The Mech Touch

5667 Solving A Dilemma

As nice as it was for Isthmus Manufacturing to inspire humans into putting up a better fight, the mech manufacturer was ultimately in the business of selling lots of mechs.

Micky Tarukan therefore spent the next minutes detailing the most prominent traits and specs of the newly announced Ultimatum.

He first highlighted the new heavy artillery mech model's defensive and mobility characteristics.

Nothing he said particularly came as a surprise to his audience. The Ultimatum was covered by thick plating that was laced with earth hypers. The defensive parameters were decent, but clearly not the best in class compared to many other recently released hyper mechs.

The mobility of the UDS-550 was terrible, as was to be expected for this mech archetype.

What mattered was that its legs were thick and stable enough to somewhat maintain stability when its guns started to fire with abandon.

The only time when the mech actively had to perform a lot of compensating actions was when it fired its now-iconic Onyx Cannon. Depending on the firing angle, the local gravity and the presence of supporting braces, the heavy artillery mech could even push itself backwards when it opened fire with all five cannons at once!

Though it became clear to the more knowledgeable mech insiders that the defenses and mobility of the Ultimatum UDS-550 did not stand out in the slightest, it did not have to be. Nobody truly bought heavy artillery mechs for their ability to withstand fire or capacity to move faster than a turtle.

What everyone really wanted to know was the specs of its armaments, particularly the big one that caused the Ultimatum to resemble a rhinoceros beetle!

The CEO of Isthmus Manufacturing first directed the spotlight to the four 'smaller' cannons mounted across the back of the heavy mech.

"The Ultimatum UDS-550 is first and foremost designed to function as a traditional landbound heavy artillery mech. It is armed with four heavy artillery cannons that are all rated to launch standardized shells for its caliber. When their chambers are loaded with high-explosive shells, they can engage in high-angle bombardment at any distance, including over-the-horizon attacks. In space, they can also fire spaceburst shells that are particularly good at intercepting incoming small craft and missiles. It can also fire long-range homing shells that can automatically correct their course and detonate their explosive payloads onto their distant targets provided that they have not been intercepted along the way."

An invited guest couldn't wait for the Q&A session at the end to ask his question. He immediately raised his hand.

"Mr. Tarukan, are the secondary armaments of your new Ultimatum model confined to utilizing heavy artillery cannons that are of limited practical value in space battles?"

"The UDS-550 model number that we will be releasing first is most at home when deployed on land, but it can pose a serious threat to any alien warship that has an easy target. I will expand on the lethality of its heavy artillery cannons later." The CEO calmly responded. "Our resident design teams are currently in the process of developing variants that are mounted with different sets of back-mounted armaments that we shall release in the upcoming months."

"Can you briefly mention the changes in these variants?"

"Why certainly. Our planned UDS-551 is equipped with 4 heavy laser cannons. It is most optimized for sustained long-range combat in space. This is the most preferred option if you wish to keep your carrier vessels as safe as possible by maintaining their distance from enemy warships. The UDS-552 that is also in development boasts 4 heavy gauss cannons. They can complement the firepower of the Onyx Cannon and function best at mid-range. It is the most destructive variant and can break down the defenses of an enemy warship remarkably fast."

All of that sounded impressive. At the very least, the UDS-551 and UDS-552 sounded much more suitable to be deployed in space.

That was not to say that the UDS-550 was useless, but a lot of people thought it was weird to introduce a heavy artillery mech that was mainly optimized for pre-Age of Dawn landbound combat.

There was no way the leadership of Isthmus Manufacturing was ignorant to these concerns.

The mech insiders remained patient and waited for a proper explanation.

The fact that the Ultimatum UDS-550 was one of Professor Larkinson's famous living mechs guaranteed that it possessed at least one powerful gimmick that completely elevated its effective performance.

Micky Tarukan was slowly moving closer to giving all of these avid individuals the answers they sought.

A minute passed by before he addressed one of the most prominent and visible features of the Ultimatum model.

"Now we come to the Onyx Cannon." Tarukan smiled. "Chiefly developed by Master Decimus Horst, a famed and authoritative heavy artillery specialist, it is not an exaggeration to state that the Ultimatum is literally designed around its main cannon. Among all of the second-class heavy artillery mechs on the market that are equipped with super-heavy guns, ours are superior by the simple fact that their firepower is not strong enough. When you field a heavy artillery mech that is equipped with the most massive cannon that they can support under their own weight, you are buying access to the heaviest firepower that you can attain. There is no other second-class mech on the market that offers this level of firepower in a package as affordable and practical as our Ultimatum model."

That was yet another daring boast, but few people doubted the validity of this statement.

With a mech as powerful as this under its belt, Isthmus Manufacturing had more than earned their right to tout the supremacy of its new product!

Only a few people were aware that the Larkinson Clan had discreetly designed the Transcendent Punisher Mark III that could overpower the Ultimatum with ease, though the two mech models occupied entirely different price ranges.

In any case, Micky Tarukan devoted more time to exposing the details of the Onyx Cannon. He called out a projection that displayed a remarkably detailed schematic of the new weapon system.

The gauss cannon relied on lots of thick coils as well as huge capacitors to electromagnetically propel the heaviest possible metal round that could fit inside the barrel.

The concept sounded simple, but there were many important areas that developers needed to address in order to make sure that the weapon system remained both stable and powerful.

From material choice to the implementation of select technologies that brought a lot of minor benefits, the Onyx Cannon was a modern hyper cannon that was expressly designed to fire a solid mass of metal at the fastest possible speed.

"At a certain point, gauss cannons often struggle to attain higher muzzle velocities. Increasing this parameter is essential to making them more practical in space combat where every participant is constantly on the move. Even a few dozen milliseconds of delay can reduce the hit rate by as much as 30 percent. The higher the muzzle velocity, the longer the weapon's effective range. Yet if we want to pursue the greatest possible speed, then the projectile will become too small and light. That is counterproductive as throwing the equivalent of a toothpick at a heavily armored alien warship will not produce much of a result even if it is launched at great speed."

That was not entirely true. As long as the so-called 'toothpick' was launched at a high fraction of the speed of light, then its kinetic damage potential should not be underestimated!

However, it was impossible for a second-class mech to carry any relativistic weapons.

"The most convenient approach to increasing the damage potential of a weapon is to scale it up. There are clear limits to this approach as the mech will not only struggle to support the oversized weapon system, but also make it difficult to reach acceptable muzzle velocities. It takes an increasing amount of power to propel much heavier rounds at velocities that are adequate for ranged combat."

Many people in the audience and watching from their homes nodded. This was one of the eternal dilemmas of ranged kinetic weapons. It was also a reason why energy weapons were more preferred in space, because their energy beams traveled so quickly that factors like these no longer bothered them anymore.

The chief executive smiled as he made an honest admission to the crowd. "As this schematic clearly shows, the chief developer of the Onyx Cannon has clearly made the decision to emphasize power over muzzle velocity. By constructing the largest possible super-heavy cannon that can be mounted on a second-class heavy mech frame, the Onyx Cannon is unable to match the muzzle velocities of lighter and more proportionate kinetic weapons."

In short, the attacks of the Onyx Cannon were guaranteed to hurt a lot when they struck their targets, but their accuracy at longer ranges made it difficult to consistently produce this result!

How could a powerful weapon possibly be useful if it ended up missing its shots most of the time?

From the moment the Onyx Cannon launched a super-heavy gauss round, the mech or ship being targeted would have time to perform evasive maneuvers that could cause the attack to miss by hundreds of meters or even entire kilometers depending on the range!

It did not do the Onyx Cannon any good by leaning so heavily towards power at the expense of long-range accuracy.

The entire point of employing heavy artillery mechs as bunker mechs was to use their firepower to pound alien warships at a comfortable distance!

If a carrier vessel had to fly closer to a threatening warship, then that was incredibly counterproductive as the latter would always enjoy an advantage in this type of confrontation!

Many people started to wonder whether this was the reason why the previous demonstration targets were so immobile.

Yet before they could feed these doubts any further, Micky Tarukan directly addressed this issue.

"Before you think that the Ultimatum is only marginally effective at long-ranged combat, let us witness another demonstration."

A familiar projection came to life again that displayed a situation in high orbit. A group of battle bots launched out of a combat carrier and began to perform all kinds of random movements in space.

Their sizes and characteristics all differed from each other. A few were heavy but boasted heavy armor. Many more were smaller, lighter and much more difficult to hit from a distance.

In the meantime, the 9 Ultimatums had already turned around and raised their reactivated Onyx Cannons.

The heavy machines produced the tell-tale sounds that indicated that they were charging their main weapons.

At the same time, the Ultimatums increasingly exuded an air that caused many of the nearby witnesses to experience odd feelings.

BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM!

The main cannons simultaneously opened fire shortly after they had reached full charge!

A relatively short period of time passed before 9 battle bots dancing around in high orbit suddenly shattered and disintegrated into pieces!

None of the shots had missed!

This was a remarkable result, and one that could not be replicated by any other mech armed with a kinetic weapon.

Many people grew shocked, but others started to grow suspicious.

It was actually not that difficult to produce this result. As long as the Ultimatums had access to the future flight trajectories loaded into the battle bots, then they could easily calculate where they needed to aim in order to strike their targets at the exact right timing.

However, a company as large and prestigious as Isthmus Manufacturing would never cheat its customers to such a flagrant degree.

Only a relatively small group of people had figured out what was truly going on. They were more familiar with the mechs designed by Professor Larkinson than the general public, so it was not difficult to make the right association.

Micky Tarukan continued to exude confidence as he prepared to explain this phenomenon. "The results you see before you are authentic. Each battle bot is remotely controlled by third-party mercenary mech pilots who have not been given any specific instructions. The reason why the Ultimatum can still defeat the odds and achieve a remarkably high hit rate is because it relies on an extraordinary application of E-technology that is actually old. Professor Larkinson has actually designed numerous ranged mechs in the past that have produced such results on a wide scale."

More and more people made the connection or became informed by the Larkinson's old works.

The results attained by the Ultimatum no longer sounded so shocking when people heard that this was actually an existing capacity!

"Now that we have entered the Age of Dawn, he has improved his proprietary Guided Aim Technology and implemented it in the most destructive second-class ranged mech possible! While we dare not guarantee that the Ultimatum will never miss, we are absolutely willing to promise you that no other heavy artillery mech can attain a hit rate as high as that of our new model! Our latest product has perfectly solved the dilemma between kinetic power and muzzle velocity. By relying on a highly innovative roundabout solution, the Ultimatum can effectively give its users the best of both worlds!"

That ignited a bomb within the second-class mech community!

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