The Mech Touch novel Chapter 5176

Master Teresa Norville managed to captivate most of the crowd with her brief but incredibly useful explanation of what her research group managed to uncover about archetech.

The Red Association still retained much of the strengths of the Mech Trade Association that it had separated from. It employed many of the best human researchers and benefited from amply funding and resources to conduct their studies.

Not even a new and original tech base such as archetech could withhold its secrets from the hungry researchers of the Red Association.

Perhaps the native aliens of the Red Ocean always struggled a lot in their attempts to reverse engineer archetech, but that was because their starting points were just lower.

Humanity possessed a much more robust and developed scientific community. It also mastered a lot of high technology and other advanced knowledge. It could use its existing base to easily implement a lot of easy solutions on archetech that the aliens had never managed to conceive.

As Master Norville continued to detail the many advancements that the Red Association's researchers had successfully applied, it became clear that the mechers were closer to adapting archetech into mechs than expected.

She even unveiled a relatively simple first-class multipurpose mech design that was completely made out of archetech in front of her audience!

A lot of people immediately tried to decipher the design as much as their own expertise allowed. It became clear that the vast majority of them couldn't understand it at all. This was because all of the design schematics portrayed large amounts of metal blocks that were somehow pushed together into the vague form of a humanoid machine!

Even the joints and other moving parts looked almost completely alien due to their complete lack of circuitry, power lines, communication lines and traditional structural sub-components.

The only parts that vaguely looked familiar and understandable were the ones that archetech could not fully replicate. The neural interface as well as an extremely potent power reactor were mostly conventional, though they utilized relatively inert archemetal as structural reinforcement.

"This is the experimental design of a working prototype 'archemech', to use the colloquial term for a mech that is not only predominantly integrated with archemetal, but also functions almost entirely through archetech. In order to fit this definition, the entire frame, barring a number of unavoidable exceptions, is completely controlled and powered by electronic resonance."

What an amazing design. Even though it was clearly designed to be as barebones as possible due to the relative lack of modules and weapon systems, it already looked more advanced than the typical mech utilized by first-rate states!

A mech designed with a completely different tech base truly tested the analytical capabilities of mech designers. Many of the professionals in the crowd tried their best to decipher and understand the projected machine.

It was easy enough to figure out what the more obvious blocks of metal were supposed to do. Engines were engines, limbs were limbs and sensors were sensors. Just because they were made out of other materials such as crystal or archemetal did not mean that they suddenly had to look or behave completely differently.

However, the fact that archemetal could perform the role of a lot of conventional components meant that the design offered far less details than Ves would have liked.

Sure, archemetal also boasted intricate internal structures that substituted the role of circuitry, but the charm of this material was that it contained many functions that were solely generated by combining different combinations of exotics together in specific ways.

What was so brilliant about archemetal was that programming its functions did not necessarily require the exact same type of materials to make it do anything specific. It could take a large range of exotics, dynamically combine them together and still produce the same effects, such as releasing a bolt of electricity or making a part glow at a precise luminosity.

All of this meant was that archetech became fiendishly hard to decipher and figure out if one was not already an expert in their workings.

No matter whether it was a young 30-year old Journeyman or a 300-year old Master, none of them could fully understand how the archemech worked just by studying its design for a long time!

The only way to realistically analyze its workings was to fabricate the archemech and test its individual capabilities, either as a whole, or by isolating its specific parts.

All of these boring data gathering activities took a lot of time as well as a lot of expertise. The Larkinson Clan did not possess a research institute that could tackle this kind of experimental study, which was a major shortcoming now that he thought about it. The clan had never really put too much effort into deciphering most alien technologies it came across.

"Compared to an equivalent first-class mech designed with conventional technological principles, this experimental archemech possesses clear advantages and disadvantages. The archemech is considerably denser as its internal volume is being utilized at a considerably higher proportion. It can withstand much more damage to its internals as much of it is as resilient as the external plating. The mobility of the mech has suffered, but that can partially be mitigated by integrating the archemetal with phasewater."

Essentially, an archemech was much more of a solid construct of metal than a more conventional mech. It made a lot of sense for it to become a lot heavier and sluggish compared to a machine of the same size.

"According to our preliminary investigations, an archemech can maintain its combat effectiveness 3 times longer on average. Its chance of surviving a typical battle where it would otherwise lose functionality is 65 percent higher, although this percentage is significantly lower when the opposing force consists of warships. What is especially important is that the chances that the mech pilot can survive an encounter increases by 187 percent, even when accounting for cockpit ejections and attempted interceptions."

Now that truly caused all of the gathered attendees to take note of this experimental archemech concept!

While the numbers mentioned by Master Norville should be taken with a huge grain of salt due to the impossibility of using a handful of numbers to calculate the parameters of an endless variety of combat scenarios, they could still be used as rough measures. _{freewebnσvel.cøm}

If the subordinate of the Xenotechnician hadn't been exaggerating too much, then an archemech could not only withstand a lot more damage and keep fighting, but its mech pilot also had a much higher chance of surviving!

Both of these factors were important to any serious mech force!

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