The Mech Touch

5723 Sequence of Winners

Dr. Paul Reemar made a short speech after his tetralaser fey became the 9th place winner.

Since the 6th to 10th place winners only earned a cash prize of 100 MTA credits each, he was actually not that better off than Esbeth Sandhurst. He only earned a little more bragging rights at most.

That was not to say that 100 MTA credits was a trivial sum. It was already enough for a mech designer who started out from nothing to acquire a fairly complete design lab and workshop.

Those who already had access to those facilities could purchase better equipment or acquire more powerful component licenses.

All-in-all, a weapon developer such as Dr. Reemar should be quite content with receiving this prize.

It was the fifth place winner and up that truly stood to gain a lot more wealth. Aside from earning greater prestige for ranking higher, he or she also stood to obtain 500 MTA credits.

Those that ranked higher could earn 1000 MTA credits, 2500 MTA credits, 5000 MTA credits or 10,000 MTA credits if they managed to earn the coveted top spot!

These were life changing sums for any independent professional or small company, but they were relatively small potatoes to most big companies.

That was just fine for Ves. It had always been his intention to encourage people such as Esbeth Sandhurst and Paul Reemar to design interesting living fey that could expand upon the options available to the Fey Fianna.

Meanwhile, those who worked hard enough to receive an invitation to go on stage took advantage of this opportunity to strengthen their brands and advertise their works!

The Fey Shaper Contest might not attract as many viewers as the previous events organized by Ves, but it still attracted a huge share of customers, both future and existing ones. Many of them had the capital to purchase the products of the contest participants. This was a golden opportunity for these well-performing individuals to achieve a marketing effect that was normally way out of their budgetary reach! Once the developer of the tetralaser fey had reached his allotted time limit and moved off the stage, Ves proceeded to announce the next winners in sequence.

[Heat Disperser Fey

Developer: Ray Tauron, Apprentice Mech Designer

Category: Utility

E Energy Attributes: Heat

Summary: The heat disperser fey is a hyper product that is designed to attach to any mech or large object and absorb heat before actively dispersing it into the environment.]

"...Many of you may question my judgment when I have designated the heat disperser fey in 8th place. Those that have witnessed or participated in many different battles will not do so, because they know that in the most intensive situations, heat management becomes progressively more difficult to get a grip on, particularly in space. When a mech cannot disperse their heat through the process of conduction and convection, the only means available to them under ordinary circumstances is radiation, which is quite limited. The heat disperser fey can relieve the immediate heat accumulation of any mech with greater ease by not only providing an additional vehicle for conduction, but also enhances the radiation efficiency due to its purpose-built design…"

[Metal Scrapper Fey]

Developer: Porto Digan, Journeyman Mech Designer

Category: Defensive, Utility

E Energy Attributes: Metal

Summary: The metal scrapper fey is capable of efficiently cutting apart scrap metal from broken wrecks. It can either bring the pieces of scrap back to a collection point, or it can also maintain hold of it to form makeshift physical shields that can offer additional defenses in battle. This makes the metal scrapper fey useful both during and after the conclusion of a battle. If no readily available wrecks are nearby, a mech unit can always bring their own disposable metal to make use of the metal scrapper fey in battle.]

"...I like the metal scrapper fey. Its main characteristic is that it offers an additional means of defense by repurposing scrap metal. The strength of these defenses are highly dependent on the properties of the materials, but that also makes it possible to attain better performance by investing in high-

quality materials. The dual-purpose nature of the metal scrapper fey also makes it useful once a battle has ended. It might be the fastest at breaking down wrecks and retrieving loose-flying pieces of scarp, but as long as their numbers are great enough, the fey can break down an entire derelict starship…"

[Anti-Shield Pulse Fey

Developer: Sarah Koyama, Senior Developer

Category: Offensive, Utility

E Energy Attributes: Electric, Space

Summary: The anti-shield pulse fey is a specialized solution that is designed to effectively destroy (transphasic) energy shields by heavily altering the operation mode of a space suppressor. By concentrating the space suppression field and combining it with an active EMP effect can produce a highly effective shield-breaking fey. The product can overcome transphasic energy shields more effectively at the expense of greater power consumption and near-total immobility.]

"...We need more fey like this. The anti-shield pulse fey is specifically designed to speed up the process of breaking the formidable transphasic energy shields that the aliens so often rely upon to keep their warships in pristine condition. It may have its limitations, but its effectiveness when employed in the right conditions is unquestionable. The anti-shield pulse fey is so impressive that I am already thinking about purchasing a large batch of them in order to give my own mech army a means to overcome the defenses of enemy warships faster…"

Not everyone among the audience was enthused by the selection of the 8th, 7th and 6th place winners. They were useful fey models no doubt, but they were highly situational in nature.

They performed well in certain scenarios, but did not offer as much value in many other situations.

This was also why Ves did not rank them higher. He had been considering whether he should rank the anti-shield pulse fey in the top 5, eventually opted against this decision because the aliens could easily counter this specific model if they became familiar with it. That did not mean the anti-

shield pulse fey was useless in the long run, but their owners had to make a careful consideration on when and where they should employ this solution.

The following fey did not have as many conditions and limitations. That was the main reason why they entered the top 5. Their greater universality meant that they were rarely a bad purchase. There should always be ways for a mech force to employ these fey in a productive manner no matter the circumstances.

[Multi-Decoy Fey]

Developer: Professor Emily Leflette, Senior Systems Developer

Category: Utility

E Energy Attributes: Light

Summary: The multi-decoy fey directly amplifies the existing decoy capabilities that is inherent to every standard fey model. Much of its capacity is occupied by specialized ECM and projector modules. This not only allows the multi-decoy fey to generate greater interference, but also produce up to 4 projections that appear as complete mechs in relatively close proximity by splitting into 4 sub-units. Relying on multiple advanced technologies, each decoy projection is able to produce emissions that closely mimic the light, heat, gravitic and other phenomena that are commonly measured by sensor systems. The fewer the amount of decoys being generated, the harder it is to discover their loopholes.]

The multi-decoy fey was a product that impressed Ves more than many of the other contest submissions.

It did not look all that powerful when it appeared above the main stage. It was covered with projection systems and ECM modules that caused it to look rather messy and disorganized.

People's impression of the multi-decoy fey improved a lot more when it showcased its main function.

The living fey split up into four smaller units before each of them produced a convincing decoy projection of a Fey Fianna mech.

"It looks quite real!"

"I can sense the heat produced by their flight systems. It won't be so easy for enemies to distinguish true and false, especially at a distance."

"I always had problems with fey getting shot after doing their jobs by posing as decoys. Being able to produce more of them from a single fey will not only save us more money, but divert more firepower away from our actual mechs."

No one disagreed with the selection of the multi-spirit fey. It had earned its place in the top 5 because the ability to generate 4 times as many decoys as other fey was incredibly practical and useful in any battle!

The biggest downside to the multi-decoy fey was that it had sacrificed the ability to do anything else to gain this power. It was unable to contribute more directly to a battle due to lacking space for weapon systems, defense systems and other functional modules.

However, the multi-decoy fey did not necessarily need all of these frills.

"Professor Emily Leflette has done an admirable job by leading a team of engineers who successfully developed a more refined subterfuge solution. The multi-decoy fey is unparalleled when it comes to producing multiple high-

quality decoys. The alien warships already have difficulty trying to distinguish the disguised fey from actual mechs. We can reduce our enemy's hit rate even further by employing a product that is expressly designed to waste their firepower even more!"

Ves genuinely appreciated the multi-decoy fey. He did not have any qualms about ranking it higher, but alas the following 4 fey models managed to impress him even more.

Still, it was not bad for this product to win 5th place. The prizes awarded to the winners became a lot more substantial at this point!

Unlike the previous mech designers and developers who got invited to speak on stage, Professor Emily Leflette was a lot older.

The Fey Shaper Contest primarily attracted young and independent professionals, but Ves did not prohibit the participation of older individuals who employed entire teams.

What ultimately mattered was that the resulting fey model would become strong enough to earn a high ranking!

Clearly, Professor Leflette managed to pull it off. She received far more publicity at this time than she could ever attain if she continued to work at a development company!

The older but fairly dignified woman addressed his audience.

"It is not unheard of to equip drone mechs with ECM spurs that can produce decoys that appear convincing at a distance. The results have never satisfied us because the spurs designed for those models are always limiting our work. They are too small and not capable of performing all of the raw calculations needed to increase the realism of an active decoy."

The woman gestured at the active multi-decoy fey hovering above her head. "The release of the Fey Fianna has given us a chance to fulfill the goal that we have set. The individual fey are large enough to accommodate more technologies. While I have designed the multi-decoy fey to split in order to effectively produce more than one convincing decoy projection at a time, they still remain connected to each other."

Every decoy mech had to be produced by a physical sub-unit. It was possible to create a projection of a mech at a distance, but without anything physical in its core, it would be incredibly easy to discern truth from falsehood.

If Professor Leflette truly managed to solve this shortcoming, then Ves would have no qualms about putting her in first place!

This was because if the aliens successfully struck a decoy mech, it did not necessarily go down because nothing physical incurred any damage!

Alas, the continued inability to do so without relying on any physical anchors producing many of the false emissions was an existing technological constraint.

Hopefully, red humanity would be able to produce a breakthrough in the future. Ves believed that decoy-generating products would see a vast increase in popularity. If he wasn't already swamped with other work responsibilities, even he might feel tempted to work towards a solution.

However, he was not a specialist in this field, so it was better for him to leave this job to more relevant professionals.

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