The Mech Touch novel Chapter 2453

Chapter 2453: Impoverished Charlatan

After adding the Ferocious Piranha design to the pile of completed projects, Ves studied the final remaining project.

The Cat's Paw design was the last one to be completed for a good reason. The heavy artillery mech was so big that it simply demanded a lot more work to take shape.

Designing it was a great endeavor. It did not help that Ves and Gloriana were the only mech designers who effectively worked on it. As a second-class mech, the machine codenamed Cat's Paw contained a wealth of advanced components with very advanced features.

The powerful weapon loadout consisted of a pair of heavy Xcordon gauss cannons, a pair of heavy positron beam cannons and a pair of light pulse cannons all needed to rely on a host of supporting systems to function correctly.

Ves and Gloriana had to cram a lot of different systems into the Cat's Paw. While a heavy mech possessed a lot of capacity, it carried a lot of weapons, each of which imposed additional demands.

The internal volume of the design quickly filled up with power systems, damage control systems, heat management systems, targeting systems, sensor systems, communication systems and other necessities such as armor and ammunition bays.

Even though Ves had already reached the standard of a second-class mech designer, he still needed to strain his mind in order to fit the pieces of the puzzle together.

Fortunately, this was something that Gloriana excelled at. Previously, she prioritized the Valkyrie Redeemer Project due to its importance to the Hegemony.

Ves did not begrudge her obvious favoritism, but he was a little disappointed that her priorities were skewed.

If she was a proper member of the Larkinson Clan, she should have devoted her efforts to finishing the Cat's Paw Project first. The Valkyrie Redeemer exclusively benefited a client while the Cat's Paw directly strengthened the Larkinson Clan.

"Well, it's okay." He shrugged.

Producing the Cat's Paw was difficult. Compared to the other mech models that were exclusive to the clan, the Cat's Paw far exceeded them in cost, scope and complexity.

In fact, Ves wasn't confident that the LMC was able to fabricate the second-class artillery mechs in its current state. He would have to outsource its productions to the Hexers or wait until his clan finally received its factory ship in order to commence production!

"Even then, I'll have to prepare all of the advanced materials needed to produce this difficult mech!"

The Cat's Paw was an expensive and difficult-to-produce machine. Even if Ves and his crew managed to establish a working production line, the production rate was bound to disappoint.

Was it worth it? Definitely!

Once the factory ship produced enough Cat's Paw mechs to fill up her bunkers, the Larkinson Clan gained a very powerful mobile bulwark!

Its budget was at least 50 percent higher than that of the Valkyrie Redeemer.

While comparing heavy artillery mechs to light skirmishers was like comparing apples to oranges, looking at cost was a good way to judge the power of a machine.

"It costs 600 million hex credits to fabricate one of these big bastards, and that only accounts for the cost of materials and licensing fees."

The actual cost was higher because Ves had to account for the cost of running the factory ship, the wages he needed to pay for the production crews and many other factors.

Rather than see it as a downside, Ves instead considered it a boon. The power of the Cat's Paw was so impressive that it should serve his clan well for at least a decade. Its usefulness could even stretch on longer if he committed to implementing incremental updates.

In comparison, the Bright Warrior was already on its way out. Its current performance could no longer keep up with the demands of the growing Larkinson Clan.

The troublesome aspect about the modular mech platform was that it was a third-class mech that incorporated a couple second-class elements, most notably its armor system.

This meant that elevating its performance was not as simple as replacing a few outdated components here and there. Ves would have to rip out most of the internals of the Bright Warrior and design something completely different in their place.

To put it simply, if Ves wanted to improve the Cat's Paw, he could simply make enough changes to produce version 1.01 or even 1.1. For the Bright Warrior, nothing less than a Mark II version sufficed.

"Ugh. That's going to be a major project at least. Should I start on it right after the wedding or should I wait a few more years?"

Once Ves finished looking over the expansive technical design schematics of the Cat's Paw, he was very satisfied at how it turned out. While it still required more time to test and optimize even further, its foundation was sound and its performance parameters were already up to standard.

The only issue was that Ves was still unsure about its spiritual characteristics.

Of all of his design spirits, only a handful directly enhanced the performance of ranged mechs.

The newly-upgraded Illustrious One provided a noticeable boost to crystals and components based on luminar technology, but the Cat's Paw utilized conventional weapon systems.

The Solemn Guardian played an indispensable role in popularizing the Soldier product line, but that was solely due to its duty-based glow.

"My clansmen already have the Golden Cat."

This left him with Ylvaine. Not James, but the spiritual fragment version of the prophet.

"Is there even a difference between the two these days?"

Whatever the case, of his entire collection of design spirits, Ylvaine was the only one that was capable of providing active targeting assistance to mech pilots. Unlike the predictive targeting systems sold by dedicated equipment developers, the assistance provided by the design spirit worked on entirely different principles.

As long as Ylvaine assisted the mech pilots to the fullest extent, they were capable of hitting critical targets with unerring accuracy!

Of course, Ves already noticed that this help did not come for free. During the Sand War, Ylvaine carefully rationed the ability to the most dedicated Kronon marksman mech specialists.

These days, Ylvaine was forced to ration its existing spiritual energy reserves even more!

When the Friday Coalition turned the Ylvaine Protectorate into its puppet state, the Kronon Dynasty was forced to scrap all of its Holy Soldier and Deliverer mechs.

The loss of hundreds of thousands of Ylvainan mechs directly crippled Ylvaine's spiritual feedback. These days, it was only able to harvest the spiritual feedback of a small number of exiled Ylvaining mech pilots.

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