[201-400] THE MECH'S TOUCH

Chapter 360: Gimmick

Ves already worked with gimmicks before. Back when he designed the 3-star virtual variant of the Hoplite, he adapted one of the spear-wielding knight's gimmicks to the Young Blood.

The gimmick consisted of various enhancements to the shield of the Young Blood so that it would be able to bash its shield with greater speed and momentum.

The implementation came with a number of flaws. The Young Blood could only enhance its shield bash for a limited number of times, because the batteries embedded into the shield carried only so much charge. In addition, the components lacked sufficient sturdiness and could easily be rendered inoperable.

"Still, it doesn't matter if the actual implementation is disappointing. It's an attention grabber."

The mere existence of the gimmick attracted a lot of attention. The Young Blood became known as the ultimate shield-bashing knight mech and its existence had been imprinted on countless Iron Spirit players.

The best gimmicks bestowed otherwise normal mechs with seemingly inconceivable superpowers. Meanwhile, the worst gimmicks actually turned out to be a detriment on the battlefield.

No matter the case, a gimmick always attracted a lot of attention, thereby making them the perfect marketing material.

Ves knew that purist mech designers disdained the use of gimmicks. They would rather focus their efforts on maximizing the core performance of a mech. The more a mech designer emphasizes a gimmick, the worse the overall performance of the design in question.

Adding a gimmick to a mech always came at the cost of weight, space, power or heat management. It also raised the price of the mech and disproportionately increased the maintenance burden.

"A good gimmick justifies its existence. A bad gimmick becomes a weight that drags down the design."

Ves did not even have to browse the galactic net to come across countless failed implementations.

For example, one iconic example often bandied about in the mech industry was the Grenadier. Nominally, the designer designed the Grenadier as a Skirmisher. However, it carried a bandolier of high-explosive shells on its torso.

The purpose of the Grenadier was to sneak behind enemy lines and inflict severe disruption with minimal footprint. Compared to missiles, grenades took up a lot less space and weight, and didn't require any launchers either. The grenades also didn't cost a lot of time and money to produce.

Alas, the actual implementation fared much worse than the designer had intended. Almost every Grenadier that got caught got blown up when its opponents focused their fire on the bandolier. The Grenadier might be carrying around a lot of explosive might, but compared to missiles, they lacked much of the preventive measures against premature detonations.

"I also can't forget about the Adaptris."

The Adaptris was a so-called multi-environmental mech. It was a heavy mech that was simultaneously an aquatic mech, a landbound mech, an aerial mech and a spaceborn mech.

The mech designer of the Adaptris piled his mech up with so many systems that it could adapt in almost every circumstance. The logic of the Adatris was that since it could be fielded in almost every situation, it could be produced and fielded en masse. The advantages of scale would eventually outweigh the inherent inefficiencies in the design.

Heavy mechs always strained the resources and industrial capacity of a state. If the Adaptris could be produced in enough numbers, then the heavy mech component of its military force would become ten times deadlier.

Sadly, the designer had a few screws loose in his head. He somehow succeeded in pitching the idea to a handful of third-rate states, which allocated a huge portion of their limited industrial capacity in producing these gimmicky heavy mechs.