[201-400] THE MECH'S TOUCH

Chapter 368: Shaping

The draft design took shape in a short amount of time. Even though this was the first time he put his conception of his second original mech into shape, he had always imagined its design beforehand.

In his rich imagination, Ves constantly tinkered with the design elements of his rifleman mech. Every available moment, such as when he fell to sleep or took a bath, his thoughts always flitted back to the design of his mech.

A mech designer never stopped designing mechs. Even without a design program, a mech designer would use his own imagination to define its shape.

Therefore, the design process right now actually consisted of constructing the second draft rather than the first. Ves had already pinned down most of the major design choices he thought about beforehand.

"My mech has to be fast, accurate, enduring and tough. In that order."

Juggling those priorities took a lot of finesse. Over the course of a single day, Ves drew up a three-dimensional wireframe model of what his intended design should look like. He only drew up the broad strokes of his design, but it already set a couple of factors in stone.

First, the new design looked nothing like the Blackbeak. Besides using the same type of armor system, engine and other components, the two designs had nothing in common.

"The Blackbeak's role is to attract attention. As a knight, it's inevitable that it's going to be put to use in attracting enemy firepower."

In contrast, a rifleman mech would never volunteer itself as a target dummy. Only stupid and desperate mech pilots would call out attention to their lightly armored mechs.

A rifleman mech armor carried at least half as less armor than a knight mech. It was not as if rifleman mechs couldn't pile up the armor if it wished to do so, but the costs outweighed the benefits.

One of the most important reasons why was that all of that armor impacted the accuracy and precision of a ranged mech. This problem became much worse with higher classes of mechs, because the exotics incorporated in armor plating often interfered with the precision of the limbs.

Either a mech can be light or precise, or heavy and strong.

Only heavy mechs circumvented this unspoken rule. They possessed enough space and weight for mech designers to separate the interference and implement all kinds of compensation systems.

"Heavy mechs are mostly designed and produced by states. I won't be able to get in touch with heavy mechs in a long time."

Right now, Ves had to play by the rules, so he adopted a slimmer medium mech form optimized for speed and accuracy. If he wanted to design a skirmisher mech, he would probably strengthen the arms to make it capable of fighting up close. However, a rifleman mech didn't need that much power, so he kept them fairly slim.

"It's not going to take too much strength to lift up a rifle. It's more important to make sure they're stable and precise."

The heavier the arms, the harder it became to ensure they operated precisely according to the will of the mech pilot. More mass meant more complications. Therefore, mech designers sought to cut them down to the absolute minimum, with perhaps a small allowance for armor plating.

This was why rifleman mechs made for very poor melee mechs. They wouldn't be able to wield heavier weapons such as swords and spears effectively, and they made for a pathetic sight if they had to resort to their backup knives.

This was why rifleman mechs needed mobility. An immobile mech was a sitting duck to any skirmisher, swordsman mech or knight that ran up to its face.

"As long as they can run away, they can maintain their combat effectiveness."