weapon or a quirky flight system.

A goal as broad and vague as enhancing the Riot's chaos properties could not be fulfilled by making a quick pass at the mech design.

Jovy Armalon needed to get involved in the upgrade project from the beginning. The mecher would have to make his mark on the expert spearman mech design every step of the way in order to fully take advantage of his design philosophy and his expertise on probability manipulation.

"Are you truly certain about this decision? What if your friend refuses your invitation?"

"The Riot is a precious Larkinson expert mech, but it is not one of my favorite ones if I am being honest." Ves responded. "To me, the Bastion, the Everchanger and the Phobos are much more reflective of my passion and my ideals. I do not want to compromise the purity of their designs by rashly involving outsiders. As for other Larkinson expert mechs, they are still important, but not to the point where we need to forgo clear and obvious opportunities to improve them in a misguided drive to maintain total secrecy. It is not as if the mechers are still clueless about the details of expert mechs such as the Riot."

He did not consider it a disaster if all of the details of the Riot got leaked to the public one day. The original concept for the expert spearman mech was centered around turning him into a very tough, tenacious and disruptive force.

The Riot might not excel at either offense, defense or mobility, but scored decently well in each of these areas. Venerable Orfan could flexibly take on multiple different roles at once as she utilized the strengths of her battle partner in different ways.

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The chaos element suited the pairing well as it could sow a considerable amount of confusion among their opponents.

Chaos made the Riot's defenses unexpectedly tougher than expected.

It could also make the Riot's attacks more unpredictable, thereby making them harder to guard against.

The characteristic hyper ability of the Riot was his Disharmony Barrier. This mutated the already enhanced resonance barrier of the expert spearman mech to infect whatever he was fighting against with a touch of chaos!

From what Ves had observed in the recent battle footage of Venerable Orfan and her battle partner, this trick certainly threw a lot of alien opponents off-balance!

It was a pity that the Disharmony Barrier was not as effective when applied to large alien warships. It was originally designed to give Venerable Orfan an edge whenever she dueled against an opposing expert mech.

In any case, Ves wanted to improve the Disharmony Barrier and everything else that made the Riot so delightfully chaotic, but he was afraid he did not possess the knowledge and expertise to do right by the living mech.

Despite not regarding the Riot as one of his favorite products, he still cared enough about it to make an exception to his rules and bring in the most suitable outsider that could elevate the living mech to a greater height.

Since Ves himself was okay with this, Gloriana had little reason to deny his proposal.

Ves proceeded to call his friend and quickly explained what he sought.

The physical projection of Jovy looked intrigued to say the least.

"I once told you that I would be happy to collaborate with you, but only when you are ready to design first-class mechs. Participating in the development of the Riot does not exactly satisfy this condition…"

"Pff!" Ves snorted. "You only put up that rule because you don't want to waste your ton designing weak and trivial mechs. The Riot Mark III is completely different from those ordinary products. It is a much higher-end product than a typical second-class mass production model. We are planning to upgrade the Riot to a high-tier quasi-first-class expert mech first, which means that most of her mech frwill already incorporate first-class tech and materials in advance. Once Venerable Rosa Orfan breaks through, we will convert the Riot into a proper first-class ace mech, just like what we are planning to do with the Dark Zephyr. Doesn't that sound exciting to you, Jovy?"

It was not every day that a Senior Mech Designer, even one of Jovy's caliber, received the privilege of participating in the development of a first-class ace mech!

In fact, Jovy would most definitely be willing to take part in the development of a second-class ace mech just because of the priceless opportunity to service the needs of a powerful ace pilot!

Although there was no guarantee that Venerable Orfan was guaranteed to break through in the short or medium term, Jovy had spent enough twith the Larkinsons to know better.

In his judgment, the Larkinsons possessed so many unique advantages that the Larkinson expert pilots had the greatest chances of breaking through!

Since that was the case, Jovy judged it was worthwhile for him to participate in the development of the Riot Mark III even if certain aspects of the design were primitive from his perspective.

At the very least, designing a mech of sufficient complexity alongside Ves was anything but a waste of time!

"Very well, Ves. You have my cooperation. I will need to clear a part of my schedule for this, but I look forward to working together with you on a proper mech design project."

"Great! The Riot Mark III Project is still in the planning phase, so there is still a lot of room for changes and additional input. My wife will transfer the necessary files to you later, but for now I want your input on how you can enhance the Riot Mark III's chaos aspect."

The physical projection of Jovy smiled as the mecher clearly becintrigued by this challenge.

"You know, Ves, you have presented an interesting demand to me. The reason why I chose to specailize in probability manipulation is to reduce uncertainty. My mechs are able to perform unlikely and improbable factions at a significantly greater rate because of my deliberate manipulation. A good mech in my view should be a machine that can more consistently perform at a higher standard. Do you understand what I am trying to convey?"

Both Ves and Gloriana nodded.

"I get it." Ves responded. "If you have a 6-sided dice that you are about to throw multiple times, you want it to land on 6 as often as possible. What I want from the Riot Mark III is for him to becmuch less consistent. The 6-sided dice that represents this expert mech should not only be unbiased towards any side, but should also be expanded to a 12-sided or a 36-sided dice! The greater the possibilities, the greater the chaos!"

Such a mech would be a nightmare to pilot to anyone that preferred to control a reliable and consistent machine.

That happened to encompass most mech pilots!

"Your analogy is not quite accurate, but it presents a simple enough image of how I manipulate probabilities." Jovy spoke with an amused expression. "I am not entirely certain about why you want to turn the Riot into a less consistent and more variable expert mech, but I can immediately deduce one advantage of designing it in the direction that you have described. It becomes harder to predict your living mech's actions."

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"Predict as in mathematically model the Riot's performance?" Gloriana questioned.

"No, predict as in trying to prophesize its future actions. As you may have already known, special existences such as Ylvaine are not as anchored to the present timeline as the rest of us. They possess the rare ability to leap beyond the immediate tand look into the past or future. There are secret research departments in our Association that have studied this for longer than you know, but I am not privy to their activities. I can only say that the ability to glimpse into potential future timelines is not unique to your design spirit, and that the reliability of prophecies is not as high as we wish."

That was not a big surprise to Ves. The Big Two or the Red Two would have tried to establish cooperation with Ylvaine a lot sooner if his foresight was unique.

Ves guessed that a few Star Designers must have managed to crack sof the secrets of tand built sfancy grand work that could literally take snapshots of potential futures.

The only concern that Ves had was how much good information the mechers and the fleeters were able to acquire with their attempts of glimpsing the future. Did they see him do anything naughty? Hopefully Jovy was right that the veracity of the Association's prophecies was not that impressive!

"Just because we are bad at predicting the future does not mean our enemies are bound by the sconstraints." Gloriana mentioned. "I think I see the value in preparing for a counter that we may not necessarily need, but can save us when we eventually confront an enemy that can see the future."

Her husband was of the smind in this regard. It was always useful to have a contingency in reserve.

"Mind you, I do not think the Riot can defeat all attempts at divining the future." Jovy cautioned. "A very powerful opponent on par with the most dangerous speculative threats from Messier 87 may defeat these measures due to the enormous power disparity. Other than that, the greater the variance and the greater the possible outcomes of the Riot, the greater the cost of making an effective prediction. If Venerable Orfan can truly beca Saint, then I can likely upgrade the Riot's randomness to a level where Ylvaine and our Association's own secret means cannot path the Riot's actions in the slightest. The cost of doing so would exceed their energy budgets."

This could beca highly strategic advantage in the long run. Anything was possible in the Age of Dawn. Who knew whether a god pilot or a cultivator emerged that excelled in the manipulation of time. If such a threatening figure ever targeted the Larkinson Clan, then having an asset on hand that could frustrate any tshenanigans was worth its mass in phasewater!

"I originally did not think of this, but I can see how this can be a handy feature." Ves admitted. "Do you think that expanding the Riot's chaos factor can be of more immediate use to Orfan?"

Jovy thought for a moment before offering an answer.

"Well, if she ever fights against a high-ranking mech pilot or maybe a particularly competent phase leader, she can foil their predictions and mislead their intuition to her advantage. Becoming more unpredictable is a greater strength than you realize."

Ves beca lot more interested after hearing that!

Even if duels between expert mechs or ace mechs had beca very rare occurrence during the Red War, Ves never ruled out the possibility that human infighting would rear its ugly head once again!

If the Larkinsons ever encountered a powerful opponent that claimed he could read anyone's moves, Ves knew which champion he should push forward.