The Mech Touch

Ves continued to elaborate on the defensive features of the Fey Fianna. Its modular armor plating was fantastic and fared best when locked in a fight against small craft.

Unfortunately, all of this fancy tech that enabled rapid dynamic redeployment of modular armor plates served little purpose when struck by the gun batteries of a warship!

Any primary or secondary gun battery of a sizable alien vessel could blow the Fey Fianna to bits with ease!

This was why many mech pilots among the viewers still tempered their enthusiasm for this new drone mech.

This amount of armor meant little in the face of overwhelming firepower.

Of course, thicker and stronger armor did not necessarily mean that a mech could withstand the powerful attacks of a warship. Additional bulk might save the mech from getting torn apart by attacks launched by secondary or tertiary gun batteries, but it would ultimately slow down the machine to such an extent that it became a sitting duck!

That was why a lot of people understood the design choice that Ves had made for this machine. Emphasizing mobility over hard defenses granted the Fey Fiannas a considerably greater chance of surviving clashes against formidable alien warships.

Over So percent of the mech designers among the viewers would have made a similar choice as Ves if they were in his shoes. The remaining 20 percent probably intended to rely on gimmicks such as ECM systems or other special tech.

Armor was not completely useless, though. There were many hazards that could not be evaded and could only be resisted with hard defenses. Armor also helped a lot with allowing mechs to endure the attack runs of alien starfighters.

"As you can see, the armor system of the Fey Fianna is primarily based on the water attribute." Ves highlighted one of the more important quirks of his new mech. "I will elaborate more on this subject, but at a basic level, the use of the water element can work just as well as the metal element in strengthening the damage resisting capabilities of armor plating. The decision to base it around the water element is to reduce potential incompatibilities and allow it to maintain maximum effectiveness when employed alongside its energy shields, which are also enhanced by water energy."

The Fey Fianna was not a defensive mech and could not accommodate more than a small energy shield generator. It was not meant to repel a lot of attacks, but was merely there to prevent accidents and fatal blows.

In fact, the energy shield generator was rather underpowered compared to the needs of the new drone mech. Ves added it anyway because the inclusion of water hypers gave the mech the potential to amplify the performance of its energy shields beyond a reasonable level!

The more expensive editions of the Fey Fianna did not have to worry about this issue. Each of them were equipped with more effective azure shield generators.

While they were nowhere near as huge and exaggerated as the ones mounted on the dreadnoughts of the Red Fleet, the devices were more than capable of protecting the Fey Fianna from a lot of sustained firepower or a few powerful impacts from a transphasic weapon!

"In short, the defenses of the Fey Fianna are empowered by the water element, which means that it can resist physical attacks much more effectively so long as they are not infused by the power of the earth element. The energy shields are particularly effective at limiting the damage of energy attacks, especially when they are enhanced by the fire element. All of these relations may sound convoluted to you, but the RA's internal database has a full list of synergistic and antagonistic relationships between different E energy attributes."

Talk about different elements sounded too abstruse to many people. Only those who possessed unusual backgrounds or had already gotten started in hyper technology understood the significance of this explanation.

To most mech pilots, all they had to know was that defenses enhanced by water were pretty effective at resisting fire attacks.

Physical attacks were pretty dicey as the ones empowered by the earth element could more easily overpower the Fey Fianna's defensive layers.

Of course, all of these relationships were relative to their power levels. A fire energy beam attack from a battleship could easily wipe out the Fey Fianna with ease regardless of what sort of fancy tricks it pulled!

Ves moved on to talk about the direct armaments of his new drone mechs.

"The Fey Fianna is primarily designed for ranged combat, but it is still able to defend itself in close combat as long as the mech pilot has the right skills. The Living Mech Corporation is ready to sell the Fey Fianna with a range of different weapon loadouts. Our recommendation is to equip the Fey Fianna with one of our newly developed fourth generation luminar crystal rifles and a backup knife."

He spent the next few minutes showcasing the power of the Fey Fianna's direct weapons.

They were not too remarkable aside from the fact that they were also hyper weapons. The luminar crystal rifle equipped with a powerful fire beam attack phase crystal could spit out fiery rays that were especially good at melting metal-reinforced defenses!

If not for the fact that the fire energy drawn by the weapon would interfere with the water-based defenses of the Fey Fianna, the rifle could have been good enough to serve as the main weapon system of this mech!

Though the performance of the fourth generation luminar crystal rifle was not outstanding, it did not lose out on many other weapons of the same type.

"The Fey Fianna is not a specialized rifleman mech, but it is able to attain higher accuracies when the living mech and the mech pilot have experienced enough growth and training. The light and compact luminar crystal rifle is excellent at producing sustained output without imposing too much of a burden on the machine. However, if you ever need more punch, you can swap its weapon for a heavier and more powerful rifle, though it is recommended that you upgrade the mech's energy reserves in order to sustain its energy consumption."

The Fey Fianna was a hungry mech model. The energy shield generator and the modular armor system all needed to be powered in order to be effective. The machine also had to power its flight system in order to make it agile enough to evade many attacks.

Ves did not spend any time on highlighting the Fey Fianna's melee combat capabilities as they were truly not worthwhile for him to draw attention to. They could only be described as barebones at best.

Perhaps Ves or another mech designer might design a melee-oriented variant of the Fey Fianna. That would allow it to synergize with other powerful features that were only effective at close range.

Once he addressed the weapon loadouts, Ves moved on to the most important elements of a drone mech.

Ves floated over to one of the luminar crystal cannon fey, which looked eager to introduce itself to the public.

Lucky followed suit and perched his body on top of the rounded surface of the fey.

Despite the fact that the fey was clearly lower in volume to a mech, Ves still looked relatively small in proportion!

The fey clearly leaned on the larger side of a spur.

Compared to the thin and elegant Sparrows of the Sparrow Storm, the fey looked like their fat, oversized cousins!

Yet their greater size did not look particularly bloated or ugly. Their size was exactly right for their purpose.

Although the fey were not as small and nimble as the Sparrows, their superior capacity enabled them to get away with a lot more stuff.

They were able to mount stronger weapons and resist significantly more damage.

There were also other important advantages to their higher volumes, a few of which happened to be highly relevant in the Age of Dawn.

While Ves methodically explained these differences, he projected two different simplified internal diagrams.

One of them depicted a dumbed down version of the internal layout of the luminar crystal cannon fey. He especially color-coded the sections in order to make it easier to understand to the technological illiterates.

The other diagram depicted a similar diagram of a spur that looked suspiciously close to a basic Sparrow.

It was easy to spot a lot of obvious differences. Mech designers could puzzle over them all day, but Ves had to keep it short.

"Spurs can come in all shapes and sizes. There is a collection of drone mechs that are always characterized by their small and slender spurs. Designed many generations ago, the properties of these spurs completely fit the needs of the market at the time. By equipping drone mechs with a large amount of small and disposable spurs, these machines can tear through lightly armored mechs with ease. Though vulnerable to area attacks and weak against better-armored units, these drone mechs occupy their niche so well that they have set a standard that has lasted for the remainder of the Age of Mechs."

Many insiders knew what Ves was referring to. For the Sparrow Storm line to consistently capture at least 30 percent of the galactic mech market over a span of many years, it had absolutely earned its place on the throne!

Yet Ves did not believe it was unassailable. The past was not the same as the present!

A part of his excitement faintly radiated through his glow, causing others to hang onto his words even more.

"The size of spurs has an important impact on their capabilities. Due to many reasons, smaller spurs have less disposable space inside of their metal shells, which have to be at least a certain thickness in order to be practical in combat. Just like straws that you can use to sip your beverages, there is not much space that you can use to squeeze in useful modules. Larger and more squarish spurs can contain a lot more modules in proportion."

This was clearly visible in the schematics. Every spur had to reserve internal space for all kinds of essential components such as armor, inertial dampeners, maneuvering thrusters, processor chips, energy cells and so on. While their volumes could all be adjusted according to the needs of the design, they could not be diminished too much, or else the spur would become useless.

Once all of the available capacity was filled up with 'essential' components that could not be removed no matter what, the amount of space left available for functional and optional parts was not that much.

This was why light mechs always had to struggle to squeeze in one additional energy cell while heavy mechs could easily stuff so many of them inside their frames that they could fire their energy weapons for hours on end.

Ves gestured at the two projected schematics. After sending a silent transmission, the spaces that were not essential lit up, making it obvious how much disposable internal volume they had at their disposal.

"As you can see, the differences in size and other factors make it so that the small and thin spurs that are commonly utilized by many drone mechs cannot accommodate as many hyper materials. Anyone who has studied hyper technology understands how debilitating that may be. The mechers have called this period the Hyper Generation for good reasons. How can any self-respecting mech skimp on hyper materials? These needle-like spurs are hardly superior to their previous versions, and the realspace performance metrics back up this conclusion!"

In other words, Ves basically castigated the Sparrow Storm Mark XII for being an ill-suited mech for the current age.

SKL Mech Industries had done an admirable job at figuring out hyper technology quickly and updating many of its mainstream mech lines with remarkable speed.

The customers who bought or upgraded to the Mark XII also got their money's worth. The immediate 20 to 30 percent or so performance boost enabled many second-class mech forces to reduce their losses and earn more decisive victories!

Yet Ves did not see a future in the Mark XII. Its legacy design choices had become counterproductive in the new age. Only larger spurs could accommodate more significant quantities of hyper materials, and the Fey Fianna was the first drone mech to field more properly sized spurs!