The Mech Touch novel Chapter 2137

Chapter 2137 Vexating Luck

As Ves recently designed the Doom Guard, he knew quite a lot about striker mechs.

Even after he temporarily lost access to his cranial implant, the memories were still fresh in his mind. He possessed a good understanding of the design choices he needed to make.

Of course, the Doom Guard was a spaceborn mech while his competition mech would be a landbound mech, so there were plenty of differences.

Still, the overall framework remained the same. Striker mechs were slow but tough machines that served a defensive function. Their armament always consisted of ranged weapons with a wide area of effect but also limited range and punch.

This was because they were mainly designed to take out fast, lightly-armored mechs. These light skirmishers and the like often proved to be the bane of traditional ranged mechs such as rifleman mechs or artillery mechs.

Striker mechs were the exception to this rule. Their weapons didn't require pinpoint accuracy to hit an elusive light mech. They just had to point their weapon in the general direction of an agile machine and pull the trigger. Even if their aim was off, the billowing flames or expanding shotgun pellets would more than likely not hit the target anyway!

Obviously, this paradigm did not apply to this design duel. _{freewebnovel.cσ๓}

Both would be fielding defensive mechs that wouldn't be zipping around the arena as if they were mice.

Instead, they would face each other off in the most brutal and direct fashion possible!

"This will come down to a battle of attrition." Ves murmured. "With such a low budget, both Jovy and I can forget about designing a mobile striker mech. We will both have clad our mechs with lots of cheap armor plating and arm them with weapons that are expressly designed to chew through armor!"

No matter how strange Jovy's design philosophy sounded, Ves doubted that the MTA mech designer could overcome the hard limitations of the striker mech type.

He began to envision all kinds of mechs and battle scenarios.

With two viable weapon types, Ves had to take four basic scenarios into account.

If Ves and Jovy both opted for flamethrowers, then the resulting battle basically amounted to which mech could endure the heat the longest!

If both of their mechs were armed with shotguns, then the battle would turn into a slugging match.

If Ves and Jovy opted for different weapons, then the results would become a lot more interesting.

In reality, Ves had to take way more scenarios into account than just these four. This was because there was a considerable amount of leeway in the design of their mechs.

As long as either of them were creative enough, they could definitely come up with something unconventional that stretched the limits of the tools at their disposal!

This was what made design duels exciting and unpredictable.

Ves did not have much time to make a choice. Time was running out and the design phase would soon commence.

With minutes to go, Ves wanted to come up with a viable vision right away.

"I think I'll go with flamethrowers." He said. "I've never worked with shotguns and while I'm confident that I can handle this simple weapon system, it's best to stick to familiar territory."

His knowledge base was also very suited to design mechs that handled heat and energy. He recently acquired relevant Sub-Skills such as Heat-Resistant Materials I, which would come in very handy in managing the heat levels of his design!

Ves figured that flamethrowers were also ultimately more suited to take down an armored mech.

The issue with shotguns was that they inflicted dispersed damage. With the dueling rules prohibiting the use of slugs or other armor-piercing projectiles, Ves could only make do with a tight spread of small-sized pellets.

Certainly, as long as the shotgun weapon system was strong enough, it could still chew through armor plating.

The problem was that the shotgun wielder needed to attack the same section continuously. Even if the opponent was a sluggish striker mech, it would never stand around and make it easy to pile up the damage on a specific part!

With a flamethrower, a striker mech could beat another striker mech by cooking it. Even if the flames weren't potent enough to melt the armor plating, the heat transferred to the metal had to go somewhere!

Usually, the heat applied to the armor plating bled through the internals of the mech. Unlike solid alloy, delicate internal components were much less capable of resisting excessive thermal energy!

Therefore, a duel between two flamethrower-wielding mechs usually ended when one of them spontaneously shut down because too many of its internals simply worked no more.

The biggest question Ves faced right now was whether Jovy chose to arm his striker mech with a flamethrower as well.

This wasn't a transparent design duel. Jovy had already been moved to another part of the workshop that was closed off from his current location. This meant that Ves had to make a very difficult design choice.

Should he design his striker mech to withstand thermal attacks, ballistic attacks or both?

The conventional answer should be to design his mech to cope with both possibilities. This was the standard answer and one that applied to most conventional striker mech designs.

His Doom Guard for example incorporated a premium armor system that offered a lot of resistance against laser beams, ballistic shells, kinetic rounds, melee impacts and so on. No matter what kind of weapon it faced, his Doom Guard easily endured the punishment!

Sadly, the same did not apply to the current design duel. The budget of the Doom Guard was around 2.5 times greater than the budget of his competition mech!

With the Doom Guard, Ves had the luxury of incorporating a decent, all-round armor system that provided adequate protection against any damage type.

With the paltry budget he was currently working with, his competition mech could never offer adequate protection against both physical damage and thermal damage.

Perhaps the only relief was that Jovy faced the exact same situation.

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