The Mech Touch novel Chapter 2185

Chapter 2185 Xcordon Gauss Cannon

To second-rate states, gauss weapons weren’t considered high technology. They worked on age-old principles and their performance straightforwardly scaled with their material composition and power supply.

A gauss weapon made of stronger materials was capable of withstanding much more forces. The stresses put on a gauss rifle capable of penetrating second-class armor systems was very considerable!

If a weak gauss weapon was forced to fire something more powerful than it could handle, then it would quickly blow up in the wielder’s face!

Gauss weapons were considered kinetic weapons, which meant they mainly dealt damage by flinging a solid projectile at a target as fast as possible.

The mass of the projectile and the energy spent in propelling it forward determined how much damage the weapon inflicted.

There was a bit of room for flexibility due to these relationships!

The classical gauss cannon was geared towards channeling as much energy as it could handle to propel a heavy round at great velocities. Such gauss rounds were easily able to collapse weaker mechs in a single hit and punch straight through meters of starship armor!

However, the firing rate left much to be desired. Heavy gauss cannons focused on maximum power and maximum penetration needed to channel a lot of energy while simultaneously dealing with the incredible amount of heat generation as well as resisting the huge forces trying to pull it apart.

Typically, a gauss cannon fired once every five seconds or so, and that was under ideal conditions.

This wasn’t necessarily bad. A mech that fired a heavy gauss cannon would always be subject to powerful recoil forces. Just as the coils of a gauss weapon pushed a projectile forward, an equal and opposite force pushed those same coils back!

Managing these recoil forces was one of the many reasons why such heavy weapons were mostly found on heavy mechs. They were the mechs that coped with recoil the best in the absence of sophisticated, energy-hungry compensating systems.

Of course, many of the more expensive heavy artillery mechs incorporated them anyway. Even if these compensating systems didn’t entirely negate the recoil of a powerful physical weapon discharge, they at least lessessened the impact, thereby allowing the mech to fire an even more powerful projectile than they normally should have been able to fire!

"Are you sure you want to add recoil compensating systems in our mech?" Gloriana asked. "While our budget allows for it, it will add a lot of complexity to our mech. The energy requirements for our heavy artillery mech will skyrocket as well, to a point where it is basically impractical to deploy it as a standalone mech in ground operations."

The Akkara, the quadruped heavy mech employed by the Flagrant Vandals, was a typical example of a mech employed in both space and land battles.

Rather than a pure bunker mech, it was actually just a landbound mech that also happened to fit in a starship bunker.

What Ves just suggested was to sacrifice most of the Cat’s Paw landbound fighting capabilities in exchange for strengthening its performance as a bunker mech.

This was a very significant decision!

This did not mean he could deploy his Cat’s Paws on land. The mech commanders in charge of leading them just had to work around their insane demand for energy, meaning that they would be effectively limited to base defense!

"I think.. we can accept this tradeoff." Ves decided. "If we ever have a need to deploy a heavy artillery mech that can take part in offensive operations, we can just develop a machine that is designed to fulfill this role from the ground up. Right now, I care much more about designing the strongest bunker mech that we can fit in our future factory ship and other vessels."

The Larkinson Fleet was the main home and sanctuary of the Larkinson Clan. Defending it was his highest priority and he could not afford to compromise its defenses too much!

"That said, even a gauss cannon that is focused on maximum power can still fire as fast as an automatic weapon at lower power settings." Gloriana added. "It just needs the right ammunition at hand."

That was true as well. Some gauss cannons were able to switch to a rapid-fire mode where they fired a large amount of lighter projectiles. They packed much less of a punch, but they were very suitable to intercept a large amount of cannon fodder or incoming missiles!

Of course, it was even better to mount weapons that were meant to fire rapidly in the first place, but it was nice to have the option available.

Though Ves accepted the suggestion, he also pointed at the smaller secondary weapon mounts. "In a real battle, our mechs should ideally focus on pounding the toughest enemies with its main cannons. We can leave the job of intercepting projectiles and weaker mechs to the secondary weapons of our artillery mech."

There were many different options they could choose from. Aside from the classic rapid-fire laser weapon, they could also opt to go for a rapid-fire gauss weapon or a pulse weapon that naturally possessed a high firing rate.

Gloriana made a suggestion. "In the Hegemony, pulsed particle weapons are a common choice for this role. Compared to laser weapons, pulse weapons are relatively energy efficient, can fire very fast, are not too weak and do not generate as much heat and physical stress. They are very reliable in battle and can keep firing virtually forever as long as it is supplied with sufficient power."

"There is one big downside to pulse weapons. They are hybrid weapons that fire projectiles at speeds far lower than the speed of light. It is very difficult to hit anything at longer ranges. Laser weapons are deservedly the most widely-used weapons in space because they can hit consistently targets at much further ranges!"

Both of them halted at an impasse. It was truly difficult to decide between a short-ranged but incredibly efficient pulse weapon system or a long-ranged but more demanding laser weapon system as the secondary armament of their Cat’s Paw design.

"I think.. the long reach of laser weapons isn’t a necessity in our current design."

"How so, Ves?"

He pointed at the projection of their draft design. "The gauss cannons that give our mech a lot of physical punch works best at medium range. The energy weapons on the other hand may fire positron beams that admittedly propagate slower than the speed of light, but not that much worse!"

In practice, positron beams still traveled at relativistic speeds, which meant that it effectively made little difference in most battles!

Verify captcha to read the contentVerify