The Mech Touch - Chapter 6814 FadeBurst Round
The second-class and third-class FadeBurst Rounds invented by Zanthar Larkinson were rather weak.
It couldn’t be helped. Their designs did not contain any special tech or materials that focused on increasing damage. When fired from a ballistic rifle, the rounds were more prone to shattering before it could expend all of its kinetic punch onto an obstacle.
Much of this had to do with the large proportion of hyper materials in the designs. They were decent at attracting E energy, but possessed disappointing physical properties. The greater the proportion of hyper materials, the weaker the overall construction.
This was a problem that plagued the Amaranto Mark III design as well. If not for Gloriana’s excellent use of archetech and targeted amounts of high-grade exotic alloys to reinforce the mech frame, the ace mech would not have been able to spar so intensively against the Lamia Kailamassu.
From what Ves could gather so far, the FadeBurst Round centered entirely on ejecting a focused burst of water-attributed E energy in a single direction.
Zanthar’s explanation about how E energy was mostly able to bypass azure energy shields without issue, he still had not revealed the most critical mechanism behind his remarkable new invention.
How was able to convert a focused spray of E energy into a physical attack?
Without the use of true resonance to alter its properties, Ves could not think of any way to make this happen.
“The secret behind how I was able to do it is… Alfred, my companion spirit.” Zanthar finally exposed the source behind his most important breakthrough in his research.
“Mawah!”
A green cat that looked like he was on fire emerged from Zanthar’s forehead. The cat still looked fairly young, but he had grown considerably from his kitten stage.
When Ves and Blinky examined Alfred, they noticed that the reason behind the companion spirit’s vigorous growth was due to practicing a qi cultivation method based on the fire element.
Ves was not familiar with this qi cultivation method, but he could feel from Alfed’s spiritual emissions that he not only became more aligned to the fire element, but also gained more volatile and explosive qualities.
Alfred should not only be able to create spiritual explosions that could damage E energy constructs, but also use his cultivation to create physical explosions!
The answers fell into place.
“You… managed to replicate one of Alfred’s abilities into the FadeBurst Round.” Ves voiced his conclusion.
“That is right.” Zanthar said. “As you know, Alfred can turn a regular projectile into an EEE Round by infusing a small amount of his energy into it. He can also amplify the power of an existing EEE Round and enable it to inflict more physical damage. That is where the original conversion came from. One of the problems that I have been trying to solve in the past few months was to replicate this conversion process in my mech design. I cannot fully explain how I managed to do it, but after borrowing the help of Polly and Aria, I managed to design a mech armed with a ballistic rifle that can somehow make my FadeBurst Rounds behave as I wished. I knew that my design philosophy had made enough progress. I broke through shortly afterwards.”
“That makes sense.” Ves nodded. “It is not unusual for you to be unable to explain the underlying mechanics of what you are able to do. Many mech designers are faced with this ‘chicken and egg’ problem. It is through the help of their design philosophies that they can imbue their mech designs with characteristics that shouldn’t physically be possible. Yet in order for mech designers to be able to create such works, they need to become Journeymen first in order to produce a noticeably strong effect. It is considered remarkable for Apprentices to be able to develop this special munition type at the strength of an Apprentice Mech Designer. That shows that your design philosophy not only holds greater promise, but that you have dedicated your heart and intention towards its realization.”
Ves was in the same boat, so he knew exactly what it was like. It took strong dedication and unwavering confidence in one’s vision of mechs to be able to produce such a reality-defying result.
Mech designers may not be as blatant as mech pilots in distorting the rules of reality, but that did not mean that the people staying in the rear were powerless. They channeled their strengths in other ways that best suited their preferred means of serving the people.
The two mech designers continued to talk further about the FadeBurst Round. Through the mysterious operations of Zanthar’s design philosophy, his FadeBurst Rounds mysteriously managed to make up for the remaining gaps in its mechanisms and successfully convert E energy into a physical attack.
There were many limitations to this conversion process. Zanthar had already conducted extensive tests.
“My FadeBurst Rounds are best fired from the kinetic ranged weapons that I have designed.” Zanthar explained. “Although they can also be launched from other weapons that can accommodate their caliber, the conversion process will weaken, causing the rounds to inflict less damage. The test footage already shows that. My FadeBurst Rounds should be able to deal a little more damage when fired under ideal conditions, but don’t expect any miracles. The efficiency of the conversion process is terribly low.”
“How much?”
“I am having difficulty with measurements, but in my estimation, at least 70 percent of the energy contained and leveraged by the hyper materials ultimately get wasted. Only 30 percent or less of that potential is converted into physical damage.
Ves did not look too upset with that. “This is still a good start. You are actually lucky that you can convert 30 percent of the potential of your FadeBurst Round into actual damage. It should be much more common for an initial experiment to be just 1 percent effective or less. You have saved yourself a lot of detours in your subsequent research.”
The new Journeyman smiled at that. “I at least confirmed that I am working in the right direction. There is also a lot of room for improvement. I at least want to raise the efficiency of the conversion process to 50 percent.”
Whether Zanthar could reach this goal in a few years remained to be seen, but Ves quietly wished him good luck.
“Alright, your FadeBurst Rounds are best used by mechs that are purpose-built to utilize them.” Ves concluded. “If that is the case, then I want you to spend your time on developing a variant of the Yellow Jacket B and C to accommodate this new EEE Munition of yours. No matter whether your FadeBurst Rounds are effective on the battlefield or not, I want to give each of our customers the option to try out your new weapon system if possible.”
“I am honored, teacher.” Zanthar said as he bowed in gratitude. “I originally developed the FadeBurst Round with your Yellow Jacket in mind. I have already completed a large amount of preliminary work.” Continue your journey on My Virtual Library Empire
Ves raised his palm. “Not so fast, Zanthar. Before we discuss this matter further, I still need to know about the weaknesses and shortcomings of this round. I am curious about how much actual damage it can do against a shielded target. From what I have seen in the test footage, it is not much.”
Zanthar sighed. “That is why I consider the FadeBurst Round to be an incomplete design. There are two major problems. I already mentioned the first one. The efficiency of the conversion process is too low. A lot of energy is going to waste before it ever hits the target. The second problem is the dispersion of water energy. Due to many reasons, when the FadeBurst Round crashes against an energy shield, the water energy ejected from the projectile spreads forward in an expanding cone pattern. This means that the power is most concentrated at point blank range, but quickly spread out. That means that the distance between an energy shield and the object under protection largely determines how much damage is being dealt.”
This was easy to understand. If the water energy had yet to spread out, much of its power was still concentrated, enabling it to penetrate through alloy plating with relative ease.
If the water energy did not encounter any immediate obstacles and continued to traverse through empty, then by the time it struck a piece of alloy plating, much of its power would have dispersed already, causing the plate to endure virtually no effective damage!
The amount of energy in both scenarios remained roughly the same, but the results were drastically different!
It could mean the difference between getting poked by a knife and getting slapped by an open palm!
As Ves thought about the implications of what he learned, he roughly figured out how this flaw compromised the effectiveness of FadeBurst Rounds.
“Since the distance between an active azure energy shield and an object under protection is so crucial, then your FadeBurst Rounds are only effective against smaller targets.” Ves deduced. “Phasefighters are equipped with small azure energy shield generators. The latter are designed to stick as close to the exterior surface of the alien craft as possible. Any excess room results in wasted energy. This happens to play to the advantage of your PhaseBurst Rounds. When they strike the azure energy shields of these alien phasefighters, the water energy bursts only have to cover a distance of a meter or two at most before striking the vulnerable frames.”
Zanthar eagerly nodded. “I think my first EEE Munitions will be especially effective when used to counter weaker alien phasefighters. However, it won’t work against the more expensive and elite phasefighters. Their frames are made out of superior alloys that can withstand much of the damage.”
“I know, but this is already a pretty good result for your first iteration of your FadeBurst Round.”
“Another shortcoming is that if a target loses its azure energy shield, the attacking mechs are better off switching to a different ammunition type than my FadeBurst Round. It is frankly awful when used to damage unshielded enemies.”
“I agree. This is a hefty shortcoming, but not an insurmountable one.” Ves said. “You should design a kinetic rifle that can easily and quickly switch between two different ammunition types. The mech pilot can choose to switch between armor-piercing rounds and FadeBurst rounds.”
“I have already begun to design such a weapon, teacher. In fact, I want the weapon to be able to load more ammunition types in case I invent additional variations of EEE Munitions in the future. I want my weapons to be just as versatile as your luminar crystal rifles.”
“Your initiative is good. Have you ever tested whether your FadeBurst Round is effective against enemy warships?”
Zanthar shook his head in disappointment. “The results are not good. I haven’t conducted any realistic tests against an actual starship, but according to the data gathered from other experiments, my FadeBurst Rounds are virtually ineffective against even the weakest alien warship. The distance between an azure energy shield and the hull can easily span 10 meters or longer. That is already enough for the water energy burst to disperse in a huge cone. The hull plating of enemy warships is also much thicker and denser than the armor plating of a cheap phasewater. Even if the dispersion of water energy is non-existent, it will still struggle to inflict any noticeable damage onto solid hull plating. At most, my FadeBurst rounds can be used to clear vulnerable sensor arrays and other delicate systems.”
Ves grew disappointed. “I see. It makes sense. Is it possible to drastically increase the effective damage of your FadeBurst Rounds by utilizing more expensive hyper materials? What about adding phasewater?”
“I haven’t conducted any tests on rounds made with more premium materials, but I can already tell you that they will most definitely pack a greater punch.” Zanthar said. “However, it will become too expensive to make use of them. You need to fire a lot of rounds in order to damage any tough target. Once you fire the rounds, you won’t be able to recoup the costs. If you are crazy enough to use phasewater on these rounds, I can’t imagine how much money you will be throwing away. Besides, the entire point of developing the FadeBurst Round is to give mechs a way to defeat shielded targets without relying on this limited resource. My work has to be affordable in order to offer enough value to customers. Otherwise, you are better off using a transphasic hyper luminar crystal weapon.”
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