The Mech Touch

Ves gained much from his short visit to the Princely Jackal. Observing the Akkara heavy cannoneer mechs of the Flagrant Vandals not only granted him a better feel for huge machines, but also sparked a fruitful discussion with two different people.

He found it rather surprising that both Zanthar and Commander Orfan helped expand his views on heavy mechs. The two weren't known for their wisdom and wealth of knowledge. Yet their different perspectives and life experiences caused them to illuminate new angles that Ves previously overlooked.

On the shuttle ride back to the Scarlet Rose, Ves briefly activated his comm in order to call for a meeting with Major Verle. He had a lot to talk about and wanted to get started right away once he returned.

"Meow."

Meanwhile, Lucky squinted his glowing green eyes as Zanthar eagerly tickled his pale bronze exterior. Even if the surface felt like a mix of solid bone and metal, the mechanical cat appeared to be quite sensitive!

"Can I have a cat like Lucky too?" Zanthar smiled as he enjoyed this moment.

"Lucky is unique. You can't afford a cat like him. Perhaps it will be different when our Larkinson Clan becomes a first-class power, but don't get your hopes up. If you want a pet, then you are better off looking for something organic."

Ves had received this question many times ever since he obtained the gem cat. There was no way that he would tell anyone the truth. He would simply tell people that Lucky was a Rubarthan product or something. That quickly ended the questioning.

"Awww…"

The teenager looked disappointed, but many people simply couldn't have nice stuff. The galaxy was filled with space peasants who looked at Terrans, Rubarthans, other first-raters, the true spaceborn, mecheers and fleeters with envy.

Ves knew it was pointless to feel jealous at those who were born at a much higher station than himself. Rather than engage in unproductive behavior, he might as well invest in himself in order to improve his ability and qualifications. Slowly but steadily, he would catch up and even surpass those privileged people.

Once the shuttle arrived at his personal ship, Ves exited the vehicle and quickly returned to his stateroom. With Lucky wandering off and Nitaa taking up an unobtrusive guard position, Ves readied his thoughts until Major Verle arrived.

"Please take a seat, major."

The middle-aged man in uniform did so. "What's this about, sir? You sounded quite eager over the comms."

"I developed some doubts in the process of designing our upcoming heavy artillery mech. I decided to seek some consultation and received some advice…"

Ves quickly explained what he had been up to. He also enumerated the most important insights he gleaned from studying the Akkara mechs.

"Several aspects of heavy mechs stand out to me. First, heavy mechs are incredibly specialized. By sacrificing mobility, they also sacrifice flexibility. Using them effectively in battle becomes more challenging, and many options simply aren't available due to their limitations."

Major Verle nodded as if he had long understood this point. "It is very easy to squander heavy mechs. Commanders need to pass special courses in order to gain the qualification to command them. They are so valuable that their loss can easily cripple a unit."

"This leads me to the second point. To make effective use of their pronounced strengths, we need to put more effort into manipulating the circumstances of the battle in our favor. Heavy mechs are assets that require time and patience to employ. Once we have set up the perfect circumstances, their extreme firepower or other strengths can be played to the fullest!"

"That's why heavy mechs exist, sir. A smaller formation consisting of heavy mechs can actually achieve far greater results than a larger formation of medium mechs. This is because you can concentrate much more firepower or defenses in a much smaller area."

"Thirdly, heavy mechs aren't very good by themselves." Ves pressed on. "They lack mobility and flexibility, hence they can't take the initiative. Heavy mechs perform at their best when they are part of a larger unit that boasts faster mechs. Combining different mech types and different mech classes is the key to achieving victory against many different opponents. In order to do that, our clan needs to develop a coherent strategy and configuration to make sure all of the pieces of the puzzle fits together."

Major Verle looked quite pleased when he heard that. "This is something that I have been working on in the past few months. Ever since you gave me permission to establish the Military Bureau, I haven't spent all of my time on unifying our personnel management and establishing rudimentary cooperation and coordination between our mech forces. With the help of some of the commanders and senior officers in the clan, I have been drafting a unified mech combat doctrine for the Larkinson Clan. The battles we have fought recently have allowed me to test, verify and refine its principles."

A unified mech combat doctrine!

Ves sat up a little straighter from his chair when he heard that. So far, the mech forces of the Larkinson Clan each fought in their own distinctive way. While the various battles against the Nyxian pirates allowed the Avatars of Myth, Living Sentinels and the others to become accustomed to working together, there was still a lot to go before they reached the same standard as the military.

"Tell me what you have come up with, major."

The major breathed deeply. "This is a very big proposal, sir. In our opinion, the Larkinson Clan's mech combat doctrine rests on three legs. They are as follows: psychological warfare, elite development and maneuver warfare."

Even before the major explained the three legs, Ves already understood the gist of them. He had personally witnessed each and every battle against the pirates and could recognize elements from all of the three strategies.

Major Verle raised a finger. "Let's begin with the first one. Psychological warfare is something that I happen to specialize in. To put it simply, it is an attempt to defeat the opponent by forming a disparity between the morale of our own side and the morale of our enemies. It doesn't matter if our enemies outnumber us, fields better mechs or employs better trained mech pilots. As long as our fighting forces are more confident than the enemy, we can still win!"

This was something that Ves had always been impressed with and one of the reasons why he was so eager to hire the former mech officer and Flashlight operative. Major Verle possessed an excellent grasp in manipulating the morale of his subordinates.

Ves smiled. "I take it that the existence of glows makes it much easier to wage psychological warfare."

"Exactly so!" Verle grinned back. "While it is dangerous to become too dependent on glows, that is no reason to discount their use. Right now, our use of glows is more a result of using what is available. We still lack a more unified and strategic approach towards leveraging glows. It's not enough to come up and implement some plans. This cooperation needs to start from the beginning of the design process of your mechs."

"Ah! I see! I shouldn't have designed a new mech without obtaining sufficient input from my target audience."

This was something he overlooked. As the patriarch of the Larkinson Clan, Ves was accustomed to getting his way. Whenever he wanted to design a mech for the Larkinson Clan, he just developed an idea and designed it right away without sufficiently paying attention to the demands of the Larkinsons or whether it fit their needs.

Whenever he designed a mech for the market or a specific client, Ves paid much more attention to the needs of his customers. Skipping this essential step when he designed a mech for his own clan was an unforgivable mistake.

Fortunately, Ves only designed a single mech for the Larkinson Clan so far. As a modular mech platform, the Bright Warrior possessed a lot of versatility, which meant it was always useful in a battle.

The same could not be said for heavy mechs. Their extreme specialization meant that Ves had to pay much more attention to how they would be used in the battles waged by the Larkinson Clan.

The major explained the need to focus on psychological warfare.

"Compared to many other powers, our Larkinson Clan possess a great advantage in this aspect. Since you are the originator of glows, you can design any mech that manipulates the morale of both friendlies and enemies to our liking. Don't take the fact that we can affect the morale of multiple sides lightly. For example, if we say that a benign glow provides us with a 10 percent boost in performance, our battle results won't differ that much. However, if we pair that with a malignant glow that suppresses the enemy's performance by 10 percent, then the difference widens to 20 percent."

The ultimate impact of such a wide disparity was not that simple! If the disparity became too wide, then that meant that the superior side would easily be able to snowball their advantages throughout the battle. A close battle with even losses on both sides could easily turn into a lopsided massacre with such a difference in morale!

The Battle of Marrakath System also highlighted the drastic difference that glows could make through this effect!

While it sounded great to achieve an easy victory through waging psychological warfare, Ves did not immediately embrace the notion.

"What if the enemy fields some sort of counter to our glows? The Friday Coalition's Masters and many other mech designers are already starting to research methods on how to counter my specialty."

"That's okay. I don't believe your glows can be negated so easily. At the very least, it is likely that those counters require very special solutions that only work against LMC mechs. The enemy will have to invest considerably in those counters in order to fight us on even ground. That is time and resources that they could have spent on something deadlier. Besides, I doubt most of our opponents will have sufficient counters ready. From our understanding of glow interactions, quantity is also a factor. Proportionally, no one fields more LMC mechs than our clan!"

That was true. Even if Master Olson and her fellow colleagues developed an effective counter to glows in the form of a mech, then one copy likely wouldn't be enough. An enemy would have to field hundreds, if not thousands of copies in order to effectively mitigate the Larkinson Clan's most notable advantage!

Against ordinary opponents such as pirate outfits, Ves doubted that any of them bothered to field any counter mechs. The only reason why they would do so was when LMC mechs became very popular in their region. Even if that was the case, that just meant the Larkinson Clan had become even wealthier, allowing it to field even stronger mechs!

Major Verle raised an important caveat. "We should be careful not to over rely on the advantages given by your mechs. Do you remember our first battle in the Nyxian Gap? We dispatched some Sentinel rookie mech pilots against some pirates in the company of some Bright Warriors from the Avatars. In the final moment, we ordered the Bright Warriors to withdraw, causing the rookies to become unbalanced by the sudden absence of glows."

"I remember." Ves grimaced a bit.

"As a result of that, Commander Magdalena and every other commander has made sure to prevent our mech pilots from getting too complacent. They need to fight well regardless of the presence of glows. This does not mean that our emphasis on psychological warfare has reached a dead end. Humans and aliens have waged psychological warfare before the emergence of your glows. There are many other levers that we can manipulate in order to obtain advantages on this front."

Propaganda, training and many other measures could all achieve some of the effects of glows. The main difference was that glows were much more directly applicable during battle while those other options had to take place beforehand.

On top of that, the Larkinson Clan also possessed another advantage that Major Verle wasn't entirely aware of. The Larkinson Network that bonded every clansman to the Golden Cat and with each other could also play an important role!

All of these measures had the potential to overlap, resulting in a qualitative disparity that was difficult to surmount. Ves readily agreed with Major Verle that the Larkinson Clan should pursue this advantage to the fullest!