The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1298

During the journey to the Zin Alpha System, Ves spent a decent amount of time on his studies. He caught up on the miscellaneous literature he collected recently and also bought a few textbooks on bestial mechs and smart metal mechs.

Though he already possessed passing familiarity in both subjects, Ves took the time to refresh what he knew and began with the basics.

Bestial mechs encompassed an entire subgenre of mechs. Mostly prominent in landbound mech warfare, mechs shaped like centaurs, spiders, wolves and other animals offered distinct advantages compared to humanoid mechs.

First and foremost was that mechs that relied on four limbs to move possessed superior stability and mobility. Humanoid mechs relied on two powerful legs to move, but it took quite a lot of effort in keeping them upright and in balance.

"Bestial mechs are just better at moving in a fast-paced, chaotic battlefield."

They offered superior mobility in the same weight class in almost every case. Not only that, but four limbs offered a lot of redundancy in case a battle became a drawn-out affair.

A humanoid mech could be rendered combat ineffective with the least amount of effort by dealing a pinpoint strike on one of their legs.

To do the same on a bestial mech required taking out at least two limbs. Even if their limbs were lighter than that of a humanoid mech’s leg, destroying just one of them still left a typical bestial mech with a decent amount of mobility, hardly affecting its speed at all. _{freewёbn૦νeɭ.com}

The only complication was that mech designers initially struggled to come up with the best configurations for bestial mechs. Eventually, some customs had emerged.

First, a bestial melee mech such as a tiger mech fought primarily using their limbs. A lot of mechanical power would be devoted to the limbs in order to facilitate a powerful leap that could quickly and efficiently allow a tiger mech to put a lot of momentum behind its attacks.

Even at a standstill, a bestial mech was incredibly formidable because its powerful limbs enabled the mech pilot to make rapid changes in direction with rapid dashes and leaps.

The only downside to such an active form of battle was that bestial melee mechs needed a lot of individual room to maneuver in order to bring out their best strength.

Such mechs were quite unsuited to fighting in formation or in tight ranks. Mobility formed the key to their offense as they relied heavily on momentum to deal strong, crushing attacks.

This did not mean that bestial mechs were limited to claw or leaping attacks. Plenty of mech designers managed to mount gun barrels to a classic bestial mech, mostly onto its flanks or inside its head.

Gun barrels mounted to the flanks usually weren’t fully turreted because such mechanisms took way too much space. Therefore, most bestial ranged mechs mounted them in a limited swivel arrangement that allowed for only limited angle adjustments.

Simply speaking, such mechs could only fire forwards, leaving them heavily vulnerable to sudden flank or rear attacks.

Bestial mechs didn’t fare too well in defense either. While such mechs could present a smaller and tighter profile against ranged attacks, they did not have the option to make use of shields. Although their frontal armor would always be better armored, it was still an awkward arrangement unless a force deployed a turtle mech or something that looked similarly ridiculous.

Yet the biggest shortcoming of bestial mechs was their inherent inflexibility. Although specialized humanoid mechs could be rather inflexible as well, at the very least their forms allowed for some ingenuity when necessary.

Not so for bestial mechs.

They were stuck with the weapon loadout baked into their designs. A melee tiger mech could not exchange its claws for a laser rifle when assailed by aerial mechs! At the very least, a humanoid swordsman mech or knight mech could resort to such a solution if they had access to spare laser rifles!

In short, bestial mechs were basically more specialized mechs that fulfilled a particular role better than most humanoid mechs.

Yet they were also not very popular in the Komodo Star Sector, which usually did not look down on specialized mechs.

There was a very basic reason for that.

"Humanoid mechs are easy to learn but hard to master. Bestial mechs are hard to learn and harder to master."

It took additional talent, training or effort to make a mech pilot proficient in piloting such mechs. Because they adopted a form divergent from the human body, mech pilots needed to become accustomed to taking advantage of the bestial form.

"That isn’t always easy."

The standard of training in the Komodo Star Sector was fairly low compared to more prosperous star sectors. Many mech academies lacked the time or resources to properly train their mech cadets in the operation of a bestial mech.

The case may be different in more prosperous states and star sectors, but close to the frontier the humanoid supremacy movement reigned supreme by virtue of its ease and convenience.

"Naturally, not every state is blindly sticking to humanoid mechs. Bestial mechs are still interesting to some." He muttered.

Ves wanted to visit those states in person in order to find out first hand why specific organizations decided to make widespread use of bestial mechs.

Naturally, by that he specifically focused on the use of classic bestial mechs such as tiger mechs, wolf mechs and the like.

Mechs that combined the advantages of humanoid arms with a bestial lower body such as centaur mechs or most spider-legged mechs didn’t count. They operated much more like humanoid mechs, but incorporated some of the mobility advantages of bestial mechs.

Ves determined an important rule. "A true classical bestial mechs sacrifices humanoid flexibility for raw bestial power."

This was a philosophical principle that many hardcore bestial mech designers abided by. They rejected the ubiquity of humanoid mechs and turned to the animal kingdom to achieve greater mechanical performance.