M213
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lost star
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Bolt had a commission now! An interesting one at that. His wife wanted a mech built exclusively for her little project. He didn't actually need to do it, but the idea itself was interesting enough that he had no problems doing it. Amplifying the 'spook' factor of the surrounding area was another request that he didn't mind trying.
Doing the latter turned out to be the easier request of the two. A few dead mechs were dragged in and given some minor adjustments, then an Undertaker token was placed into them. The adjustments would keep the mechs running indefinitely so long as you topped them off every few days and the tokens would produce the appropriate effects they needed for the haunted battlefield. Eternally torturedmechs souls in a quagmire of death!
Bolt had taken care to make sure that there weren't actually spirits being tortured. Oddly he was pretty sure that several of the mech spirits in Mechalla were amused and able to slip into and out of the non-functional props. He wasn't really their boss or wrangler, so he let them have their amusements. If anything it would help the process.
That just left the mech design.
This part was going to result in a new style of mech. It wouldn't be a training mech. Those were for novices. It wasn't going to be a fully functional warmech either. Having something that could be used on the battlefield would be counterproductive truthfully. If someone ascended with the wrong attitude they could lose a few dozen people as they rampaged. Bolt would rather avoid that if he could.
Here Bolt decided to lean on the newest fad that had started to emerge with his work. The current thought was that if you found one of his or Ves mechs that synched with you, you had a better chance at ascending. Bolt figured that even if it wasn't true it'd be useful as a prop to help hone the mindset needed for ascension. His idea was to create a mech that could be modified on the fly to suit someone.
It was on the face of it impossible. Designing a mech for one person was a standard procedure. Designing a singular mech for everyone was completely impossible. Modular mechs were the types of mechs that came close, and those had to make harsh tradeoffs. Bolt was going focus on several things that would make it more theoretically possible.
One was fairly simple. Bolt didn't want perfect suitability for everyone. He wanted to adapt the mech to the pilot slightly. It had to give the person a good hint as to what worked for them. Anything more than that would be outside the exercise. This meant it just needed to adjust itself a little bit.
Two was the Heart System. Here Bolt was going to open up his little vault of Crystals. He had a lot of them, and this would let him offload a lot. As part of his manufacturing contract the Crystals came to him if there was no claim on them. Most were being claimed now, but he had about a million and would likely get more because there'd always be a few unclaimed crystals out there.
Bolt had planned to blend most of the less potent ones and store the resulting spiritual power for tasks, but this gave him a different idea. He'd blend a lot of them and create sort of 'archetype' energy flavors out of the resulting energy he'd harvested. A potentiate would walk through the halls and pick one that felt right. Then put them into the mech he was working on.
The mech design was going to be a bit different from standard stuff too. It was going to be modular, with a twist. What was key was a nanotechnology derived from Dowry. With the appropriate part and a service station, the part could be placed against the mech and it'd interface with minimal adjustments. It'd require an attending technician to help smooth things out, but it would allow one to take a base design and modify it into anything within an hour or so.
This was not a miracle tech. Bolt could already see that the modifications would be relatively fragile and not particularly robust. That was actually fine. This was a mech designed to let a pilot customize it how they wanted over time. That could even be part of the gauntlet! The comparative fragility and low performance was almost a bonus rather than a hindrance in this case. Every pilot would have to work to scrabble out the most from their mech.
So inspired Bolt began work on the design.
Key here was the material base. It wasn't the standard mech alloy. Even the inside skeleton wasn't the standard alloys. Bolt chose an off-white plastic / metal hybrid family of materials that was famed mostly for how adjustable it was. The color and choice was deliberate. This mech needed to be malleable and something that could be changed quickly.
Using this required some artful design. Mechs had been made with this particular hybrid composite before. The high adaptability and lighter weight made it useful for mechs that prioritized things other than durability. Many of the more fragile speedsters used it instead of the more durable stuff. None used it quite like what Bolt was doing. He had to reinforce several key areas and make sure there were plenty of areas for the nanomachines to interface with. There was also a lot of nanomachine programming that had to be done too.
The base part of the mech formed fairly quickly after this. It was a simple an almost manikin like design. This was just the framework though. What was next, and where the lions part of the work would be were the components and customizations. That was harder.
It was also something Bolt delegated to the computers and sims mostly. These programs weren't always trustworthy for mech design, but for this project they could be trusted. The design was actually very simple at base, and almost every sim could handle this sort of thing. There were far too many components for Bolt to really make himself anyway. He could have the computer push out what was needed and fix the most obvious mistakes. Considering how temporary these mechs were, any non-serious errors wouldn't crop up really. These mechs would have about a month's runtime.
Next was the spiritual background, and the most important part of the mech. Here Bolt took inspiration from Ves and his collaboration. He couldn't use the Heart System to calibrate things, that was technically tied up in the 'custom' crystal that the pilots would be taking. This mech had to reflect what was in the crystal. Hence there'd be small channels throughout the body that would focus and direct all the spiritual power. Theoretically it would all cycle through the system and reinforce the pilot's energy, thereby helping their mindset and focus towards what was needed for an ascension. (Bolt had a lot of data about ascensions due to his crystals. It was nonsensical stuff, but he could almost see a possible pattern.)
This would all require a lot of testing before it was ready. Bolt was looking forward to it really. So many theories could be tested at once!
Doing the latter turned out to be the easier request of the two. A few dead mechs were dragged in and given some minor adjustments, then an Undertaker token was placed into them. The adjustments would keep the mechs running indefinitely so long as you topped them off every few days and the tokens would produce the appropriate effects they needed for the haunted battlefield. Eternally tortured
Bolt had taken care to make sure that there weren't actually spirits being tortured. Oddly he was pretty sure that several of the mech spirits in Mechalla were amused and able to slip into and out of the non-functional props. He wasn't really their boss or wrangler, so he let them have their amusements. If anything it would help the process.
That just left the mech design.
This part was going to result in a new style of mech. It wouldn't be a training mech. Those were for novices. It wasn't going to be a fully functional warmech either. Having something that could be used on the battlefield would be counterproductive truthfully. If someone ascended with the wrong attitude they could lose a few dozen people as they rampaged. Bolt would rather avoid that if he could.
Here Bolt decided to lean on the newest fad that had started to emerge with his work. The current thought was that if you found one of his or Ves mechs that synched with you, you had a better chance at ascending. Bolt figured that even if it wasn't true it'd be useful as a prop to help hone the mindset needed for ascension. His idea was to create a mech that could be modified on the fly to suit someone.
It was on the face of it impossible. Designing a mech for one person was a standard procedure. Designing a singular mech for everyone was completely impossible. Modular mechs were the types of mechs that came close, and those had to make harsh tradeoffs. Bolt was going focus on several things that would make it more theoretically possible.
One was fairly simple. Bolt didn't want perfect suitability for everyone. He wanted to adapt the mech to the pilot slightly. It had to give the person a good hint as to what worked for them. Anything more than that would be outside the exercise. This meant it just needed to adjust itself a little bit.
Two was the Heart System. Here Bolt was going to open up his little vault of Crystals. He had a lot of them, and this would let him offload a lot. As part of his manufacturing contract the Crystals came to him if there was no claim on them. Most were being claimed now, but he had about a million and would likely get more because there'd always be a few unclaimed crystals out there.
Bolt had planned to blend most of the less potent ones and store the resulting spiritual power for tasks, but this gave him a different idea. He'd blend a lot of them and create sort of 'archetype' energy flavors out of the resulting energy he'd harvested. A potentiate would walk through the halls and pick one that felt right. Then put them into the mech he was working on.
The mech design was going to be a bit different from standard stuff too. It was going to be modular, with a twist. What was key was a nanotechnology derived from Dowry. With the appropriate part and a service station, the part could be placed against the mech and it'd interface with minimal adjustments. It'd require an attending technician to help smooth things out, but it would allow one to take a base design and modify it into anything within an hour or so.
This was not a miracle tech. Bolt could already see that the modifications would be relatively fragile and not particularly robust. That was actually fine. This was a mech designed to let a pilot customize it how they wanted over time. That could even be part of the gauntlet! The comparative fragility and low performance was almost a bonus rather than a hindrance in this case. Every pilot would have to work to scrabble out the most from their mech.
So inspired Bolt began work on the design.
Key here was the material base. It wasn't the standard mech alloy. Even the inside skeleton wasn't the standard alloys. Bolt chose an off-white plastic / metal hybrid family of materials that was famed mostly for how adjustable it was. The color and choice was deliberate. This mech needed to be malleable and something that could be changed quickly.
Using this required some artful design. Mechs had been made with this particular hybrid composite before. The high adaptability and lighter weight made it useful for mechs that prioritized things other than durability. Many of the more fragile speedsters used it instead of the more durable stuff. None used it quite like what Bolt was doing. He had to reinforce several key areas and make sure there were plenty of areas for the nanomachines to interface with. There was also a lot of nanomachine programming that had to be done too.
The base part of the mech formed fairly quickly after this. It was a simple an almost manikin like design. This was just the framework though. What was next, and where the lions part of the work would be were the components and customizations. That was harder.
It was also something Bolt delegated to the computers and sims mostly. These programs weren't always trustworthy for mech design, but for this project they could be trusted. The design was actually very simple at base, and almost every sim could handle this sort of thing. There were far too many components for Bolt to really make himself anyway. He could have the computer push out what was needed and fix the most obvious mistakes. Considering how temporary these mechs were, any non-serious errors wouldn't crop up really. These mechs would have about a month's runtime.
Next was the spiritual background, and the most important part of the mech. Here Bolt took inspiration from Ves and his collaboration. He couldn't use the Heart System to calibrate things, that was technically tied up in the 'custom' crystal that the pilots would be taking. This mech had to reflect what was in the crystal. Hence there'd be small channels throughout the body that would focus and direct all the spiritual power. Theoretically it would all cycle through the system and reinforce the pilot's energy, thereby helping their mindset and focus towards what was needed for an ascension. (Bolt had a lot of data about ascensions due to his crystals. It was nonsensical stuff, but he could almost see a possible pattern.)
This would all require a lot of testing before it was ready. Bolt was looking forward to it really. So many theories could be tested at once!
