The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1167

Before the War General took up its Destroyer Axes, the mech employed an unusual ranged weapon module, turning it into a marksman mech.

Waltz eventually abandoned the strategy seeing that his War General would exhaust its energy reserves long before the Ouroboros succumbed from the damage. Yet even as the mech pulled out the hollow shaft from its chest and turned them into compact handles for its Destroyer Axes, the weapon module in its chest still existed.

Even though retractable armor plating quickly closed up the hole in its chest, it still represented a structural weak point in the War General!

Even in this form, the War General was still very much a multipurpose mech! Although Waltz abandoned all other modes of attack in favor of overpowering the Ouroboros with an unrelenting rain of axe strikes, those other modules still remained in place!

Compared to the Ouroboros which possessed nearly no additional modules, the War General in its light mech form still possessed more than a dozen compact modules spread throughout its frame!

Of all of those modules, the weapon system integrated in its chest was the largest and most powerful of them! To Ves, the weapon module in its chest represented great offensive power.

"Great power always comes at a price!" Ves mentally repeated to himself. "The greater the power, the greater the price!"

Mech designers continually engaged in balancing tradeoffs. Increasing one aspect of a mech always led to decreasing another aspect of a mech.

While the Terrans were able to elevate every parameter of their mechs through the use of superior materials and technology, no matter how advanced first-class mechs turned out to be, they still followed the fundamental rules of mech design!

A design choice that increased the offensive power of a mech inevitably decreased its mobility or defensive power.

A design choice that increased the defensive power of a mech inevitably decreased its mobility or offensive power.

A design choice that increased the mobility of a mech inevitably decreased its offensive or defensive power.

According to this paradigm, the War General in its heavy mech form was a machine that excelled in both offensive and defensive power to the detriment of its mobility.

It was very hard for the Ouroboros to defeat it, let alone come close to it to engage in a close-ranged brawl!

Yet once Waltz shed the outer layer of his mech, the War General adopted a very different set of attributes!

The War General in its second form obviously relied on evasion rather than armor to withstand attacks. Therefore, mobility was paramount and its mech designer put a very heavy emphasis on making it as fast and agile as possible!

In addition to upping its mobility, the War General retained most of its offensive power as well. Various integrated weapon systems as well as the myriad transformations of its main external weapon allowed the War General to employ various powerful offensive modes of attack against a variety of threats!

Whoever designed the War General put a very high emphasis on versatility as well to increase its offensive power. In fact, this property defined the entire design!

While its versatility boosted the offensive power of the mech to a very high level, all of this came at a cost.

"The heavy mech form possesses low mobility while the light mech form is lacking in defensive capabilities."

Although the War General was clad in very strong armor plating, enough for it to withstand several potshots from a positron pistol, its design did not make full use of its armor system!

"The War General can’t provide optimal armor coverage with all of the weapon systems and other modules integrated in its frame!"

From the gauss rifles and the radiant beam projector integrated in its chest, the War General’s defensive power was frankly awful. The only reason why it managed to last this long against Axelar was that it was simply too mobile to expose its many weak points to accurate attacks.

Yet as long as Axelar managed to land a single substantial attack on one of those weak points, the War General would definitely suffer! Each weapon system was covered up by thin and imperfect retractable armor plating. It was a compromised way of covering up the surface of the mech when its weapon hardpoints weren’t being used.

Previously, Ves mentally calculated the amount of power required to pierce through those retractable armor plating and came to the conclusion that it took at least two positron pistol attacks to overcome their defenses.

After that, it took a third hit to exploit the glaring hole in the War General and inflict crippling internal damage.

Axelar wouldn’t be able to land three consistent hits on a fast-moving mech. The Ouroboros wouldn’t even last long enough to complete that arduous challenge!

He needed to overpower the defenses put in place to protect the War General’s frontal weak points within a single attack!

Ves therefore devised a way to do so by overloading the positron pistol. Even though he knew that the pistol would blow up, it at least granted Axelar a single opportunity to unleash a very powerful ranged attack!

With his current level of skill, Axelar wouldn’t be able to land his Destroyer Sword on the War General. Not when he was already being suppressed by his opponent’s superior skill!

Therefore, the positron pistol was his only choice.

Ves identified the closed weapon port in the chest of the War General as the most critical target.

However, it was easier said than done for Axelar to hit this narrow point on the War General with a single attack!

The Ouroboros only had one chance to fire its positron pistol before it exploded from the strain. Axelar had no second chances once he missed!