lost star
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Entertaining, but no.
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GrindStone
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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Plebe mentality, real enjoyers always appreciate the classics.
M034
New
lost star
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They didn't just focus on Ghoul of course. They did all the mechs. It was both good practice and helpful for them all. As eager as they were, it took time to learn how others did things. Bolt especially had issues. He sympathized with Lilly a bit more now. He knew they were average students from their college. As time passed he could see their limitations compared it him. Sometimes those limits frustrated him. He made sure to identify those times and kill the building pride fast. Over time he learned to appreciate the different viewpoints, and the added eyes and hands were worth all the problems.
Of the revisions, Zombie was the hardest to do overall. Pushing him up from a one to five star was hard. Doing it incrementally was hard and expensive parts wise. The only reason they were even able to do it was the wealth Bolt had in game and the fact that older parts were really cheap. The tricky thing was that his gimmick was only really legitimate at one star due to the limited and primitive parts. Past that a one shot missile didn't matter nearly as effecively.
What they ended up doing, and it was just a bit hilarious in retrospect, was changing out the head payload for each star. Low level, it was just explosives. High level, it became a sort of mix of everything that fragmented and caused chaos. It became less a finisher and more a disruption that was best used at a critical moment. They also ended up putting most of the sensors in the shoulder and making the head completely expendable as a five star. It was a bit awkward to pilot in that regard, but it worked well enough to function. Especially because Zombie was a borderline frontline mech at all levels.
The ugly looking mech appeared to be clumsy and hard to pilot on the surface, but the truth of it was that he was actually a pretty durable and deceptively easy melee mech to use. Basically a shield-knight in zombie form. They'd specifically leaned into that and his affordability as his main real benefit. Functionally he was still pretty wasted as anything more than fodder, but just having a durable and cheap body that could take a hit and keep going was sometimes all you needed.
Ghoul had the most revisions due to it being Lilly's main choice for most tasks. They removed the acid and made the jaws viable as an attack method. Past two stars, her claws and hands had a specifically revised design that made them able to get into the armor seams on a mech and pry open the armor with a single smooth motion. It required precision and skill, but it was a distinctly different sort of attack that set her outside your standard skirmisher. They also changed her internal structure so that she could run on all fours, and pounce on things without actually damaging herself. Finally her bite was now a viable attack. She was faster and more durable at five stars, but pretty similar in function across all levels. Light Skirmishers had narrow applications and few pilots frankly. It was a useful, but extremely high skill level niche.
The Drowned Man was the least changed. Upgrading and downgrading his designs to fit various stars was fairly easy. What wasn't easy was the fact his fog generator wasn't exactly being updated anymore. Modern sensors could peer through it with relative ease. They didn't have a fix for that from the company, or the knowledge to do it themselves. The most they could do was update what they could and leave the generator for later with a small note to revise if they got a good substitute. Ando had some fun fixing the armor on it at least. The semi-stealth alloy was an interesting thing to work with and took some finesse to layer with other armors. At five stars he was mostly a swordsman with a small gimmick in his mist. Respectable but unremarkable aside from that. (Not all of them could be utterly unique.)
Undertaker was something Dai took a personal offense to in contrast. The designer ended up completely redoing the gun and the ammo in a long frustrated fit. From the outside it looked the same, but even the four star design had a good twenty percent more range and area coverage. It also sent out significantly more mist, because he'd added a sort of grapeshot mist bombs that launched with the shells. Downgrading it turned out to be the hardest task, since the jamming and communication protocols just didn't scale down tech wise. They ended up having to remove that for the two and one star models which frankly made the mech a less than useful cannoneer at those levels. The five stars was a surprisingly capable support mech for small teams though.
The Bloody Berserker was probably the most commercially viable of Bolt's creations. It was also a mech he'd rushed to create. Bolt had done some serious mistakes while making it. The armor for instance. It had been so bad that on his first pass Ando had both decreased the cost and increased the durability in one swoop. The twin generators had to be redone completely as well. Bolt's work on the power distribution had been very hasty and required some dedicated work from everyone to make it properly functional in all edge cases. Finally the boosters actually caused damage to the mech. The damage itself was small, but it did add to the repair bill at the end of the day and could be potentially catastrophic if ignored. Wu spent an entire day fixing that issue while retaining the deadly acceleration the mech needed to be a threat.
Appearance wise, Berserker looked exactly the same after the revisions. Internally there were a lot of changes. They'd chopped off about five percent of the cost, it was slightly easier to repair, and the boosters were no longer damaging. It also lacked a serious flaw that hadn't come up in the game. The Bloody Berserker's runtime was actually pretty shitty. The dual generators guzzled twice the fuel a single generator would. This sounded obvious, but generators scaled up very well. A single instead of two smaller ones was far more efficient. Heavies weren't exactly known for endurance either. Fixing that had required a mix of letting one generator idle when not in actual combat, and expanding the fuel storage. This required some creative part shuffling, but they managed it. (They also left in and actually enhanced the steam burst that happened when the armor dropped.)
Berserker also held up surprisingly well when you downgraded it. The top speed took the largest hit, but the rest was really just it's base design. A one star Bloody Berserker was still a very deadly and durable close ranged monster with very heavy and dangerous axes. It was just pretty slow and sluggish at that level. That did make it rather useless in the niche it was designed for, but one star mechs were based off old, low performance designs in the first place.
Amusingly, over time the largest arguments were over the appearance of the mechs rather than anything else. Marketability was one area that Bolt knew he was absolutely horrible at. Inside the game, the appearance was a fun novelty. Outside the game, the undead aesthetic was decidedly less acceptable. Bolt wanted to keep it anyway. If his family every built the mechs outside the game, it'd be for niche users that wanted those specific mechs. Bolt didn't anticipate there being any other buyers really. In the end there was a small compromise where they simply had different looks available. It required a few minutes adjusting the profile and outer armor for all the mechs but was ultimately just a day's worth of work for all of them.
The largest accomplishment was the conclusion of the only six star Mech Bolt planned on. Ghoul's final version had a central processor that used nanomachines and a refinery to process mech parts. Her main sensors could identify components that that processor would use, and then she could eat them. She would then use those materials to repair herself or give herself more fuel.
Visually the process was a bit gross. She'd eat something, and then seemingly 'drool' out a compound that would fix her wounds when the mech spread it over her body. It was not a pretty thing to witness. It also didn't guarantee an indefinite operational capacity or repair ability. The repairs would be the equivalent to patches, and anything that hit the skeleton or vital points wasn't possible to repair. It still doubled her theoretical deployment time.
In addition to the survivability, Ghouls claws and teeth were significantly better than even the five star version. Iterating on the claws effects had given them a good understanding of how to make it lethal to other mechs and they could use some trace exotics to further enhance the damage at six stars. Iron Spirit had a bit of trouble simulating that sort of thing, but it managed. Ghoul could rip a mech's armor off in a second, then use her bite to theoretically both take out a mech and refuel herself with one pounce. This made her a light, fast, long living mech that could live behind enemy lines for a very long time.
For giggles, Bolt named the thing Dowery and then added a little red lily-shaped adornment on her head as the finishing touch. He then sent the concluded product to Lilly in Iron Spirit to get it tested. While that was going on, he and the others did the finishing touches on a set of plans for the big contest.
They could not bring in their own designs. They would actually have outside communications blocked off while in the testing area. What they could do was memorize a few possible designs. This contest would be a series of battles in a series of prepared battlefields. It would all be live, and they'd have to repair the mech between bouts. The battlefields themselves would be chosen at random out of a series of one hundred of them around the planet. To further complicate things, there would be additional events or changes to each arena to keep things interesting for the pilots and audience.
It was not going to be easy or quick. Lilly seemed very enthusiastic though. (Also she loved Ghoul's newest form.)
Bolt in his haste did make on very, very minor mistake in his perpetrations. He'd listed Dowery as a public mech. It was a mistake he wouldn't catch for awhile.
Of the revisions, Zombie was the hardest to do overall. Pushing him up from a one to five star was hard. Doing it incrementally was hard and expensive parts wise. The only reason they were even able to do it was the wealth Bolt had in game and the fact that older parts were really cheap. The tricky thing was that his gimmick was only really legitimate at one star due to the limited and primitive parts. Past that a one shot missile didn't matter nearly as effecively.
What they ended up doing, and it was just a bit hilarious in retrospect, was changing out the head payload for each star. Low level, it was just explosives. High level, it became a sort of mix of everything that fragmented and caused chaos. It became less a finisher and more a disruption that was best used at a critical moment. They also ended up putting most of the sensors in the shoulder and making the head completely expendable as a five star. It was a bit awkward to pilot in that regard, but it worked well enough to function. Especially because Zombie was a borderline frontline mech at all levels.
The ugly looking mech appeared to be clumsy and hard to pilot on the surface, but the truth of it was that he was actually a pretty durable and deceptively easy melee mech to use. Basically a shield-knight in zombie form. They'd specifically leaned into that and his affordability as his main real benefit. Functionally he was still pretty wasted as anything more than fodder, but just having a durable and cheap body that could take a hit and keep going was sometimes all you needed.
Ghoul had the most revisions due to it being Lilly's main choice for most tasks. They removed the acid and made the jaws viable as an attack method. Past two stars, her claws and hands had a specifically revised design that made them able to get into the armor seams on a mech and pry open the armor with a single smooth motion. It required precision and skill, but it was a distinctly different sort of attack that set her outside your standard skirmisher. They also changed her internal structure so that she could run on all fours, and pounce on things without actually damaging herself. Finally her bite was now a viable attack. She was faster and more durable at five stars, but pretty similar in function across all levels. Light Skirmishers had narrow applications and few pilots frankly. It was a useful, but extremely high skill level niche.
The Drowned Man was the least changed. Upgrading and downgrading his designs to fit various stars was fairly easy. What wasn't easy was the fact his fog generator wasn't exactly being updated anymore. Modern sensors could peer through it with relative ease. They didn't have a fix for that from the company, or the knowledge to do it themselves. The most they could do was update what they could and leave the generator for later with a small note to revise if they got a good substitute. Ando had some fun fixing the armor on it at least. The semi-stealth alloy was an interesting thing to work with and took some finesse to layer with other armors. At five stars he was mostly a swordsman with a small gimmick in his mist. Respectable but unremarkable aside from that. (Not all of them could be utterly unique.)
Undertaker was something Dai took a personal offense to in contrast. The designer ended up completely redoing the gun and the ammo in a long frustrated fit. From the outside it looked the same, but even the four star design had a good twenty percent more range and area coverage. It also sent out significantly more mist, because he'd added a sort of grapeshot mist bombs that launched with the shells. Downgrading it turned out to be the hardest task, since the jamming and communication protocols just didn't scale down tech wise. They ended up having to remove that for the two and one star models which frankly made the mech a less than useful cannoneer at those levels. The five stars was a surprisingly capable support mech for small teams though.
The Bloody Berserker was probably the most commercially viable of Bolt's creations. It was also a mech he'd rushed to create. Bolt had done some serious mistakes while making it. The armor for instance. It had been so bad that on his first pass Ando had both decreased the cost and increased the durability in one swoop. The twin generators had to be redone completely as well. Bolt's work on the power distribution had been very hasty and required some dedicated work from everyone to make it properly functional in all edge cases. Finally the boosters actually caused damage to the mech. The damage itself was small, but it did add to the repair bill at the end of the day and could be potentially catastrophic if ignored. Wu spent an entire day fixing that issue while retaining the deadly acceleration the mech needed to be a threat.
Appearance wise, Berserker looked exactly the same after the revisions. Internally there were a lot of changes. They'd chopped off about five percent of the cost, it was slightly easier to repair, and the boosters were no longer damaging. It also lacked a serious flaw that hadn't come up in the game. The Bloody Berserker's runtime was actually pretty shitty. The dual generators guzzled twice the fuel a single generator would. This sounded obvious, but generators scaled up very well. A single instead of two smaller ones was far more efficient. Heavies weren't exactly known for endurance either. Fixing that had required a mix of letting one generator idle when not in actual combat, and expanding the fuel storage. This required some creative part shuffling, but they managed it. (They also left in and actually enhanced the steam burst that happened when the armor dropped.)
Berserker also held up surprisingly well when you downgraded it. The top speed took the largest hit, but the rest was really just it's base design. A one star Bloody Berserker was still a very deadly and durable close ranged monster with very heavy and dangerous axes. It was just pretty slow and sluggish at that level. That did make it rather useless in the niche it was designed for, but one star mechs were based off old, low performance designs in the first place.
Amusingly, over time the largest arguments were over the appearance of the mechs rather than anything else. Marketability was one area that Bolt knew he was absolutely horrible at. Inside the game, the appearance was a fun novelty. Outside the game, the undead aesthetic was decidedly less acceptable. Bolt wanted to keep it anyway. If his family every built the mechs outside the game, it'd be for niche users that wanted those specific mechs. Bolt didn't anticipate there being any other buyers really. In the end there was a small compromise where they simply had different looks available. It required a few minutes adjusting the profile and outer armor for all the mechs but was ultimately just a day's worth of work for all of them.
The largest accomplishment was the conclusion of the only six star Mech Bolt planned on. Ghoul's final version had a central processor that used nanomachines and a refinery to process mech parts. Her main sensors could identify components that that processor would use, and then she could eat them. She would then use those materials to repair herself or give herself more fuel.
Visually the process was a bit gross. She'd eat something, and then seemingly 'drool' out a compound that would fix her wounds when the mech spread it over her body. It was not a pretty thing to witness. It also didn't guarantee an indefinite operational capacity or repair ability. The repairs would be the equivalent to patches, and anything that hit the skeleton or vital points wasn't possible to repair. It still doubled her theoretical deployment time.
In addition to the survivability, Ghouls claws and teeth were significantly better than even the five star version. Iterating on the claws effects had given them a good understanding of how to make it lethal to other mechs and they could use some trace exotics to further enhance the damage at six stars. Iron Spirit had a bit of trouble simulating that sort of thing, but it managed. Ghoul could rip a mech's armor off in a second, then use her bite to theoretically both take out a mech and refuel herself with one pounce. This made her a light, fast, long living mech that could live behind enemy lines for a very long time.
For giggles, Bolt named the thing Dowery and then added a little red lily-shaped adornment on her head as the finishing touch. He then sent the concluded product to Lilly in Iron Spirit to get it tested. While that was going on, he and the others did the finishing touches on a set of plans for the big contest.
They could not bring in their own designs. They would actually have outside communications blocked off while in the testing area. What they could do was memorize a few possible designs. This contest would be a series of battles in a series of prepared battlefields. It would all be live, and they'd have to repair the mech between bouts. The battlefields themselves would be chosen at random out of a series of one hundred of them around the planet. To further complicate things, there would be additional events or changes to each arena to keep things interesting for the pilots and audience.
It was not going to be easy or quick. Lilly seemed very enthusiastic though. (Also she loved Ghoul's newest form.)
Bolt in his haste did make on very, very minor mistake in his perpetrations. He'd listed Dowery as a public mech. It was a mistake he wouldn't catch for awhile.
Wolfjob
Not too sore, are you?
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Guess who's sleeping on the couch for the next year lmao
Evaunit02mark1
Here for the finer things in life
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I mean lily might not like people get to play with her toy in game, but tell me she doesn't have bragging rights for days.
"Oh your hubby got you a ring with a shiny rock on it? Mine designed a mech that lets me literally eat people I don't like. Get on my level bitch."
GrindStone
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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Announcing your incoming marriage via mech sale is a pretty chad move.
BismuthBorealis
Making the rounds.
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There was never any mention of him making it, just that it worked in the undead legion playstyle, and since it only showed up in that one interlude I assume it's a mech someone else made based on rhe zombie and drowned man to fit the theme, rather than one of his.
lost star
Connoisseur.
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Correct. It was just something someone added to fit the theme and fill a niche.