The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1489

In order to maximize the cost-effectiveness of his mechs against the sandman threat, Ves had to make some hard choices.

Concerning the performance of his upcoming spaceborn rifleman mech, he decided to prioritize both offense and mobility over defense.

"In other words, a glass cannon with very powerful wings!"

Defense by far the biggest resource hog of a mech. Ves decisively gave up on expensive and hard-to-work-with compressed armor systems in order to save a lot of costs.

To resist the sandmen, a mech force had to take it out from a distance. By the time they got close enough to engulf a mech, all the armor slowing it down only delayed the inevitable by a few more seconds.

"Instead, it’s much better if my mech can accelerate quickly! The faster it moves, the longer it can take potshots at the approaching sandman vessels!"

For mechs, speed was the only form of defense against the sandmen. Though the sandmen also possessed ranged firing options, the lasers the sandmen vessels tended to shoot out were powerful but recycled very slowly.

"More armor won’t help in that situation. A mech will instantly get blasted no matter if they’re light mechs or heavy mechs."

The sandmen mainly utilized their heavy laser attacks to cripple human starships. As of now, they hadn’t adapted their armament to resist swarms of mechs, though this might change in the future.

"Even if that happens, as long as my mechs can maintain its range, the sandmen will have difficulty predicting their targets, though some unlucky mechs will always get shot down no matter what."

This was why many defensive forces closer to the border failed to cope with the frequent sandman raids. Fighting off a single sandman fleet wasn’t necessarily difficult, but the powerful lasers the vessels shot out always eliminated a mech with a single shot!

A mech force lost at least several mechs and mech pilots in a single engagement. If a mech force had to fight numerous battles against more and more sandmen fleets, then the constant attrition quickly added up until there were not enough mechs to hinder the relentless sandmen from overwhelming a star system!

Though it pained Ves to fail in coming up with a better solution to this threat, he had no choice but to discount armor almost entirely because he had no good solutions on this front.

Most mechs except heavy knights stood a realistic chance at resisting a full-powered laser strike from a sandman vessel.

"Now that I think about it, My Aurora Titan might be able to withstand a hit as well." He mused.

While its mobility was abysmal, it excelled at defense. Its polarizing module massively strengthened his super-medium space knight’s ability to resist energy damage!

"It will be interesting to see if it can actually take a hit!"

While this sounded like a welcome surprise, Ves did not expect that sales for the Aurora Titan would pick up. The mech could only withstand one or two hits at most before exhausting its reserves. For a mech that sold for at least 100 million credits a piece, the price was far too high and completely out of sync with current market circumstances!

In any case, for his affordable rifleman mech, its primary form of self-preservation came in the form of better-than-average mobility.

For a spaceborn mech, this meant investing heavily in the flight system of his mech. He had to pair up his mech with a powerful means to accelerate and outrun the hungry sandman vessels.

"My mech doesn’t have to be nimble or agile. It just has to have the raw power to accelerate quickly. My mech also has to possess enough endurance to keep this up for at least an hour!"

A decent level of endurance was vital. Though mechs that ran out of power could always return to their carriers to replenish their energy cells and ammunition stores, this cycle took way too much time, especially during an ongoing battle.

"The greater the hassle, the less applicable my rifleman mech becomes." Ves judged. "No one wants to go through a half-dozen cycles just to defeat a single sandman fleet."

Sandmen vessels were ordinarily quite massive, and it took a lot of damage to wear them down. This wasn’t a problem for military mech units as they often fielded hundreds of mechs at a time.

However, many outfits only fielded a single mech company or less. Even if they pooled their forces together, they might not have the firepower to eliminate an encroaching sandman fleet quickly.

In such cases, Ves wanted to offer a mech design that was still able to cope under those circumstances.

"If I want my mech to have a respectable amount of endurance and uptime, I’ll have to make sure my mech has enough energy and ammunition to last in the field."

This essentially meant that his rifleman mech couldn’t be a light mech. Ves had to add so much capacity to his mech that trying to keep his mech light was an exercise in futility.

Ves therefore defaulted to the standard of a medium mech. It offered an appropriate balance between capacity and mobility.

"Since I’m not spending a majority of the available capacity on armor, I can stuff my mech with a lot of energy cells and magazines."

With regards to firepower, Ves wanted to go for something cheap but effective against the sandman race. A simple ballistic rifle firing cheap projectiles could do a better job than an entire squad of laser rifleman mechs against this specific threat.

"I don’t necessarily need to pair my mech with an extravagant weapon."

More powerful ballistic rifles and their oversized ammunition took up vastly more space. Lighter weapons performed adequately against the sandman since their defenses weren’t based around solid armor.

A fast-firing ballistic rifle therefore inflicted a respectable amount of damage to the sandmen. Even if their caliber was lighter than usual, it made no difference against this specific foe.