1844 What Pirate?

Discovering that Merrill Truman was right at home in a mech workshop came as a pleasant surprise to Ves. He had become incredibly disappointed at the lack of hands-on fluency in his other subordinates.

While he didn't insist that every mech designer should have the same competences at him, he still thought it was an awful idea for someone of his profession to neglect this side of the job!

How could mech designers possibly know what they were dealing with when they never put a mech together piece by piece?

How could mech designers expertly model and anticipate the performance of mechs if they never came close to a component weighing several tons?

How could mech designers possibly claim to understand mechs when they never saw the consequences of battle in person?