The Mech Touch

The Mars Project was so advanced and ahead of its time that it presented the Larkinson mech designers with a vision of what future expert mechs would be like.

Ves and the others were clever enough to understand that the transphasic trend was unstoppable. There was no way to prevent different people and organizations from stuffing phasewater into mechs in order to grant them a massive boost in performance.

While it was unlikely for most expert mechs to be infused with several kilograms of phasewater, less exaggerated phasewater products that only integrated a hundred grams of phasewater were already considerably powerful!

It was difficult to predict how long it would take for every decent expert mech to possess transphasic parts. It heavily depended on how much phasewater would become available in the coming decades and to what extent phasewater technology had advanced.

Personally, Ves believed it would only take two mech generations at most for the Red Ocean to be completely dominated by transphasic expert mechs!

Compared to regular expert mechs, their transphasic counterparts were much faster, much tougher and much more capable of penetrating through armor.

They might even be able to compete against warships because of those advantages!

Ves also made another important realization about this new branch of technology.

"What is even better about transphasic technology is that it is only practical at the smaller scale!"

He estimated that the cost required to equip even the smallest armed frigate with phasewater systems was already multiple times greater than the cost to make the Mars Project!

This was because warships were inherently larger and relied on larger weapon systems, much greater and thicker armor coverage and much more sizable thrusters to overpower weaker weapon platforms such as mechs!

For a long time, the seemingly limitless size and scale of warships was like an undaunted obstacle to mechs.

Since the mech industry rejected the use of juggernauts as an alternative to mechs, it was hard for mech designers to come up with a product that could fairly compete against warships.

It was only now that Ves realized that the competition between the two weapon platforms was not as skewed against mechs as he initially thought!

"Transphasic products have the potential to equalize the gap between the two. You can dump tens of kilograms of phasewater on a typical warship and only selectively improve a few parameters. As for expert mechs, it can take as little as a couple of hundred grams to amplify their performance by three or four times, and that is just when phasewater technology is still in its infancy!"

Even if a single transphasic expert mech wasn't able to compete against a warship, what about two?

If two wasn't enough, what about four?

Even if a force deployed multiple transphasic expert mechs against a single warship, the former would still be cheaper and more cost-effective to deploy due to how little phasewater it took to make them powerful enough!

"The smaller scale of mechs actually plays to their benefit this time!"

Ves found this to be a profoundly ironic notion. Mechs were often regarded as weak because they weren't as big as the war weapons employed by the big boys.

Yet with a rare, precious and powerful material like phasewater in the mix, this paradigm suddenly became less true!

The reason why phasewater could play such a critical role in altering the balance between mechs and warships was because it lowered the requirements for the former to compete against the latter!

Many industry insiders generally believed that ace mechs possessed the capital to compete against warships by themselves.

This was all well and good, but the biggest problem with ace mechs was that they needed to be piloted by ace pilots.

Ace pilots were extremely scarce in human space!

It was far easier for a state like the Friday Coalition to construct hundreds of warships than to accumulate a dozen ace mechs.

This was such an enormous disparity that ace mechs simply wouldn't have a chance to tip the scales of a war!

Quantity mattered. Perhaps an ace mech might be able to overpower a single warship, but if it happened to bump into a dozen enemy warships, then even a Saint needed to make a tactical retreat!

Expert pilots were much more numerous than ace pilots, but the problem was that their expert mechs traditionally weren't strong enough to compete against a warship in open combat.

Yet what if all of those expert mechs became transphasic? What if each of them were supplied with phasewater harvested by the colonial states that controlled a number of phasewater-rich star systems in the Red Ocean?

The balance would completely change as the smaller and much more economic expert mechs suddenly possessed the capital to threaten warships to a much greater degree!

It took less time for them to cross the deadly zone where they would have to withstand withering firepower with the help of their transphasic flight systems.

The expert mechs were able to resist heavy caliber shots much more easily due to their transphasic armor systems.

Once the machines came into effective range, the mechs could easily pierce and inflict crippling internal damage to the warships with the help of their transphasic weapon systems.

In fact, it was theoretically possible for ordinary mechs to do this job as well!

"It's not that economical, though." Ves quickly dismissed this possibility.

The Red Ocean would have to be drowning in phasewater in order for everyone to equip regular mechs with transphasic products!

Compared to ordinary machines, expert mechs possessed the advantage of true resonance.

The reason why the Mars Project was so powerful was not just because it was transphasic, but because it combined phasewater technology with true resonance.

The combination between the two produced a degree of amplification that scaled extremely well!

The more powerful the expert pilot, the more powerful the transphasic effects!

This was why transphasic expert mechs were so cost-effective to counter warships in the future.

As Ves became engrossed by this new realization, he couldn't help but discuss this topic with Professor Benedict.

The Senior nodded when he heard Ves share his thoughts.

"This is not a secret among the high-level mech community. The upper circle of the mech industry has already recognized that phasewater technology can play the role of disruptive technology. The reason why it hasn't become more common knowledge is because it is still too early to say for sure whether all of this can come true. The most essential requirement to turn expert mechs into effective threats against warships is the availability of enough phasewater."

Ves frowned. "Isn't the MTA shooting itself in the foot, then? With how much phasewater the mechers are claiming for themselves, how can we ever build enough transphasic expert mechs to meet our own needs?"

"Who says the MTA isn't doing the same thing right now?"

"...You have a point."

If the MTA made the same realization about phasewater, then it absolutely made sense for the mechers to go crazy with upgrading all of their first-class expert mechs with phasewater technology!

This would massively reduce the absolute power disparity between the two trans-galactic organizations!

Even though there was no doubt that the CFA was in a hurry to upgrade its formidable warships with phasewater technology as well, it was a fool's errand to fully upgrade even a fraction of its massive fleet!

Their titanic battleships that were more than 10 kilometers long each required an astronomical amount of phasewater in order to improve any of their aspects to a significant degree.

If the fleeters didn't put in enough phasewater, then it was too difficult to achieve a measure boost in performance!

What screwed the CFA even more was that its technological direction was completely opposite to that of the MTA.

The mechers had always invested a huge amount of research into miniaturizing components and making mechs more efficient. It had always been difficult to make mechs more powerful after each generation without scaling up their sizes, but mech designers had become increasingly more proficient at coming up with inventive solutions.

The fleeters on the other hand always resorted to size in order to make their warships more powerful. The idea was that as long as there were enough resources, there was no problem with larger and more unwieldy vessels! The CFA's research teams always prioritized power over efficiency!

"The implications of the invasion of the Red Ocean are far greater than what is obvious to the public." Professor Benedict spoke. "What you have just touched upon is another facet that may very well have a profound influence on the balance of power between every major human group. The Common Fleet Alliance is by far the most threatened by the potential of transphasic products."

The overall scarcity of phasewater presented a serious flaw to the CFA's naval doctrines and technological focus.

Nor just the Big Two, but also the first-rate superstates would be in a better position to stand up to the CFA if all of these changes came to pass!

Ves quickly tied this potential development to a rumor that he had heard from more and more people.

"Is this why the CFA might be pushing to revoke the taboo on warships?" He asked.

The professor did not answer directly. He gazed to the side where the central projection of the design room showed off the half-complete design of the Mars Project.

"One of the particularities of the Age of Mechs is that the common people are only able to employ mechs to wage their wars. Warships have turned into forbidden fruit ever since the Big Two heralded their new order. As such, a new profession has emerged across human civilization. We are but a few of the huge number of mech designers who are dedicating our entire lives to further the technological state of mechs. Even if our individual ability is not as great as a mech designer brought up by the MTA, our quantity is so enormous that our community will always be able to produce exceptional innovations from time to time."

Ves quickly saw where the Senior was going with this story. "In contrast, the development of warships has become a lot less lively. Aside from the CFA and to a certain extent the MTA, there are no researchers, developers and shipwrights that are putting any serious work in advancing the state of warships. The CFA may have hired a lot of brilliant scientists and engineers who have done a good job at making warships stronger over time, but their quantity is so small that their progress cannot possibly keep up with that of their colleagues that are involved in the mech industry!"

"That is correct. Human ingenuity is like this. The more people who are working on a branch of technology, the faster it will improve. That is the general rule. While the state of mechs is still highly immature compared to tried and true warships, it is undeniable that the latter have not been able to grow as quickly as before due to lack of attention. The generational differences between warships used to be significantly greater back during the Age of Conquest."

"So… the CFA's plan to prevent warships from being overtaken by mechs is to reintroduce a portion of the Age of Conquest to modern society?"

"That is a rather crude description, Ves, but we believe that this should be the general idea. The fleeters are heavily conflicted on this issue, so it is not absolutely certain whether the CFA will make this drastic choice."

"What do you think, Professor?"

The older man smirked at Ves. "Humans are the same regardless of the uniforms they wear on their bodies. In my experience, as long as people become desperate enough, they are more than capable of throwing aside their principles and their promises if it means they can resolve the crisis that threatens their existence. Think about what would happen if the state of mechs improved so quickly that any expert mech could put up a good fight against a warship. Will the fleeters be happy that humanity has finally gotten rid of its obsession with destructive warships, or will they be scared now that their greatest dependence can no longer guarantee their hegemony over human civilization?"

"..."