[401-600] THE MECH'S TOUCH

Chapter 401: Helpful Tips

They entered the end sprint.

Ves personally accompanied the modified prototype to the newly erected testing grounds a fair distance away from the Mech Nursery. He witnessed each test in person and made his own observations about the prototype's performance.

From what he saw so far, his rifleman mech design performed up to expectations. It weaved nimbly around the obstacle, showing hardly any signs of slowing down. As a fast and nimble medium mech, the prototype demonstrated both speed and resilience.

Even the people who supervised the tests couldn't help but let out admiring gasps when the prototype finally revealed the power of the chest crystal.

After being hit by a number of laser beams, the crystal started twinkling in white. After the test pilot sent out a command, the chest crystal unleashed a powerful but controlled beam of light with almost the same properties of a conventional crystal, but with a lot more oomph behind its power.

"The beam is at least twice as powerful as a standard laser cannon!"

That wouldn't change any paradigms anytime soon, but it sounded impressive nonetheless. The capability to unleash a laser beam twice as powerful as a cannon should come as a nasty surprise to the rifleman mech's opponents.

It was too bad that the crystal couldn't be charged in any other way than firing lasers at it, not if you wanted to be safe. The crystal also didn't hold its charge for very long and fizzled out rather quickly, throwing up a lot of excess heat into the vicinity as a result.

"It's still a gimmick." Carlos noted at the side while Ves engrossed himself in studying the data readouts. "I really don't see this feature being very useful. Sure, it's impressive for a mech of that size to be able to unleash a powerful beam, but it won't have many opportunities to show off that feature. It can only be charged if it's shot at. Even if it carries a decent amount of armor, I don't see any mech pilot volunteering to go out in a laser storm."

Ves grunted. "You're right, but the crystal can be charged in other ways as well. It doesn't discriminate between sides, so there's no problem with asking other mechs to shoot at its chest crystal."

"As if anything like that will happen. It's more efficient if those laser rifleman mechs don't waste their battery packs on tricks like that."

Ves did not believe it was as straightforward as Carlos made it out to be. He could figure out several potential advantages to pre-charging the central crystal. He did not worry about the center crystal lacking any applications.

Although the crystal technology still hid a lot of secrets, Ves was pleased by the value it added to his design. Perhaps in the future he'd be able to bring out its full strength.

The testing grounds continued to grind away at the prototype. Ves gathered a lot of data on the soundness of its construction and the performance of each of its components. He paid a lot of attention to the targeting system, which turned out to be snappy and responsive, though it wasn't very accurate at longer ranges.

The further away his mech was from its target, the more effort it had to expend to break past the enemy mech's ECM. Against skirmishers which specialized in taking out ranged mechs, this effect could become very pronounced.

A skilled enough pilot stopped relying on external aids anyway. AIs and processors always glitched out and failed at the worst possible moments. Mech pilots had been taught to rely on their own skills instead of the comforts provided their mechs.

A mech pilot was there to pilot his mech, not the other way around.

From the fifth day onwards, the testing grounds started to subject the prototype to more demanding tests. This mostly involved subjecting it to extreme conditions. They had to find out if the design delivered all of its promises in terms of survivability.