The Mech Touch novel Chapter 21

Designing an armor scheme for a mech took a lot of skills and knowledge. Ves was frankly impressed by the young Jason Kozlowski’s work in making the armor of Caesar Augustus look majestic while still doing its job. Of course, he also enjoyed limitless resources and help. With an abundance of processing power, Jason could easily layer the armor plates in a way that minimized the gaps.

Ves lacked a room full of processors ready to solve any problems by brute force, but the Mech Designer System came with its own perks. The Designer offered a number of simulations that showed how certain sections responded to laser fire or other types of damage. It simulated a mech’s maximum capacity for damage. It also had a tool that showed how to disable the mech with the least amount of effort.

Using these aids saved Ves a lot of effort. Together with his newly gained Mediumweight Armor Optimization I sub-skill, he felt competent enough to start his job as an armorer. Rather than copying Jason’s armor contours, Ves decided to remove most of it and start from the bare minimum, only keeping the ingenious ways Jason and his helpers kept the joints protected.

He started with the legs. For mechs, legs not only provided movement, they made sure the mech stayed stable. While the mech’s engines devoted most of its power to supporting the legs, the limbs had to bear the entire mech’s weight in addition to its own armor. The mech’s legs were absolutely crucial to a mech’s operation. Crippling even one of them might immobilize a mech, effectively achieving the same results as killing it. Protecting the legs was a top priority.

The Caesar Augustus enjoyed luxurious armor on its legs. National Aeromotives knew their business when they developed its proprietary armor. It offered excellent protection at a decent weight. Now Ves somehow had to keep his Marc Antony’s legs protected while not piling up too much armor. Excessive bulk reduced a mech’s flexibility and speed.

"The Marc Antony is a spear that breaks through obstacles. It needs mobility more than armor. The legs has to facilitate a charge. It doesn’t need to be excessively nimble. The Antony doesn’t pretend to be a light mech in that regard."

The Marc Antony featured slightly thicker armor, especially on its front axis. While it made the legs vulnerable to crippling strikes from the rear, it could take about 75% of a beating the base model’s legs could endure. This was already very generous considering the enormous differences in price between Ves’ newly acquired HRF and the original armor plating.

Next came the torso. The core of any mech, it features by far the most space for its systems. The cockpit, power reactor and engines all resided in the torso. This placed unparalleled importance on its protection, especially with regards to shielding the pilot inside.

Mechs were expensive, but potentates were rarer. Only 3.5% of the total population of humans possessed the potential to pilot a mech, but not everyone of them actively pursued a military career. Mechs could be gained fairly easy by spending enough credits, but pilots represented a limited resource that replenished slowly. Thus most countries treated pilots like gold but mechs like silver. The armor schemes of most mechs reflected this demand, making it the thickest part of their armor.

In keeping up with the Marc Antony’s indomitable intent, Ves became bold when working on the torso. He pursued aggressive lines that largely mirrored Jason’s own scheme, but added more bulk to the lower torso and shaved a bit of armor from the upper torso.

The upper torso of a mech usually housed the cockpit and some other delicate components that could fit by the side. Surrounded by the shoulders and arms, it took a lot to excavate the cockpit from the heavily armored chest. The lower torso housed the power reactor and engines. Their central position ensured energy and motive power could flow in all directions of a mech equally. Naturally, not all mechs followed this scheme. Some lighter mechs such as the Fantasia 2R swapped the positions around.

In the Marc Antony’s case, Ves decided keeping its engines and power reactor working his main priority. The mobility of the mech must not be compromised. The cockpit still enjoyed adequate protection, but not to the exaggerated extent of the base model. The cockpit’s frontal protection got reduced by as much as 50%, an inevitability considering the HRF armor plating’s lack of exceptional attributes. Layering too many plates on top of each other not only wasted Ves’ armor budget, it also threatened to upset the mech’s balance.

Still, considering the HRF’s much cheaper cost, it was a price worth paying in some situations.

Ves spent some time with the rear torso, but not too much except for thickening it a little bit. The Caesar Augustus possessed above average rear armor, but if Ves replaced it the same thickness in HRF plating, he’d turn the Marc Antony in a mech with its rear section dangerously naked. He had no choice to bulk up the rear, choosing to incorporate some subtle angles that helped deflect damage aimed at the cockpit or engines, but otherwise keeping it plain.

The shoulders deserved special attention. Jason’s CA-1 employed shoulder launchers for long-ranged missiles. This wasn’t anything unusual for mech designers who wanted to offer a long-ranged solution to round out their mech’s deficiencies in that area, but Jason very clearly half-assed the attempt. The Caesar Augustus was not a mech that specialized in lengthier engagements at longer ranges, so it carried no room for additional missiles. In short, the launchers only fired the missiles in its tubes before they became useless ornaments.

He considered removing them. Sure, the launchers were relatively small and light, and didn’t hinder the mech’s mobility all that much. On the other hand, it added little firepower beyond its initial salvo and the addition of the system and its mechs meant its logistical footprint grew larger than what could be justified.

"Well, it’s not like anyone has to stick to these missiles. They can easily change them to something to their liking."

These days, missile systems became a lot more standardized than in the past, where each manufacturer used different sizes to monopolize the sale of refills. The missile launchers employed by Jason came from a reputable manufacturer, so plenty of missile types could fit in. Shorter ranged missiles that lacked sophisticated guidance options packed a lot of punch, which might be crucial when employed with great timing.

He spent a lot of time refining the torso before moving on to the arms. Most humanoid mechs employed arms as their primary weapon platform. They required protection from harm due to their essential role in a mech’s offense, but they also had to retain their nimbleness in order to operate their weapons as smoothly as real human arms.

Regarding the use of arms, mech designers generally chose from three different options. One was to keep the arms articulated like a human’s, letting the mech depend on external weapons like pistols and rifles. Great importance is placed on mimicking the arms to its biological equivalent, sometimes achieving a synchronization of up to 99%. This allowed marksmen to fire their weapons as accurately as they could in real life without depending on aim assist and other guided aids, which provides a remarkable advantage in certain times.