Mecha Design Quest

At this point, your shop floor was filled by two prototypes, both under constant work. The first prototype was the power prototype, holding an engine, transmission, generator, and batteries. The most notable feature of it was that it caught fire all the damn time, and at this point had caused you to permanently assign a detail of two junior workers to stand around with respirators on their necks, goggles on with the halon extinguishers ready to deal with the damn thing.

The second prototype, meanwhile, was the dry fit prototype. Everything that wasn't the power system went on it, which in this instance meant the beginning of the actuator hardpoints, the cockpit, and the radio shock absorber frame. Currently, it was holding a prototype cockpit, but Guilmont & Sons had finally delivered their prototype cockpit, with Guilmont himself coming in to oversee installation in the prototype.

When he was done, you were not happy, nor impressed, nor any other lesser adjective. Stepping into the cockpit was like sliding into a safe embrace, one where the mecha was perfectly positioned to respond to you. Controls and dials were both excellently laid out relative to viewports, but also were semi-adjustable. With a very mobile seat and saddle, the design was rigged to be a double-handle and saunter system: a pilot would control the foremost legs with his own via the saunters, and the rearmore legs with two parallel sets of three-control tillers. Simple twists of the foot or the topmost control ring on the tiller would lock a knee, stablizing the mecha, while undoing those locking brakes was a simple anti-twist. More importantly, the tillers and saunters had been fully integrated with a soft wall system tied to the other tillers and saunters.

From your time learning how to pilot an Arignée, you felt this needed a little explanation. The older mechs had hard walls in the control schemes to prevent the tillers or saunters from moving past a certain point to prevent trips, even though the controls mirrored the full range of motion on the legs. During the war and immediately after, the pilot corps managed to get these replaced with soft wall systems. Instead of blocking the control, there was a brief surge of heavy resistance, which could be broken through to put the limb into a position that was possible, but potentially suboptimal for the pilot that might cause a limb tangle and related trip.

What your new mecha had now was moving soft walls, which meant a pilot didn't need to constantly force through the soft wall when moving the mecha at maximum speed to keep utilizing the full range of motion of the legs. This also meant that the soft walls served as a far more useful check on trippage in theory, because they were a way to communicate extra information to the pilot in a tactile fashion.

Someone would probably call this revolutionary. That person wasn't you, though, since the thrice-damn power prototype was still catching fire. Fortunately, you had a plan for that.

The problem with the original transmission adaptor was that it was a series of power splitters and a power joiner. To fix that, you instead came up with a relatively simple fix: you would take the standard differential from inside, and then you'd daisy-chain together three of them with extensions to the case, with the last case having the end removed to drive a flywheel with any residual power that would then have the generator leech off it. The lab had an utter fit actually building some practicable prototypes, but the system mostly worked, and even let you sneak in a better clutch and gearbox assembly to increase engine torque as needed.

Of course, every solution bred new problems as your team flailed about trying to coax more power out of the engine. Your last resort would be buying the superchargers needed to force more air into it: between the cost and the complexity of mounting the things and re-engineering the fore hull, it would be the least pleasant option as far as you could foresee.

The other options weren't much better, though. The current line of experimentation was in higher octane fuels with assorted fuel boosters in them. There were two sides to that plan, and so far neither had covered themselves in glory.

The first group had been working with a wet nitrous oxide booster system. By injecting nitrous gas into the fuel system after carburation, the nitrous oxide would break down into additional oxygen, with the added nitrogen serving as inert filler to help raise cylinder pressures. Aside from repeatedly damaging the engine as a result of mis-application of the system, they also required a patently absurd amount of nitrous oxide, which would only be used under certain conditions as a way to add extra horsepower in high-intensity situations. The addition of a tank of liquid in a pressure system that would evaporate at room temperature was also a less-than-ideal addition to an already fire-prone mecha.

The second group had been working with a direct fuel additive, tetraethyl lead. While both more simple to work with than the nitrous oxide team, the tetraethyl lead team was much more expensive in secondary costs. The material in question was made with a combination of ethyl chlorine and lead salts in a chemical equation that made your head spin, and was in low supply at all times. If this was to be a key part of your mecha's engine system, the French Army would need to dedicate intensive effort to producing the stuff in job lots. Mind, it would also work on every other engine in the French Army, but that didn't change the fact the initial outlay would be, dun dun dah, your fault.

Still, with the transmission fixed and the cockpit sorted out, you could move forward, specifically to the legs. With the feet and actuators sorted out and no last-second requirements forcing a change here, you could do final prototype leg design. Fortunately, that was dead easy. Each leg had a simple four-actuator design, and testing on the OSEN actuators revealed that they were more than adequate for the loads they'd be placed under. If you'd had substandard or shoddy actuators, you'd probably be screaming bloody murder and redesigning knee joints at this moment, trying to throttle the closest lab tech. Likewise, no arms meant no problems!

(QM note: due to the simplicity of this mecha, step 6: Leg testing and step 7: Arm testing have been omitted from this contest)

All you had to do right now was sort out your engine issues, and decide your test pilots. There were five available choices in your pool, which had inasmuch as you knew no overlap with the other workshops.

Pierre Vans was a young mecha pilot who's served out his tour in the War about the same time as you did, ending the war with four combat deployments in a mle. 1917 Argnée bis combat mecha as the pilot in three of them and the fourth as an interim vehicle commander. Calm, almost phlegmatic, he was a pool of tranquility in the cockpit and rarely made mistakes. Currently he worked as a crane operator at the docks.

Jules Montrove was a racing pilot, who had been mecha repair and refit during the War as a ferry driver and general purpose gofer. Living fast and on the edge in the race circuit, he brought a wealth of experience in handling quadruped mecha, and was more than willing to put any machine you made through its paces. Currently, he was working part-time as a cashier at a florists, due to being between race seasons.

Anna Petroyvina Chompevsky was a Russian expatriate from Rostov-on-Don, and had earned her mecha credentials as an ambulance technician in the War handling the mle. 1916 Tortue det medical recovery mecha. Well acustomed to temperamental machines and terrible terrain, her steely personality could put the skeleton of your mecha to shame. Currently, she was working as an emergency response in one of the suburbs of Paris.

Jerome St. Ignacio was a mechanic and smith with a background in mecha handling in the post-war border patrol. Used to conducting field repairs on the ancient mle. 1915 Lièvre mechs assigned the task, he had been long accustomed to finicky vehicles in harsh conditions. Generally pleasant from his correspondence, he claimed to understand how to use a soft touch to gain more from a mecha. Currently he was unemployed, after the boarder patrol units discarded their mecha for cars in the latest round of budget cuts.

Marc Fitzroy was an engineering student with the Université de Paris focused on applications of unusual mecha body-forms, with two years experience as a test pilot to some of the downright bizarre horrors that crawled out of their laboratories and three years into his degree. Energetic in correspondence, he claimed the ability to be able to handle any mecha produced in the last quarter-century; if one took the time to read between the ink-stained pawprints of a cat and the schematic doodling in the margins. Currently he was a student, whom would be given sabbatical to be employed by your workshop and laboratory.

Now, it was time to shuffle the paperwork off, and get ready for the initial prototype testing.

VOTES

Engine
[] Go for a supercharger (Most expensive option, most reliable option)
[] Install a nitrous oxide boost system (best high end performance, lowest cost, fire risk)
[] Add tetraethyl lead booster to the fuel (best overall performance, moderate cost, long-term cost generator)

Test Pilots, choose two.
[] Pierre Vans
[] Jules Montrove
[] Anna Petroyvina Chompevsky
[] Jerome St. Ignacio
[] Marc Fitzroy