The Mech Touch novel Chapter 4908

Venerable Irene Mox gently raised her body into the air and smoothly entered the cockpit of the Iron Hedgehog.

As a fairly young but talented expert pilot who distinguished herself in many past engagements, the Quillim Mech Army recently replaced her old low-tier expert mech for a mid-tier expert mech.

That machine was the Iron Hedgehog, an expert heavy artillery mech that had been designed with her proclivities in mind.

To Ves, it was a well-designed expert mech that was a product of its time.

"The current date is 197 AOM." Ves reminded himself. He learned the exact date during the mission briefing earlier. "At this stage, the Age of Mechs has entered full-swing. All of the messy stuff that mech designers invented in the first century has long been settled by the MTA. Mech archetypes are well-defined and a lot of expert pilots have already emerged."

Ace pilots were much rarer and god pilots were so few that they were revered to an even greater extent because of their scarcity!

As Ves examined the Iron Hedgehog through Venerable Irene Mox's senses as well as her strong and bountiful mental activity, he quickly developed a basic understanding of its design and configuration.

The Iron Hedgehog was designed as a pure landbound mech. Although it could technically perform the role of a bunker mech, it was clearly not optimized for this role.

Irene's expert mech was much more suited when deployed on land.

Ves had learned from Master Decimus Horst that if he wanted to figure out any heavy artillery mech, he first had to study its armament.

The quantity of weapons as well as their properties immediately told Ves what they were all about.

The Iron Hedgehog's weapons were split into two different categories.

The armaments placed on the outside edge of its oval top consisted of 8 heavy gauss cannons.

Their calibers were not considerably large, but perhaps they did not need to be. Ves could tell that the gauss cannons were designed to maximize their muzzle velocity and precision.

What Ves found interesting about the placement of gauss cannons was that they could cover any angle when aiming straight ahead.

However, this was only meant for emergencies. The Iron Hedgehog did not have any other way to repel enemies that managed to get past friendly guardians and come close enough to threaten it at close range.

Normally, the 8 gauss cannons should be pointed at an angle. This allowed for Iron Hedgehog to fire solid rounds that followed a parabolic trajectory and land on distant targets with good speed and precision.

They were not the main sources of damage, though. The 8 howitzers that were clustered at the center portion of the Iron Hedgehog's top were remarkably simple in nature!

They were ballistic cannons that were designed to propel high-explosive shells at high angles.

What mattered the most for these howitzers was their ability to inflict lots of damage onto distant locations surrounded by complex terrain.

Many times, resilient structures and thick mountains blocked the firing angles of ranged mechs.

By employing howitzers whose rounds could be fired with steep angles of descent, a heavy artillery mech could provide valuable support from the rear whereas a typical rifleman mech remained helpless!

While there were missiles that could circumvent all kinds of obstacles before they struck their targets, it was possible to blind their sensors, interfere with their guidance or simply shoot them down before they reached their targets.

Simple but solid explosive shells were cheaper, faster, less prone to faults and could easily be replenished.

These were vitally important traits for a heavy artillery mech that was expected to launch hundreds if not thousands of explosive shells over the course of a long day!

From what Ves could surmise of the Iron Hedgehog's design, its ammunition capacity was remarkably disappointing.

"Why does it have so many guns, yet so little space for rounds and shells?"

The answer eventually became clear once Venerable Irene Mox interfaced with her expert mech and directed it to exit the underground hangar bay.

The Iron Hedgehog slowly utilized its four thick legs to step into a ruined city.

It was clear that the Bontues and the Quillims had fought hard over this city. Heavy shelling and collateral damage made it so that there were vastly more damaged structures than untouched ones in this urban environment!

More and more mechs bearing the emblem of the Quillim Mech Army strode out of the tunnel exits. Ves had the illusion that he was watching a period drama due to all of the outdated tech on display.

The Treading Drum Star Sector was located close to the galactic center where all of the best tech emerged first. The mechs that showed up were all fairly advanced during this time period.

It was a pity that to a modern mech designer like Ves, the mechs in view were awfully primitive in many aspects!

"It's 200 years, after all. The overall mech paradigms may have been set, but the tech that empowers these machines is constantly progressing. If I remember my history correctly, the current mech generation introduced a lot of mobility-oriented advancements that have made many mechs faster than before."

In the year 185 AOM, the Mech Trade Association announced the commencement of the Speed Generation. Landbound mechs primarily benefited from the introduction of many innovations, but aerial and spaceborn mechs also received sufficient attention.

Before this mech generation, a lot of mechs moved rather ponderously on the battlefield. There were still plenty of ways to increase their traversal speeds, but that came with heavy tradeoffs such as massively restricting their runtime and forcing them to burn through an excessive amount of fuel or energy.

The Speed Generation solved many of those problems and made it much easier for mech designs to hit more favorable sweet spots.

This period of time also happened to be the point in mech history where light mechs truly became unleashed!

It had been more than a decade after the introduction of this mech generation at the current time. The average speed of mechs had already been elevated and light mechs had become a terrible scourge that needed to be guarded against.

The mech unit that Venerable Irene Mox was attached to clearly took a lot of precautions.

Early striker mechs guarded the periphery while a number of melee mechs stuck close to important ranged mechs such as the Iron Hedgehog.

Not a lot of aerial mechs lifted off from the ground. It was dangerous to put them into exposed positions under the current conditions. The only ones that launched at this time were dedicated scouting models that could evade many attacks.

The slow but steady march proceeded for an hour or so. Nothing much happened as the Quillim mechs had yet to make contact with Bontue mechs.

Though Ves was disappointed that he wouldn't be able to see the Iron Hedgehog in action right away, he bided his time while he slowly and cautiously explored the mind of Venerable Irene Mox.

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