The Mech Touch

Lord Richard Brownstone continued his attempt to sell his weapon system to an enormous audience.

He knew that his gauss weapons were the less essential parts of the Yellow Jackets, so he needed to do his best to emphasize their value.

"The Onager System is meticulously designed with the support of the Red Association to form a cost-effective solution when employed on a large scale. The weapon system can accommodate a wide variety of projectiles made from many different combinations of alloys. This allows every state or regional organization to produce large quantities of rounds with different effects with the lowest per unit cost."

This was highly relevant to third-rate states and organizations. They tended to have the greatest population of people. They also had selective access to a great amount of low-grade resources.

The Onager System was so flexible and adaptable in terms of ammunition compatibility that every state or group should be able to produce a huge amount of kinetic projectiles that offer good performance at a very low cost.

It was somewhat relevant to second-raters and first-raters, as they may opt to choose specialized rounds that were very effective but could only be produced by locally sourced exotics and hypers.

"Furthermore, the Onager System is also designed with the most common needs of the Red War in mind. The weapon system is designed to allow the Yellow Jackets to launch attacks against targets with superior defenses. Whether they are tasked with fighting against alien phasefighter or warships, the Onager modular gauss guns allow the Yellow Jackets to inflict damage that surpasses the average offensive level of a mech of this price range. This will make them more useful on the battlefield and allow them to make effective contributions at a lower cost."

In other words, the Yellow Jackets equipped with these gauss guns should ideally fulfill the fire support role.

The Yellow Jackets were not suitable for close-range brawling and dogfighting. They did not have the accuracy and precision to fight for longer either.

They were best employed at mid-range, where they could get close enough to wear down the transphasic energy shields that protected the hulls of enemy warships, but far enough to evade the approach of enemy phasefighters.

While the Yellow Jackets could fulfill other roles by equipping different support modules, their most direct and simplest combat roles required them to occupy a good position and fire their Onagers until they emptied their ammunition reserves.

More and more mech commanders and so on began to warm up to the Onager System. The designers had truly put a lot of thought in pairing it up with the Yellow Jacket

Design.

Although the power of these guns were modest, they were better than the peashooters that most budget mechs carried, especially the more outdated ones!

"The Onager System is designed to serve as the standard weapon solution of all three editions of the Yellow Jackets." Richard Brownstone repeated. "It is the only weapon system that the Yellow Jackets are highly optimized to make use of. Their base models possess limited energy capacities, and cannot sustain the operation of one or multiple energy weapons for too long, especially if there is a desire to attain the same damage levels as the gauss guns of the Onager System. The latter are less demanding on the energy reserves, but are also limited by the quantity of ammunition that a Yellow Jacket can carry. The ammunition capacity of the Carmine mechs is relatively modest if there is a desire to retain their good mobility characteristics. If you feel it necessary, you can mount larger and more massive ammunition canisters onto the Yellow Jackets, but this will impose greater penalties to their mobility."

The Onager System consisted of rather hefty gauss guns. They were not designed to launch small and light projectiles, but rather larger ones that could pack a punch. That imposed a burden on the Yellow Jackets as the mech frames were supposed to remain relatively light.

There was no good solution to this problematic issue. The best way to resolve the contradiction was to employ dimensional technology to store a lot of hefty rounds in a different space.

However, only the more expensive first-class mechs tended to enjoy this luxury. It was impossible to supply this luxury to the Yellow Jackets on a large scale!

Soon enough, Lord Richard Brownstone gradually completed his presentation on the kinetic weapon system that he had designed for the Carmine mechs.

"As a final feature of the Onager System, the Yellow Jackets are designed to assist in the aiming of the gauss guns. We only recommend our clients to activate this function when the Carmine mech pilots are still lacking in training. If they are fielded without possessing enough skill and experience in handling ranged weapons at the mech scale, then it is better to rely on the help of the living mechs to control the weapons to aim and fire at hostile targets."

This was a dangerous feature, but one that could also save lives one day.

The reality of the situation was that the Red Offensive was a life-and-death crisis to red humanity.

Most people may not act like it, but they could feel the tension growing in human-occupied space.

There may come a time where lots of norms had to be conscripted for war. Whatever training they received in bootcamp would not be enough to give them good aim. was better to let the living mech lend a hand even if it was a risky proposition.

Not everyone approved of this additional 'feature, but they were fine with it so long as it could be switched off. It was a fundamental principle that only humans should pull the trigger of a weapon.

Once Richard finally concluded his presentation, he made a short bow before the next-to-last speaker strode forward.

Jovy Armalon addressed the crowd with his characteristic smile. "My name is Jovy Armalon. As a Senior Mech Designer of the Red Association, I was responsible for designing the armor system among other aspects of the Yellow Jacket designs. As can be seen by the segmented armor plating of the Carmine mechs on display, we have developed the Scotara Hyper Semi-Modular Armor System to fit the physical defensive needs of this range of machines."

A new overlay highlighted the armor plating and listed out a few key properties. "Similar to the Onager System, the Scotara Armor is an umbrella term that encompasses a range of armor plating formulas that consists of commonly available exotics and hypers. We have especially composed the formulas to produce armor plating out of different materials that is roughly consistent at the same tech level, and are therefore interchangeable. The formulas take into account the most commonly available materials of notable effectiveness in the Red Ocean Union, the Terran Alliance and the Rubarthan Pact. All of this ensures that it is easy to mass produce large amounts of armor plating in vastly different regions but still attain a high degree of consistency and uniformity. This should depress the cost of production to a very low level, thereby making the Yellow Jackets more cost-effective."

The defensive properties of the Scotara Armor was actually not that impressive. It was only relatively good as far as budget mechs were concerned.

What was really great about this armor system was that it did not impose a heavy burden on the industrial capacity of many different states and organizations. This was quite important because the armor system was often the most expensive system of a mech. The Yellow Jacket was no exception in this regard, so even a modest cost saving in the armor system could benefit red humanity a lot in the long run! Much of Jovy's explanation sounded relatively standard and mundane. The Scotara Armor truly did not offer any other significant advantages aside from cost savings. This mostly sounded interesting to large states that intended to mass produce the Yellow Jackets on a large scale, but it was not as relevant to other parties.

Many people who decided to order a batch of Yellow Jackets already decided to task their mech designers to replace this inferior armor system with a more superior one

Based on more premium alloys.

There were also other potential customers who decided to wait a few months for other brilliant mech designers to publish variants that addressed this particular shortcomings. Before Jovy could convince everyone that the Scotara Armor had no other advantages, he briefly surprised them by mentioning one nebulous advantage.

"I have applied my expertise in manipulating probabilities in the design of the Scotara Armor. With the help of hyper materials, the armor plating of the Yellow Jackets are imbued with a certain luck factor that helps them withstand attacks that should

Otherwise cripple or destroy them entirely."

That caused more than a few people to look confused.

"It is difficult to define and describe this luck factor in precise terms as we have not been able to test its effects on the three Yellow Jacket models for an adequate amount of time." Jovy honestly admitted. "However, our brief testing so far has shown that there is roughly 2 percent that a serious outcome can be converted into a mild outcome. Let me explain what this means. Of the 100 attacks that are powerful enough to eliminate a Yellow Jacket, 98 of them will proceed to do so without any complications. Only 2 attacks will inexplicably deflect or lose power, as if a freak accident has occurred."

That was actually quite impressive! Jovy's design philosophy had already advanced to the point of interfering with reality to this extent!

Unfortunately, it was not strong enough to impress the crowd!

Who would want to bet their lives and their future careers on this measly 2 percent

Chance of avoiding a fatal blow?

They would rather invest in a new armor system that may be a little more expensive or troublesome, but would also offer solid benefits such as 5 or 10 percent more damage

Resistance!

Jovy continued to smile as he had yet to share the most important point.

"This luck factor is not a static property. I have not been able to test this hypothesis, but

I have a certain degree of confidence that the luck factor of a living mech can grow more powerful over time. My expectations are that it becomes more effective at deflecting weaker attacks, and may even protect against a larger variety of calamities." This luck factor was a nebulous concept even for a weirdo like Ves. He really couldn't understand how Jovy could bend and manipulate probabilities as if he could turn everything random into deliberate outcomes.

People had little choice but to take Jovy's word that this luck factor was a real feature

And not a figment of his imagination.

Still, if the Scotara Armor truly possessed a bit of luck, then that could play a significant role in mitigating casualties in the Red War.

Of the hundreds of millions of Carmine mechs that would be at the frontlines in the coming years, the Scotara Armor's inconsistent but highly effective performance may cause a couple of million of them to survive fatal blows and live to tell the tale!

Ves found it rather regrettable that Jovy was not able to work at his best in the Swarm

Project.

The Survivalist's design philosophy tended to work best on weapons and other elements that were inherently random to begin with. The Yellow Jackets did not harbor that much instability as a rule.

There was only one aspect about the Carmine mechs that could be described as unstable, but Ves intended to introduce that after Jovy had finished his speech. "The Scotara Armor's semi-modular design makes it easier to replace broken or worn plates with mass-produced replacement plating from other sources. This may lead to small but escalating inconsistencies over time, but is also good for restoring the immediate combat effectiveness of spent Carmine mechs."

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