The components were very expensive, being thousands of dollars on their own. However, he also looked at plasma blades.
These heated the edges of a metal blade to become extremely hot. This would give it very good slashing abilities, allowing to even slash and cut at the most durable of armour plates.
These were a cheaper option, and more commonplace amongst lower tier support bots.
There were also energy shields, which used pure energy to make a translucent, glowing protective screen against attacks. These were expensive components, and rarely seen in low-tier support bots and exosuits.
He left his component search for now then began his programming of the bipedal system. He'd have to make sure that the system to walk on its own and have good enough balance to not just fall over when hit.
There were special libraries posted by people all over the galaxy of different ways to program these movements. Cael, after unlocking his Level 1 Script Sage skill, could discern much larger portions of this code than he had expected.
He remembered it helping him when programming his sensory drone too and allowed him to make more informed choices on the blocks of code displayed to him.
Some code was better suited for fast, explosive bipedal systems that ran mainly forwards, while others leaned more toward stable, omnidirectional movement.
Cael was looking for a blend of both, but was more inclined to adding omnidirectional movement as a main attribute of his support bot. If it had the size to be agile, he had to program it so that it would take advantage of that.
Downloading certain pieces of code, he began piecing together these functions and syntax in the simulation lab's very own IDE platform.
He was hard at work, and soon started to feel exerted from the amount of strain he was placing on his mind. He'd make annoying errors and be forced to check over his code, while also struggle to put all these separate blocks of code together into one unique piece.
These blocks of code didn't cover everything, though, and extra supplementary pieces had to be added by himself.
He then had a basic prototype for his bipedal schematic, and was looking to perform something known as system-simulated learning. This would allow his bipedal system to simulate walking and incrementally improve after several repetitions of trying to stand and walk around.
His bipedal system appeared in front of him, and the surrounding panels retreated. He clicked off the panels of his system, so the floating projections were given more space to move out.
"Moment of truth. Let's see this." He thought to himself.
Seeing how well one's bipedal system would work off raw code was a great determiner of its potential after this system-simulated learning.
"Simulation 1." He heard from his projector, as the bipedal system lifted and stood.
It went forward and took its first stride, which was a good sign. Just as the system attempted to run, though, it fell right over, and the next simulation began. This then continued at a much quicker pace, and his system iterated through numerous simulations to fortify his bipedal system's walking abilities.
The days went on, and after 6 days a special system notification appeared as he was continuing his work.
"I wonder what this is about." He whispered to himself, upon seeing it appear in front of all his other active panels.
[Market Trends Report #1]
[Overview]
[Attack Bots are in high demand, along with marine control bots. Medical support bots fall into even lower demand and remaining markets remain relatively stable.]
[Attack Bots: Tensions between the Soburg Empire and its rival nations have caused an increased demand for all types of attack bots. Prices are rising while costs remain relatively stable, driving up profits.]
[Marine Border Control Bots: After advances in sensory technology and reduction in cost for intelligent AI logic systems, prices for marine border control bots have dropped, disproportionately increasing demand for shared planets.]
[Medical Support Bots: Heavy regulations and costs on medical equipment makes the industry even more unprofitable. The main suppliers remain as interplanetary firms and governments.]
Cael was liking this new weekly report, as it gave him some nice information that he would've struggled to find otherwise. It even established root causes for events that occurred in the market, which was a surprisingly helpful addition.
He never would've even thought that marine border control bots would be helpful, since shared planets were no longer common. Shared planets were planets that had two different nations residing on them. They were usually planets with very valuable resources and to prevent wars from breaking out, two parties would compromise to both own a portion of the planet for themselves.
For now, Cael couldn't do much with the information. He didn't have the funds to just hop onto a trend, but did keep his eyes open for now.
Days of hard work on his autonomous bot passed and these days soon turned to weeks. To begin with, his fear wasn't very strong since he had numerous weeks before his quest would be complete. However, with more than half his time gone, it felt like he wasn't making progress as fast as he should've been.
His bipedal system was finally showing promise and had been put under serious challenges within the simulation lab's simulated walking process. It would make the system off balance, by applying force to it in many ways, but now it managed to stay up and standing.
Cael had decided to give his autonomous bot a large, sword-like plasma blade, along with one shoulder-mounted energy blaster. Another was mounted on its wrist, that was small and compact but still packed a punch.
It was a struggle to put together the design. Forming a design for pretty much any support bot from scratch was a tall order, even for adept mechanics.
The skeleton or frame of the support bot would have to be just right, and then the several components like the power sources and wiring would have to be added accordingly.
To be honest, he had no real clue if the internals of this bot was good or not. It resembled a human without skin and some muscle, but the bot did possess four arms as a striking difference.
He had nothing to reference it back to, but he knew he did the best he could
Cael now had a complex, detailed logic system, and this was after tens of hours of pure programming. It was much easier to program things like the arms, and movement of the torso compared to legs since there was no need to worry about exceptional balance and multidirectional movement.
However, he needed to program the bot's use of a sword, which required him to acquire blocks of code specialised for swordsmanship.
As he coded, though, he was hoping that in the future he could form this code himself. It would make his production speed much slower but if he could optimise his code for a model that he was working on, he could make it more energy efficient and maximise its abilities.
"Now, for the armour."
Since he was hoping to flesh out this design at some point, he couldn't give it very good, expensive armour. He stuck with metals that were cheap and commonly found in the Soburg Empire. Most of the metals he used were also found in his basic metals package.
These were metals like Dresium amongst others, and he formed alloys to then make the armour plating.
This took days, with 2 mere days to go, the final armour plate was laid down. He was stood just ahead of his bed and fell right into it once he was finished. He sighed lightly, before then looking up to see some new notifications from his system lab.
What stood in front of him was a 5'0, 185lb bot, with four arms and two sturdy, bulky legs. It had glowing yellow eyes and had a monkey-like face, which was what Cael was aiming for. On its back were four moving thrusters, to just give it extra speed when needed in battle.
"So, what should I call this thing?"
He really wasn't thinking of a name, but upon looking more deeply at the design, it resembled a true, courageous warrior. It had a somewhat bulky frame, with slim arms but a large sword on its waist. Along with that, one of its four arms had an energy blaster, along with a larger one planted on its left shoulder.
[Design Complete!]
[Name: WM-01 Valiant]
[Type: Mediumweight Attack Bot]
[Evaluation]
[Speed: 60/100]
[Agility: 64/100]
[Firepower: 30/100]
[Power Efficiency: 24/100]
[Intelligence: 25/100]
[Maintenance: 26/100]
[Versatility: 29/100]
[Framing: 20/100]
[Overall Rank: 37/100]