The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3608

Chapter 3608 Sliver Project

Life aboard the fleet fell back into a familiar routine. Mech pilots trained and polished their skills in order to get ready for the next battle while everyone else performed their own duties.

All of the Larkinson mech designers resumed their work. With no further interruptions of note, the Design Department made brisk progress on most of their mech design projects.

Though Ves was more than a month behind his schedule, the halt on the Fearless Project meant that he could invest his full attention on completing the Deceptor Project.

By spending most of his working time on a single project, he not only made swift progress, but also put more effort into getting the Deceptor Project's nuances right.

Still, the closer it got to completion, the more Ves felt a void within the mech design.

One of the elements that was still missing was its new design spirit. He did not intend to employ any of his existing design spirits to augment the Deceptor Project because none of them aligned with its predominant themes.

As a harasser mech for the Flagrant Vandal Mech Legion, the mech's primary strengths centered around its elusiveness, its persistence and its deceptive nature.

It was an interesting exercise for Ves to design a light mech again. Though he was committed to keeping it as his solo project, he was not arrogant enough to assume that he knew all about this weight class.

He occasionally dropped by Juliet's corner of the design lab in order to sound out ideas and check whether he was overlooking any variables.

Juliet Stameros never held back in offering her critique when Ves presented his progress on the Deceptor Project.

"Your design is overly slanted towards agility in my opinion." She stated. "Its maximum acceleration is not that great in comparison. This poses a danger for the Deceptor Project because it doesn't have the straight-line acceleration and speed to outrun other light mechs, particularly skirmishers such as the Ferocious Piranha. Are you certain you want to go this route?"

Ves nodded. "The Deceptor Project is mainly configured for large battles rather than smaller skirmishes or scouting runs. You're already designing a dedicated scout mech in the form of the Sliver Project, so I do not think our Deceptor Project needs to be shoehorned in the scouting role either."

Juliet was almost completely responsible for designing the Sliver Project, which completed the trifacta of signature mech models for the Flagrant Vandals. Ves only occasionally lent a hand in order to make the mech design alive, but other than that he left all of the important design choices to Penitent Sister mech designer.

Unlike the Ferocious Piranha and the Deceptor Project, the Sliver Project was emphatically not a machine that excelled at fighting.

It was more of an auxiliary mech than anything else. The Sliver Project in its current configuration would probably become the weakest combat machine of the Larkinson Army once it entered into service.

Armed with only a light pistol and a thin knife, the Sliver Project was not able to wield them effectively because most of its capacity was spent elsewhere.

The armor of the Sliver Project was light as well as it mostly focused on reducing its energy signature rather than hard protection.

In most cases, keeping the mech hidden from enemy sensors was its best form of defense. It could not be destroyed if the enemy didn't know the Sliver Project was present in the first place!

Its mobility characteristics were almost opposite to that of the Deceptor Project. As a machine that was never meant to get caught up in a mech duel, it had no need for exceptional agility and range of motion.

Juliet therefore chose to mount it with a flight system model that excelled at straight-line acceleration but sacrificed agility and maneuverability as a consequence.

She implemented all of this so that she could reserve most of the capacity of the mech to empower its various sensor suites.

While it came equipped with a lot more sensor and scanning modules than average mechs, the crown jewel of the Sliver Project was the large orb mounted on its head.

The Samasel Orb was a highly modern directional scanning module that excelled at deep scanning. As long as it came close enough, its focused scanning operation could penetrate through meters of armor and expose crucial details about the interior structure of a starship or other large structure.

Naturally, the Sliver Project was also able to perform deep scans on enemy mechs, though this was a risky prospect.

The biggest downside to the Sliver Project was that activating the Samasel Orb or any sensor module at full power would not go unnoticed. The mech needed to rely on solid cover or powerful escorts in order to keep the enemy at bay.

All in all, the Sliver Project was pretty much the opposite of the Deceptor Project in many ways. Their diverging roles meant they needed to excel at different aspects.

"It's acceptable for the Sliver Project to be lacking in combat capabilities considering it is meant to be an auxiliary mech." Juliet remarked. "It is difficult to justify the same approach to a combat mech. The Deceptor Project will be deployed in the thick of battle. Even if it is not meant to fight against enemy forces head-on, its inferior acceleration characteristics means that it cannot avoid enemy pursuit forever. Since it is a ranged light mech, an enemy light skirmisher can easily cut it to pieces."

Ves nodded. "I'm aware of that, but it is unacceptable for me to weaken its greatest advantages in order to compensate for its shortcomings. The Deceptor Project may possess glaring holes on its own, but the Ferocious Piranha can plug most of them. Once the Flagrant Vandals begin to deploy both mechs alongside each other, they can easily compensate for each other's weaknesses."

He put a lot of thought in coming up with the Deceptor Project. The mech not only had to be good on its own, it had to be even better when fighting as part of a larger system. Each mech legion needed to obtain its own stable of complementing mech models and the Deceptor Project was definitely capable of augmenting the Ferocious Piranha without slowing it down too much!

Juliet understood this point as well so she did not pursue this line of questioning any further. She just wanted to make sure that Ves knew what he was getting into. No one could guarantee whether the Deceptor Project would always be able to deploy alongside the Ferocious Piranhas.

The Bolvos Rage was a truly impressive hybrid mech. It was a relatively balanced expert mech that nonetheless packed a considerable punch. It was mobile enough to duel against other high-tier expert mechs but it was also sturdy enough to endure bombardment. _{freewebnoveℓ.com}

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