The Mech Touch novel Chapter 2629

Chapter 2629: Developing Prime Mechs

Prime mechs had become the new obsession of the Miracle Couple.

This newly-invented category of mechs exhibited properties that no one in the fleet had ever heard of. In order to make sure that someone hadn't stolen his thunder, Ves even spent a few hours searching across the entire galactic net.

He even visited the MTA and Rim Guardian's virtual portals to look up whether other mech designers discovered different forms of resonance besides the ones that everyone knew about.

It turned out that Ves was not unique in this case. He looked fascinated as he read up on inventions that enabled resonance between two expert pilots in a single expert mech, resonance between two expert mechs with two expert mechs and more creative arrangements.

In fact, a more immediate example was the infamous Unit L of the Coalition Reserve Corps! Venerable Ghanso Larkinson's Charlemagne exhibited the capability of extending its resonance to the Scarra, a group of accompanying quasi-expert mechs!

Therefore, inventing a new and unusual method to generate resonance was not unheard of in human space. The reason why they weren't popularized like other forms of resonance was because the conditions were too harsh.

Unless a skilled mech designer specifically invested in a specific solution, it was too difficult to meet all of the conditions. It simply wasn't worth it to popularize a different method because the market and the mech industry simply had better options at their disposal.

Better did not necessarily mean stronger. After all, Unit L had already paid off in spades by defeating more than a dozen expert mechs and killing off almost just as many expert pilots.

Better in this case meant that it was more economical, practical and cost-efficient to just rely on fielding expert pilots with traditional expert mechs. If a better and more affordable method of utilizing resonance became known, then it would have displaced the current paradigm!

In the context of the prevailing industry standard, prime mechs were not that impressive. They were merely souped-up standard mechs that failed to match the standard of genuine expert mechs.

The main reason why Ves bothered them at all was because he currently lacked the ability to field expert mechs. This was just a temporary problem, though. Once he completed the current round of mech design projects and tackled the next round, his clan would likely welcome its first batch of expert mechs in about a year.

Ves was looking forward to that time.

He just had to be patient. For now, Ves was attracted by the convenience and the various applications of his new invention. He had just confirmed that just like forced resonance, prime resonance could be used to supercharge battle formations, thereby allowing them to unleash much more powerful attacks than usual.

Now that he confirmed the utility of the Valkyrie Prime, it was no longer a priority to investigate it further. If he wanted to increase the comprehensive strength of his forces, it was much more efficient to develop additional prime mechs.

When Ves and Gloriana entered the former's personal workshop the next day, they planned out their next assignments.

"We have multiple expert pilots who are currently being underutilized due to the limitations of their mechs." Ves began as he projected a list of the Larkinson Clan's expert pilot roster. "Now, we have given Venerable Joshua something to sink his teeth into. While he still cannot express his full might with the Valkyrie Prime, he can at least begin to exercise his resonance strength. This alone is enough of a reason to continue building prime mechs. While they demand a very specific resource, they aren't as troublesome to design as expert mechs."

"How much Unending alloy do you have, still?"

"I just took stock of that earlier." Ves spoke. "To be honest, we don't have as much as I would like. We have enough Unending alloy to comprehensively armor three to four mechs depending on how frugal we are. The Valkyrie Prime admittedly uses more Unending alloy than is strictly needed. If we skip reinforcing the internal frame and reduce the thickness of the armor plating by at least 25 percent, we can probably make four additional prime mechs that will perform nearly as well."

Of course, both of them knew that this wasn't actually true. While the performance of the subsequent prime mechs was indistinguishable from the Valkyrie Prime against normal opponents, in tougher battles that extra armor and reinforced structure could make a substantial difference!

Though Gloriana frowned a bit, she was helpless to do anything about it. The only way to remedy this shortcoming was to supply more Unending alloy, but how could she possibly do that? She didn't even know how Ves got his hands on this extraordinary material!

"It's so fascinating to know that materials like Unending alloy exist." She sighed as she leaned against her husband's shoulder. "The Milky Way is home to a large variety of exotics. The Red Ocean will introduce even more materials with unusual effects. I wonder if we can find a substitute for Unending alloy?"

Ves shrugged. "I'm not so sure about that. Unending alloy itself is a manufactured product. I salvaged it out of some really old and creepy statues that must have been built by extinct alien civilizations. I've tried to analyze the alloy in order to figure out its composition, but it's too damn hard and incredible in other ways for me to do that. Not even the lab equipment on this ship is up to par. I think we need to get our hands on actual first-class scanning machines to identify the exotics and the proportion that make up this remarkable alloy."

That wasn't going to happen anytime soon. While Ves was tempted to ask Master Willix a favor, he didn't want her to look too closely at what he was doing with Unending alloy.

As Ves and Gloriana made some quick calculations on how far they could stretch their current reserves of Unending alloy, they ended up with an unsatisfactory conclusion.

"We can either build 4 good prime mechs or 5 barely passable prime mechs with the supply we have." Gloriana stated. "Barely passable in this case means very vulnerable when their weak points are targeted."

"The biggest issue by far is the Shield of Samar." Ves noted. "The mech is too damn big. It uses up more Unending alloy than a more normal medium mech. While Venerable Tusa's light mech is not as demanding, we can't be too stingy with his machine."

The two puzzled over their options and eventually decided to make some compromises.

Ves tapped the projected names of Venerable Dise, Venerable Orfan and Venerable Tusa. "We need to prioritize our resource allocation towards our offensive melee mechs. They are the ones who need the premium protection the most. Venerable Dise just happens to be the nexus of the Swordmaiden battle network, so her mech has the highest priority."

There was a good reason to focus on meeting the needs of their offensive melee specialists. Just like Venerable Joshua, the three aforementioned expert pilots were powerful duelists and possessed a lot of agency on the battlefield. They could single-handedly turn a battle around by taking advantage of their high threat and fantastic freedom of movement. _{freёwebnovel.com}

Verify captcha to read the contentVerify