The Mech Touch

The Supremo Project was unlike any other second-class heavy artillery mech design that Micky Tarukan had seen before.

In fact, no Rubarthan had ever seen such a mech before!

On the surface, the Supremo Project looked like a typical heavy artillery mech that was based around the one-huge-gun mech concept.

These were mech designs that attempted to skirt the line of the MTA-imposed rule that restricted the caliber of ranged weapons.

The general rule of thumb was that weapon systems were only allowed to be as big and powerful so long as they could still be independently carried by a single mech.

This restriction chafed people a lot during the early years of the Age of Mechs. Many of the people who were alive at the time still recalled the awesome firepower of warships.

A standard mech could never come close to matching the firepower of the main cannon of a battleship, but that did not stop mech designers from attempting to close the gap as much as possible!

All sorts of silly mech designs emerged as a consequence that amounted to little more than a big cannon with a mech body vaguely attached to them. From mounting the oversized cannons on their backs to literally turning them into spines, the ultra-heavy cannon mechs did manage to live up to their promise and bestow immensely strong firepower to the mech forces that fielded them in battle!

Unfortunately, restricted mech combat abided by a completely different set of rules than traditional unrestricted warship combat.

Big guns did not deliver the overwhelming suppression and the easy victories as their promoters envisioned.

The mechs that carried them were too undersized relative to their enormous cannons. This caused them to lose a huge degree of flexibility.

Their ultra-heavy cannons possessed an exceedingly slow firing rate. Their massive frames moved too slowly on the battlefield. They were easily damaged. Their main weapon systems became prone to malfunctions. The most stressed components wore down far too quickly.

While the ultra-heavy cannon mechs barely functioned adequately when employed as a semi-fixed defensive installation, they were terrible when used in attack maneuvers.

Any adversary could easily work around their many obvious weaknesses and take advantage of their complete lack of flexibility and adaptability to target their vulnerabilities!

They were especially vulnerable to light mechs. Any light skirmisher could easily advance while evading the slow-firing attacks from the unwieldy ultra-heavy cannons.

Once the light skirmishers came close, then they could easily avoid the firing arc of the single big weapon and dismantle the vulnerable heavy mechs from the rear or any other unprotected sides!

Of course, the forces that employed the ultra-heavy cannon mechs always made sure to provide their expensive babies with adequate escorts, but that brought its own host of issues.

When a hostile force fielded a more reasonable and flexible roster of heavy artillery mechs, it became easy to eliminate the ultra-heavy cannon mechs by relying on quantity as opposed to quantity.

It was impossible for a small number of ultra-heavy cannon mechs to eliminate a much larger quantity of regular heavy artillery mechs!

The latter had a lot more depth and redundancy. They could also reposition themselves much easier after they fired a salvo, allowing them to avoid counter-battery fire a lot easier.

In short, there were many reasons why the prevailing pattern of heavy artillery mechs ultimately ended up as a relatively balanced configuration with multiple reasonably-sized integrated cannon weapons.

Any mech designer that deliberately deviated from the market standard better had a good reason behind this risky decision.

"The demand for heavier siege weapons has increased by a large extent after the start of the Age of Dawn." Micky Tarukan remarked. "Isthmus Manufacturing along with many of our competitors have observed that mechs armed with weaker and lighter weapons are selling in much less quantities than before. The demand for heavier mechs that are armed with larger weapons has increased, but the market has yet to demand mechs as unbalanced as your Supremo Project."

Having designed the heavy artillery mech in cooperation with Master Decimus Horst for many months, Ves had gained a much more comprehensive understanding of this mech type.

"That is because the customer base is lagging behind the rapid changes in circumstances. They are still stuck in their own mindsets. There is nothing wrong with more traditional heavy artillery mechs. The latest iteration to my famous Transcendent Punisher model still adheres to this pattern. However, I think that there is a legitimate place for ultra-heavy cannon mechs in many mech forces, particularly the less well-equipped ones that cannot afford to employ transphasic mechs on a wider scale."

"Is the Supremo Project a transphasic mech?" The Rubarthan chief executive asked.

Ves shook his head. "Strictly speaking, it is not. I designed this machine with the economic conditions and resource endowments of the Colonial Federation of Davute in mind. The second-rate state used to enjoy the backing of a consortium of first-rate powers, but that relationship ended with the Great Severing. Master Horst and I took great effort to make it as affordable as possible while still preserving much of its key strengths. The estimated production cost comes at just 4 MTA credits. I have no idea how much Davute intends to charge for this product, but I imagine that it should hover between 4.7 to 6 MTA credits depending on how much it wants to subsidize its own domestic mech forces."

The Supremo Project was a bit more expensive than the Standard Fey Fianna, but the new drone mech was already expensive when compared to other medium mechs.

As far as heavy artillery mechs were concerned, it was not unusual for them to be priced at 5 or even 6 MTA credits. They were more expensive because they used up a lot more materials and because it was worth it to obtain so much firepower.

When Micky Tarukan reminded himself of the unverified but highly consequential claim that the Supremo Project was able to unleash greater destruction with the support, however slight, of the Destroyer of Worlds, then the heavy artillery mech was definitely a bargain at this price range!

Every second-class customer would instantly flock to every available retail channel and purchase at least a few units in order to experience the mighty god pilot's power for themselves.

Tarukan feared that a lot of Rubarthans consumers would especially go mad once this product finally entered the market!

It did not matter if smaller or more restricted mech forces could not accommodate such a large, heavy and expensive artillery mech. Just their ostensible connection to one of their most powerful guardians was enough to justify their purchases!

As the head of Isthmus Manufacturing continued to examine the projected mech design from every angle, he tried to pick out every detail that could increase or decrease the sales potential of this new mech product.

Many of the old objections still existed, but there were even more compelling reasons to buy this mech.

Tarukan took another look at the main cannon that was so large that nobody could possibly mistake the silhouette of the Supremo Project from a distance.

The dark brown coating and the absence of any clear markings caused the heavy artillery mech to look a lot more frightening than it should. Its shapes and contours already conveyed so much threat that there was no need to dress it up with any further artistry!

Such a mech... was exactly what red humanity sought in their fight against the native aliens.

The Supremo Project was not suitable to be deployed by itself, but it would work wonders in a proper combined arms force where it could pummel enemy warships under the protection of many supporting mech units.

"How is its estimated performance against alien warships?" Tarukan asked directly.

"I can transfer you a bunch of reports that contain a lot of calculations and estimates, but they are already outdated due to my most recent changes." Ves responded. "At longer ranges, the Supremo Project's 4 heavy artillery cannons are unable to hit anything unless the target is big and stationary. However, that is not a big problem because the super-heavy high-velocity hyper gauss cannon is more than powerful enough to make up for this shortcoming. Its firing rate is slow, but each super-heavy round is accelerated to a blazing speed with the help of the exceptionally long barrel. That makes every shot both fast and powerful, so much so that a direct hit on any typical mech can literally cause the poor machine to explode into pieces!"

Micky Tarukan could believe in this claim. The huge size and other obvious characteristics of the main cannon better be able to one-shot a mech, or else it wasn't worth the trouble!

"The main cannon is clearly more suited for direct or low-angle fire in landbound combat. It can function as a suitable long-range siege weapon in spaceborn combat. The heavy artillery cannons that can launch explosive shells should have much lower muzzle velocities. That should only make them suitable for mid-range combat in space battles."

Ves nodded. "That is true. The heavy artillery cannons can load all sorts of standard shells for its caliber, so every mech force has a lot of choice on how to employ them. My favorite is to load them with spaceburst shells that can produce wide-area explosions at set distances. That should be reasonably effective in destroying dense formations of small craft or hitting fast-moving targets."

That sounded useful, but the premise was that the enemy small craft and warships moved close enough to the human starships that carried the Supremo Project in their bunkers.

As long as the range extended past a certain point, the horribly slow muzzle velocities of the traditional artillery cannons would make it so that they could never hit any reasonably moving target in space!

Even so, this was an acceptable tradeoff. The Supremo Project was really all about the big fat gun that was mounted on its front.

The more Micky Tarukan looked at it, the more he became attracted by its possibilities.

How much damage could a mech company comprised entirely of this exaggerated heavy artillery mech inflict?

Such a force might not excel at inflicting wide-area destruction, but it could accurately strike heavily fortified targets with the force of a hammer of god!

Another idea came to mind.

"This cannon... is it capable of firing at orbital targets from the ground?"

Ves grinned. "Yes. That is one of the new objectives that Master Horst and I tried to fulfill. All of the calculations bear this out. The early prototypes have also confirmed this capability. The best way for the Supremo Project to threaten enemy warships in orbit is to load its main cannon with transphasic rounds. This allows the solid projectiles to partially phase through the air, effectively negating a lot of air resistance that ordinarily saps a lot of speed and force. It may be an expensive choice, but with the targeting guidance from Ylvaine, the Supremo Project is capable of making every shot count!"

This made the Supremo Project even more attractive than before! It could function as a legitimate planetary defense unit that could safely bombard enemy warships that had managed to approach a human-occupied planet.

In many cases, enemy warships could easily ignore the threat from the surface so long as the humans kept sticking to their own version of small craft. Mechs simply did not possess the punch needed to inflict significant damage onto shielded warships that leisurely hovered in orbit.

That could change once a heavy artillery mech like the Supremo Project started to get stationed across many different planets!

The expense would be great, but the resources needed to field a hundred copies of this radical heavy artillery mech were far lower than the resources that the aliens invested in their own warships!

So long as the Supremo Project could down one enemy warship, then they had already paid for themselves!

The deterrence value alone was already precious enough. If the aliens decided to postpone or slow down their planetary assaults upon detecting large quantities of Supremo Project mechs, then that granted the latter an even greater strategic significance!

Micky Tarukan made a decision.

Isthmus Manufacturing could not let this powerful new mech design slip past its fingers!

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