The Suit-Maker 10 Hea

There were several ways to deal with heat. Nowadays modern Battlesuits used special coolant but such options were not available to me as the Steambot was designed and built in an era that did not have such modern chemical compounds. Not only would such chemicals push the Grade of the Battlesuit beyond Grade 0, I would have to rework the entire internals of the Steambot to accommodate it. Needless to say, I was not going to do that. Instead I was going to use what was already there.

Victor Sage's twin heat exhaust design was considered revolutionary for it's time. Before the Steambot, most Battlesuits depends on their operators to deal with the heat problem. Operators need to make sure they do not push their suits too hard to avoid accumulating too much heat. The twin exhaust designed by Sage solved that problem once and for all. You could even argue that it was the main reason why the steaming exhaust were so iconic. I decide to make full use of it.

I created a new pathway to link the legs to the two exhausts and connect the pathway to the original cooling mechanism of the operating rig. The Clockwork Technology may be a secondary system but I did not want to do a separate action just to vent the heat of the SH-3 Legs. By combining the heat dissipation system to the original design of the Steambot, hopefully I only need to release the valve to vent the heat of the whole suit.

I did an initial test of the system after implementing the system and the result was not great. Heat was being dissipated but only at a rate similar to heat absorption. Even an elementary designer like myself could tell you that heat dissipation must be higher than heat absorption. I tried tinkering with the system but after a while I discovered the limitations of my new skill. No matter what I try, there was no way to meaningfully improve the heat dissipation. Tinkering does not solve design flaws.

Giving up on tinkering with the system, I went back to the drawing board. I looked over the specs of my modified Steambot and the results of the simulation test. Outside the heating issue, my Steambot actually did very well in the test. My modified Steambot was a notable improvement to the original model with improved performance in almost all categories of note. The results of the test told me that I was on the right track. If I could clear this heating hurdle, I would have a viable Steambot on the market.

I'm no genius but I do have experience and in my experience, sometimes the simplest method was the best. My modified Steambot works. It may have a design flaw but the idea of putting a secondary technology on it was sound. Even my idea of connecting the SH-3 Legs to the twin exhaust of the Steambot works, to an extent. So I try the simple thing first. I created another pathway from the legs to the cooling system. In theory, having two pathways instead of one means that the heat would be dissipated at twice the rate. Would it be enough? I had no idea but I created the second pathway and ran the test again. This time, the results was positive. Heat dissipation was higher than heat absorption and the test even told me that the twin exhaust was able to handle the stress of the extra heat. I broke into a wide smile. I had not taken into account the extra stress the two exhaust would be under. I still had a long way to go as a Designer.

I put the modified Steambot back on my Dive shop. A cost from Dive came up due to the new modification and I gladly paid it. A sense of satisfaction came over me. It was a lot of work for a Grade 0 Battlesuit but I felt that it was worth it. I finally had a unique Battlesuit for sale.

Now come marketing.

As it was the biggest platform for technology in the Solar System, new designs always pop up in Dive and the competition for customers was fierce. Flash Corporation did not let such a golden money-making opportunity go to waste. Dive had several advertising channels for designers with the highest being personalized advertisements. If you take up this channel, Dive would send personalized advertisements promoting your products to players who had express even the remotest interest in your product. However such personalized advertisements could easily cost a thousand credits a day and I had no desire to waste my credits. After all, I just need to sell one Battlesuit and the best way for that would be by word of mouth. I just need to impress one person with my modified Steambot and the best way to do that is with action.

I got up and left the Dive console for the second part of Dive; the Dive pod. For most people, the Dive pod was Dive. Most people don't spend their DP to design their own Battlesuits, vehicles, spaceships, mechs etc. They used their DP to play and in order to play, you need a Dive pod. A simulator that put the player in the seat of the vehicle of choice, the pod I inherited was a mid-level model. I was pretty impressed with it. It don't have the neural interface that would give me the full sensation of being in the operating rig but it was fully-enclosed, which was more than the cheap models I usually rent at gaming centers.

I made sure the workshop was closed and locked before entering the pod. As I sat down in the pod and it closed up, the screen in the pod changed to my login page. Unlike my design page, my pod page wasn't empty. I had played games on Dive before though I didn't really concentrate on any one specific game world. Unlike the console which only shows the design page, the Dive pod allows me to enter any game worlds I want within the Dive platform and there was even a history page showing the various game worlds I had entered before. As my desire was to sell a modified Steambot, I knew which game world I should go to. Once again, there was a cost. Just as it cost DP to design a Battlesuit, it cost DP to enter a game world. The moment I selected the game world I wanted to join, various promotions popped up on my screen. I took a one month pass and accessed the game world of 'Lands of the Whistler', or more commonly known to the general public as 'Old World'.

Chapter end