The Mech Touch novel Chapter 4885

Recruiting new mech designers was the last major task that Ves wanted to complete before he fully threw himself onto his work. The Design Department already employed plenty of Journeyman Mech Designers, but their specializations left obvious gaps that hindered the development of their mechs.

For example, Ves still lacked a ranged weapon specialist by his side. One of the reasons why he wanted to invite Jocasta Clive to his clan was because he became greedy for her kinetic weapon expertise.

The Larkinson Clan's utilization of gauss weapons and other ranged kinetic weapons had fallen behind due to its embrace of luminar crystal technology.

While Ves had a lot of confidence in the strength, efficiency and versatility of this branch of energy weapons, he knew better than to bet his entire clan on a single horse.

Technological progress often occurred in jumps and spurts. The mech industry had a long history of changing trends due to the uneven advancements of different technological applications.

For example, energy weapons and transphasic technology were in vogue at the moment. They were both stronger than other tech, so many of the leading and well-regarded mechs incorporated applications from one or both of them in order to keep up with the forefront of progress.

Gauss weapons were still widely used for many reasons, but their overall strength and practicality hadn't significantly changed compared to the previous generation.

The only gauss weapons that were noticeably stronger and more worthwhile to use were transphasic gauss weapons, but that was more because of the use of phasewater more than anything.

If the technological basis of gauss weapons did not experience any significant improvements in the last 30 or 40 years, then how could they outperform energy weapons under the same conditions?

Besides, gauss weapons possessed a clear disadvantage compared to energy weapons in the current generation that caused a lot of mech designers to favor the latter rather than the former.

The difference was not necessary based on performance, but had to do with cost.

A transphasic laser rifle only needed to incorporate phasewater in its body, while gauss rifles needed to integrate this expensive substance in both its body and its physical ammunition in order to maximize their effectiveness!

Even if Ves could get away with integrating a tiny drop of phasewater in the tip of a gauss round, a typical rifleman mech armed with a gauss rifle could easily expend over a hundred rounds in a single battle.

If the Larkinson Army deployed a couple of hundred of those rifleman mechs, his clan would probably throw away a kilogram's worth of phasewater in a single battle.

Although the results would definitely be astonishing, Ves did not think his clan could afford to sustain this level of consumption for long!

It was much more economical to resort to transphasic energy weapons instead.

The Nullifier Battalion was the first elite mech unit that fulfilled his goal of arming an elite mech unit with transphasic weapons.

Each Nullifier mech was armed with a Godkiller heavy luminar crystal rifle that integrated 5 grams of phasewater.

This might not sound like much, but this was already enough to neutralize much of the boost in damage resistance of transphasic defensive systems!

Their penetration power was even more exaggerated against non-transphasic defenses!

Better yet, as long as those ostentatious weapons did not get destroyed in battle, the Nullifier Battalion could use their Godkiller heavy rifles over and over again without needing to replenish their phasewater content.

In short, transphasic luminar crystal weapons played an essential role in the Larkinson Clan's current development strategy. They were the key to powering up the combat strength of the Larkinson Army and enabling the expeditionary fleet to hunt down alien warships and strip them of their valuable salvage!

That was not to say that transphasic gauss weapons had become irrelevant due to this crucial difference.

Transphasic ammunition was expensive, but the upside to that was that their penetration power was far superior to transphasic energy beams.

The Larkinson Clan had already encountered multiple different alien foes whose transphasic defenses proved to be too resilient to overcome.

In situations like these, the Larkinson Clan needed to stop worrying about minimizing cost and throw everything it had to defeat the foes that had the power to crush the expeditionary fleet!

One of the most memorable battle moments in the past year was the instance where the Thunderer Mark II piloted by Saint Jelmer Osenring managed to utilize all 10 of its transphasic heavy gauss cannons to overcome the transphasic barriers of an orven battleship!

The destructive power of those heavy gauss cannons was unparalleled, and their penetration power gained an immense boost after Ves had 'blessed' it with the guidance of the Phase King!

Ves often thought back on those times. He could already guess that unless he was able to design a much stronger and more sophisticated energy weapon, he wouldn't be able to equip his mechs with luminar crystal cannons that could come close to those impressive heavy gauss cannons in damage output.

The only other way to obtain the weapons he wanted to turn his mechs into the ultimate warship killers was to ingest an appropriate enlightenment fruit and quickly develop a proficiency in transphasic gauss weapons.

Ves did not necessarily reject this approach, but it was not an appropriate strategy for him to take.

Verify captcha to read the contentVerify