The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3453

Chapter 3453: Short Burst Mech

At the start of the High Tide Tournament, all 94 competing Journeymen called up a document that precisely explained the conditions they had to work in. The lengthy pages outlined what they were allowed to design, what they needed to avoid in their work, what materials and components they could employ and what specific technical requirements they needed to meet.

Ves quickly noticed that the tournament organizers didn't set any unusual or overly limiting conditions.

Sure, he had to work with a set of completely unfamiliar materials. He also wasn't familiar with any of the component designs in the catalog. However, a good mech designer didn't need to know all of these elements in advance to design a working mech.

"I can still design many different kinds of mechs under these conditions."

The High Tide Tournament evidently wanted to showcase a lot of variety. The greater point behind this was to show to the audience that the Korok Alpha KA-35 could easily produce many different machines.

After he understood all of the specific parameters his competition mech had to meet, he cast his thoughts on his most important decision.

"Which plan should I adopt?"

He developed several different plans, each of which was based on a specific mech type and a design concept.

Personally, he wanted to design a hero mech. A machine that was equally capable in ranged and melee combat could perform well no matter what opponent it faced during the fighting phase.

"This is a mistake, though."

The tournament format didn't provide the best conditions for hero mechs. An all-round performance meant that a hero mech would never lose quickly, but also needed to fight hard in order to achieve a victory.

This was rather iffy to Ves. What if the hero mech lost all three matches because the hero mech didn't possess any pronounced strengths?

Sure, hero mechs were versatile and adaptable, but in an arena setting like this, it was too easy for more specialized mechs to showcase their power.

Ves recalled one very important detail in the tournament rules.

"Every competition mech must fight against three random opponents. The scores of the two best performances will be added up in order to form a final score. As a consequence, the results of the worst match will not be taken into consideration."

The implication of this scoring method was that it was okay if a competition mech lost in a terrible fashion!

Such situations usually occurred when mechs were matched up against other ones that just happened to counter them. For example, a light mech would have an awful time if it had to fight against a striker mech.

"With the way the rules are set up, I don't have to be too afraid of taking a gamble. I can afford to lose one without suffering any consequences."

The downside was that his competitors also enjoyed the same advantage!

He believed that they too understood how to game the rules in order to maximize their chances of winning. They shouldn't be stupid enough to design balanced, versatile mechs in this setting. _{ƒгeewebnovёl.com}

It was much wiser to design a specialized mech that clearly excelled in a single mode of combat!

This way, the competition mech would have the tools it needed to gain the upper hand in even matchups.

"Besides, a hero mech is also more complex to design and build."

Ves only had 12 hours to design and fabricate a competition mech. Even if a superfab worked faster than any of his own production machines, he still needed to reserve at least two hours for this task, so his effective design time amounted to just 10 hours!

With so little time at his disposal, how could he have the courage to design a complicated mech? He should be going for simplicity instead!

"The simpler the mech, the greater I can elevate its overall quality and performance."

With that in mind, Ves silently discarded his plan to design a hero mech and considered his remaining choices.

"I can design either a landbound or aerial mech. Regardless, it will have to fight in a decently-sized arena with no distinct features and a moderate height limit."

If Ves wanted to avoid his mechs getting countered too easily, then he should design a mech that was able to retaliate against aerial opponents.

That meant he should either design a ranged mech or a melee mech with flight capabilities.

However, neither choice sounded optimal.

A ranged mech was good at taking out targets from any range, but they were basically dead if any melee mech managed to get into point-blank range.

The key to designing a good ranged mech in tournaments like these was to design a machine with a big gun.

A very big gun.

An enormous gun.

The goal was to output the highest amount of damage in a brief time interval.

Anything that could damage, hinder or cripple an enemy mech right away could deliver an easy victory before the first minute had passed!

"If I was a ranged mech specialist, I could confidently design a mech armed with a formidable gun."

The problem was that he didn't excel in this area. Sure, he was proficient in designing luminar crystal rifles, but there were several problems with designing a competition mech armed with this exotic weapon system.

He was completely unfamiliar with the materials provided by the tournament. While Ves could rely on existing theory and prior experience to come up with a new formula for a luminar crystal, he would have to waste an hour or more to come up with an acceptable solution.

Could Ves afford to invest so much time in just a single aspect of his entire mech design?

"Probably not." He shook his head. "Besides, luminar crystal weapons are energy weapons. It's too difficult for me to amplify their damage output."

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