The Mech Touch

Most of the battles fought by the Larkinson Clan took place in space, and Ves didn't think this would change.

Sure, there was a lot of untapped wealth buried on different planets, but that didn't change the fact that his clan was based entirely in space. That meant that strengthening the Larkinson Army's ability to defend the fleet was paramount!

After analyzing the expeditionary fleet's previous engagement, Ves recognized that ranged combat was the foundation of space battles.

A good space-oriented mech force fielded an abundant amount of ranged mechs in order to gain the initiative, to deter enemies from approaching and to gain the option to deal damage to any part of the battlefield without too many hindrances.

The Eye of Ylvaine already shouldered much of the burden with the help of its Transcendent Punisher model. Though its armaments could use an update, its heavy firepower and the possibility to lay down accurate firepower at longer ranges had already saved the Larkinson Clan ever since it came into service.

If it was possible to do so, Ves would have gladly doubled or tripled the amount of Transcendent Punishers in service!

Unfortunately, their biggest shortcoming was the lack of bunkers in the Larkinson fleet. After getting rid of all of the clan's sub-capital ships, the amount of Transcendent Punishers that could still be used had dropped considerably!

This made Ves uncomfortable because he had gotten accustomed to relying on long-ranged artillery support to make his battles easier.

In order to make the Transcendent Punisher so good at its job, its design sacrificed many aspects, most notably a flight system that could allow it to deploy in space.

Sure, Ves could resort to alternative solutions such as employing heavy floater platforms, but they came with their own issues.

No, the Transcendent Punishers were best left in their bunkers. The heavy mechs not only enjoyed a defensive advantage, but could also obtain a degree of support from the ships they were stationed on. Taking them away from these cozy, purpose-built sites was inefficient.

While the Penitent Sisters also filled another ranged niche with the Eternal Redemptions, they were not flexible enough due to their low mobility. They were another form of artillery in his opinion. They excelled at fighting against heavily-armored targets but performed a lot poorer against lighter and more mobile opponents.

What the Larkinson Clan needed was a ranged mech that could keep up with the latter. Ves sought to develop a new mainstay that could achieve clear superiority at medium range.

Ves planned to design new spaceborn rifleman mech for that reason.

The main purpose for this new project was to replace the Bright Warrior in rifleman mech configuration. Its performance had to exceed the existing standard solution of the Larkinson Clan in every way.

"There's nothing wrong with the Bright Warrior, but it doesn't possess any distinct advantages either." He muttered.

Tactical flexibility was a great advantage, but sometimes Ves just wanted to whack his opponents with the biggest hammer. He needed to bestow greater firepower to the Larkinson Army, especially now that the expeditionary fleet had entered the Red Ocean.

Ves was willing to spend a lot to design a high-performance ranged mech. A Bright Warrior cost roughly 500 million hex credits to produce, though that price level was based on the cost of materials back in the galactic rim.

The actual production cost was likely a lot higher in the Red Ocean due to the inflated prices of many raw materials.

Even so, Ves did not intend to cheapen out with this project, especially considering that his fleet would be operating on extremely limited mech capacity for the foreseeable time.

He had to make each mech count, and that meant trying his best to strengthen them in many different ways.

Better weapons, better tech and better piloting support were all in the cards. What he needed to do was to combine these elements into a coherent package that was clearly superior to the existing solutions of the Larkinson Clan.

The biggest question was whether he should make it exclusive to a single mech legion or turn it into a more general ranged solution.

Ves preferred to do the latter, but that went contrary to his current plan. Sure, designing a single powerful rifleman mech would allow every mech legion to adopt the new solution, but it wouldn't be tailored to their unique strengths.

In the long run, this would leave Ves disappointed with his ranged mech, the same way he was disappointed with the Bright Warrior for being too general and unspecialized.

"I'll have to pick a single mech legion to focus upon." He decided.

He already came up with two candidates.

The Avatars of Myth could make good use of a powerful ranged solution. Commander Melkor had complained multiple times about getting outshined by the other mech legions. Giving them a powerful new mech model would do wonders in placating their demands.

"It doesn't have to be a ranged model, though."

Ves became more inclined to shift the Avatars of Myth towards an assault role. That meant providing this mech legion with armored, close-ranged mechs that could take a beating and deliver high impact.

A rifleman mech, especially armed with energy weapons, embodied the opposite of this concept.

The rifleman mech he had in mind would be fairly light, agile and armed with luminar crystal rifles that excelled at mid-ranged combat.

Their impact at the beginning of a battle might not be the best, but they could effectively wear down any massed enemy units as long as they could deal persistent damage.

Pairing this kind of rifleman mech might grant more flexibility to the Avatars of Myth, but it would also dilute their primary purpose.

Ves thought it was better to design this mech for another mech legion.

The Battle Criers came to mind. Much like the Avatars of Myth, they had struggled to find relevancy when the other mech legions outshone them. Yet when Ves came up with the idea of arming their Bright Warriors with luminar crystal rifles in order to fight against expert mechs, the loyal soldiers finally regained their drive.

It didn't matter that their initial attempt to defeat an expert mech had failed. Their performance was dragged down by several factors. Not only did they lack the numbers to fell an expert mech, but their Bright Warriors and the rather crudely-designed luminar crystal rifles that Ves had provided to them did not impart enough advantages for them to fulfill their new role.

What Ves had to do was to design a new rifleman mech that allowed the Battle Criers to succeed the next time they were called to fight against enemy expert mechs.

This still left him with a lot of open-ended questions, but fortunately he could gain a lot of inspiration from his current environment.

He paid a bit more attention to the rifleman mechs that once played a significant role in their time.

"This is another interesting rifleman mech." Gloriana said as she was hugging Aurelia.

"…Wuuu…gooowaaaa…"

The cute baby had woken up again and looked curiously at the large and impressive machines. She probably had no idea what they actually were, but the more flamboyant ones featured bright and pretty colors that fascinated the little girl.

The mech that Gloriana referred to was not one of those machines.

Mechs with bold colorations were not unusual, but tended to attract a lot more attention. This could be good or bad depending on the circumstances.

Only confident mech pilots were comfortable with piloting mechs with eye-catching colors. That, or the mech force they belonged to fielded a lot of mechs with bright colors.

Mechs with plainer appearances such as the one that Ves and Gloriana were studying at the moment were more common. Rifleman mechs wanted to avoid being targeted, and looking as boring as possible was a good way to increase their survival rates.

That said, a masterwork mech always drew attention, and the deliberately plain and boring appearance of this specific machine failed to hide its brilliance.

"This is quite a contradictory mech." He remarked.

After a short period of study, he already gained a read on its character.

Unlike any other masterwork mechs in the gallery, the BDX-35F-3 did not gain a personal name that enshrined its special and unique identity. During its entire service period, it had only ever been referred to by the code name of its mech model.

Ves quickly read through the backstory of this masterwork mech.

The context of the BDX-35F-3 design was important. Apparently, a small and weaker state was fighting against a more powerful one. The war did not proceed well. In the initial planning, the weaker side should have been able to hold out longer against its opposition, but in practice its mech armies kept being pushed back.

The problem turned out to be the mech pilots. Their training and discipline weren't up to standard and they broke faster than they should when met with stronger opposition.

It was frankly embarrassing for them to give up valuable positions without putting up a sufficient amount of resistance!

The state soon implemented various measures in order to bolster morale and prevent mech pilots from giving ground too easily. The BDX-35F-3 was an experimental mech design that attempted to solve this problem in a different way than usual.

It was designed to make its mech pilots less susceptible to fear by dampening their emotions.

"What an unusual experiment." Ves looked intrigued. "I haven't seen any mech that suppresses emotions to this degree. It runs counter to the current paradigms on mech pilots."

Emotion and rationality were two important properties of mech pilots. The former gave them a reason to fight while the latter allowed them to fight smarter.

It was generally believed that a good mech pilot had to possess both, but not to the point of excess.

A mech pilot that was too emotional not only became more susceptible to fear and setbacks, but could also grow a distorted personality. Ghanso was probably a good example of how soldiers could descend into madness.

A mech pilot that was too rational tended to think too much. This not only slowed their responses, but might also cause them to question their own cause and purpose.

Of course, the assumption that too much emotion or rationality led to bad outcomes was not a hard rule. There were situations where the advantages outweighed the potential dangers, and BDX-35F-3 was designed with that in mind.

Its lead designer happened to be a rare special in neural interface technology. He modified an existing neural interface design and tuned it in a way that dampened the pilot's emotions while increasing his ability to leverage the powerful processing capabilities of the mech.

The changes worked. When the new rifleman mech model came into service, its mech pilots displayed a lot more calm in chaotic battles and had a much greater tendency to make the most optimal decisions in different situations.

The masterwork mech that had actually been produced in a manufacturing complex was the best of them. It had been piloted by numerous military mech pilots, each of whom fought under adverse circumstances that would have driven poorly-trained soldiers back.

The masterwork mech along with thousands of other identical mechs fought against super numbers, ambushes and even survived encounters against half-a-dozen enemy expert mechs!

Despite its stable and reliable performance, the mech military that fielded the BDX-35F-3 model ultimately decided to retire it without exploring this novel direction any further.

There were several reasons for that.

First, its mech pilots generally didn't like to pilot a mech that robbed them of their emotions. It was creepy for mech pilots to adopt a different mode of thought that put an unreasonable emphasis on rationality. They also resented at being forced to pilot a weird mech because their superiors didn't trust their decisions. The orders from above were too paternalistic.

Second, not a single mech pilot who fought with the BDX-35F-3 model had managed to break through. While their performance when piloting it was indeed better, the lack of breakthroughs after several years of use by thousands of different mech pilots caused it to be labeled as a failed experiment.

Ves didn't think the BDX-35F-3 was a failure, though. The implementation might not be great, but he was confident that he could do better.

"There is potential in this concept."