The Mech Touch

Of all of the hyper tech introduced by the Lord of Thermodynamics, space suppression technology trumped everything else in importance.

The Star Designer allocated a lot more time on explaining the uses and implications of this new tech.

"The new age has introduced us to new possibilities but also exposed us to greater dangers. Without access to reinforcements from the Milky Way, we must defeat the native alien races by ourselves. As long as you have paid attention to the battles that have already been fought, you will know that defeating any alien force starts with blocking their warp drives and overcoming their transphasic energy shields. Space suppressors are notably effective at facilitating both outcomes, but there are many nuances to their usage."

The Star Designer entered into lecture mode and began to project several typical space suppression modules that were mainly different in size.

"We have already developed space suppressors of different scales that can be applied to infantry gear, mechs and starships. The range and suppression strength of these devices vary greatly according to scale. Other variables that determine their effectiveness are power draw and the presence of phasewater."

The projection gave everyone a more intuitive understanding of what that meant by simulating different outcomes.

The space suppressors projected several different spherical fields. The strength and range of the smallest one was miniscule compared to the one that could be produced by a starship-grade module.

Each of these fields grew stronger and reached further when they increased their energy consumption. The opposite happened when their energy consumption dropped.

The inclusion of phasewater produced the most drastic difference.

As long as any space suppressor incorporated transphasic components, the range and suppression strength improved dramatically!

There was a real qualitative difference between a regular space suppressor and a transphasic space suppressor.

Although the former was still useful enough to be valued, the latter could truly make a lot of alien lives miserable!

This meant that space suppression technology did not make phasewater technology obsolete.

The fact that transphasic space suppressors worked a lot better meant that the demand for phasewater would definitely remain as high as always!

The Star Designer addressed another important topic related to this tech.

"As you can see, the current generation of space suppressors can only produce an omnidirectional field. We have yet to develop any products that can limit their effects to a more specific direction. The simpler space suppressor modules are also indiscriminate in function. They suppress all forms of transphasic products and spatial phenomena without regard for whether they are utilized by friendly or enemy units."

That caused a lot of people to lose a bit of enthusiasm for this tech. While it still remained essential to many forces, the fact that they could also suppress the transphasic technologies of friendly units severely dropped their practicality!

It would be quite annoying to keep units with space suppressors separate from units with transphasic parts.

Fortunately, the Red Two already had an answer to this problem.

"Fear not. We have developed more advanced space suppressors that can selectively ignore most transphasic products utilized by known friendly units. They are more expensive to produce, but you can program them with the P-frequencies of all of the transphasic products that you wish to whitelist."

Everyone who has studied phasewater technology was familiar with this variable. Each transphasic object possessed a special frequency resulting from the interaction between phasewater and other matter.

The full explanation was a lot more complicated and elaborate than that, but the easiest way to understand it was to equate it to a phasewater fingerprint that was unique among different designs.

"That is useful." Gloriana remarked. "However, the need to constantly update the databases of the space suppressors with new P-frequencies adds an extra burden. I wonder how you can prevent the enemy from adopting the same P-frequencies to circumvent the space suppression effect."

Ves briefly fell in thought. "The P-frequencies of every transphasic product can be slightly changed if you mess around with them a bit. You can even change it on the fly by changing a few variables. That should massively increase the safety of using this tech."

No one was sure yet how much more expensive it was to build these selective space suppressors, but Ves was determined to equip them onto his own mechs!

The Lord of Thermodynamics continued to explain a few more basic theories, but he eventually wrapped up his technical explanations so that he could address the greater implications of this tech.

"If you have kept up with me so far, you will know that space suppression fields are more effective at close range but drastically drop in effectiveness at greater distances. Much like the gravity of a planet, as long as you travel far enough, the gravitational force that attempts to pull you to the surface becomes negligible. Let me demonstrate what that means in a visual exercise."

All of the projections disappeared in order to make way for a basic combat scenario.

A human warship squared off against an alien warship.

Both of them possessed all of the expected pieces of tech that were common before the Age of Dawn.

When the latter produced a typical segmented transphasic energy shield, the former produced a space suppression field!

A warship equipped with a sufficiently powerful space suppressor should have been able to reduce the effectiveness of many pieces of tech installed on the alien warship. This should negate the advantages of the latter so much that it should have suffered a defeat.

However, the actual outcome was much different. What actually happened was that the human warship's space suppression field was ineffective when the enemy vessel was hundreds if not thousands of kilometers away!

The human warship needed to close the distance in order to envelop the alien warship into the space suppression field, but the aliens weren't stupid enough to let that happen!

The alien vessel took advantage of her warp drive to maintain the distance as much as possible to prolong the interception.

In the meantime, her gun batteries constantly fired back at the pursuing human vessel, eventually causing the poor ship to succumb before using the space suppressor for its intended purpose!

This was a sad display and hammered home the fact that space suppressors could not produce automatic victories right away!

"Depending on the strength of their space suppressors, warships generally cannot effectively utilize them in an offensive capacity unless they have successfully moved close to their adversaries. This is not an ideal solution. It is not appropriate to bring warships at close range from the enemy. It is much more practical to resort to other means to affect alien warships with space suppression fields."

The next few scenarios showcased a few of these solutions.

They ranged from launching missiles at the enemy that would eventually hover in the vicinity and constantly maintain space suppression fields at close ranges.

These missiles easily got shot down by the point defenses of the alien warship.

Drones and bots emerged next. They were all numerous, active and mobile, but that forced the alien warship to expend a bit more effort to eliminate all of the small but fairly expensive space suppressors.

It was the next scenario that truly jolted all of the mech designers who had been listening to the announcement.

A troop of melee mechs advanced on the alien warship. While the latter's formidable secondary and tertiary armaments managed to intercept numerous machines, the new azure energy shields made it a lot harder to eliminate them as easily as in the past!

In addition to that, space suppressors were also able to weaken incoming attacks by weakening their transphasic effects. This further reduced the damage suffered by mechs!

Once the mechs succeeded in closing the distance, they kept up their mech-grade space suppressors and concentrated their efforts to undermine the transphasic energy shields.

As the secondary and tertiary gun turrets continued to take a toll on the mechs, the large quantity of space suppression fields were having a remarkable effect!

It was true that the space suppressors equipped by mechs were extremely weak.

That did not mean that they were ineffective.

In order to compensate for this massive downside, a mech force could focus on increasing the other variables that determined the effectiveness of this tech!

Pairing space suppressors with mechs and more specifically melee mechs was a match in heaven!

Melee mechs needed to get into point-blank range in order to perform their main jobs. This also happened to be the range where the space suppressors exerted their strongest effect onto transphasic defenses!

A single mech-grade space suppressor was usually too weak to seriously weaken a transphasic energy shield, but what about several?

One of the important traits of space suppressors was that their fields could stack! The more, the better!

A standard mech squad consisting of 10 to 12 mechs could produce a space suppression field that was an order of magnitude stronger!

A mech company of 40 mechs could produce an even more exaggerated result!

Every problem could be solved as long as the quantity was great enough. Although the danger of approaching any warship was still great, the new hyper technologies introduced by the Red Association made this much less dangerous than before!

A well-equipped mech force that incorporated azure energy shields, hyper armor systems, hyper weapon systems, hyper flight systems and most importantly space suppressors could finally fight an alien warship on more even ground this time!

Even if the aliens still retained an advantage, the gap had shrunk so much that the dangers of becoming a warfighter or a linefighter had become a lot less severe!

Many different mech designers looked at each other. They understood that the role and purpose of mechs had changed considerably due to the massive implications of this new tech!

"The Red Association has not forgotten the plight of mech pilots." The Lord of Thermodynamics forcefully stated. "We are aware that far too many mechs have fallen in their attempts to defend human space from the intrusions of hostile alien fleets. Our mechs seemed out of place in battles where warships possessed the strongest offensive and defensive capabilities. Hyper technology has unlocked a new future for us where mechs can regain their relevance on the battlefield. Once your forces have adopted the innovations introduced by the Hyper Generation, the aliens will learn to fear our mechs just as much as our warships."

This was not a fanciful prediction. Ves could easily imagine alien soldiers dreading the approach of mechs equipped with space suppressors!

Even if the modules consisted of the cheaper variant that did not incorporate any phasewater, so long as the numbers were great enough, an alien warship's hull would get exposed sooner or later!

After all, the space suppressors didn't have to do all of the work. Once the melee mechs attacked the transphasic energy shields with their weapons, the enemy defenses should deplete even faster!

Ever since the Phasewater Generation came about, ranged mechs possessed a distinctive advantage over melee mechs.

The colonization of the Red Ocean had increased the proportion of space battles. Fights against alien forces became regular, and it was always difficult to get close to alien warships.

Ranged mechs possessed greater advantages in these scenarios as they could already become useful without getting too close to the dangerous enemy vessels.

Melee mechs lacked these advantages and had essentially been relegated to unwanted children in any mech force.

Their presence made a lot of sense back when battles were fought exclusively by mechs, but the insertion of warships into the mix had changed the equation!

Now that the Hyper Generation had arrived, the mechers finally managed to correct this earlier development!

"Damn, Ketis is going to be so happy after learning about this." Ves spoke. "I can already imagine that the Hyper Generation will become the golden age of the Swordmaidens. All of those swordsman mechs will be able to shred through transphasic energy shields with ease."

His wife nodded in agreement. "This will especially be the case once Ketis has completed her Storm Sword Project."

The Hyper Generation had changed the game!