The Mech Touch

Currently, the Larkinson Army's mech roster was heavily slanted towards medium mechs.

This was not a big issue in most cases. Medium mechs were the most balanced and versatile of weight categories. The general definition of it was that it was massive enough to resist a fair amount of damage while also being light enough to evade a fair amount of attacks.

Of course, there were a lot of ways a mech designer could shift this balance.

There were times when speed and flexibility were more important, so a mech design might lose a little weight.

There were other times when a mech needed to resist more damage, so its design consciously sacrificed a bit of speed.

Ideally, any mech should rank high on categories, but such a perfect configuration either didn't exist or required the use of materials that were worth as much as an entire first-rate state!

In a reality where scarcity and physical limitations couldn't be overcome, mech designers like Ves had no choice but to make tradeoffs.

Light mechs presented a rather extreme package compared to medium mechs. They were smaller, lighter and more fragile in order to increase their mobility far above the limits of their larger cousins!

Although this sounded rather simple, light mechs possessed a lot of depth and nuance that Ves had not yet sufficiently explored.

He became eager to work with light mechs in a different way than he had before.

The characteristic light mech was the light skirmisher, a fast and agile melee mech that could be employed in various ways. In most cases, they were either used as scouts, flankers, saboteurs or even assassins.

Although they were fairly cheap to produce, they demanded a higher level of skill and courage to pilot than more ordinary machines. This had always been one of the significant hindrances towards popularizing them, as mech pilots generally didn't like to entrust their lives to flimsy machines that could easily collapsed when struck by just a couple of serious blows.

However, those who excelled at speed and possessed the courage to pilot these high-risk and high-reward machines, the impact they could exert was significant!

From circling around to attack the enemy's weak side to outrunning any opponent that was stronger, superior mobility conveyed a lot of advantages that could significantly change the course of a battle.

Light mechs revolved around initiative. Their superior acceleration and their nimble maneuvering gave them the choice to engage whenever they wanted and prevent the enemy from forcing it to take action under adverse circumstances.

When Ves was thinking about designing a new light mech for the Flagrant Vandals, he didn't think about providing them with another light skirmisher.

The Ferocious Piranha Mark I Version B served that purpose adequately for now. Perhaps it needed to be updated with new tech and materials that were available in the Red Ocean, but the overall concept was still sound.

Even if the elite mech pilots brought by the pioneers were firm enough to retain their battle effectiveness under the effect of a suppressive glow, they still needed to spend at least some effort to resist the effect, which inevitably threw them off and affected their performance.

What Ves truly sought was a complement to the Ferocious Piranha. He wanted to create a form of synergy between different mech models that allowed them to exert much greater strength when working together than if they fought by themselves.

The Molten Hammers and the Hivar Roarers already provided him with two working examples. Each of their systems worked out for them, but Ves couldn't blindly copy them. He had to create a new system for the Vandals that fit their fighting style and martial tradition.

The fundamental character of the Flagrant Vandals was that they were a bunch of devious bastards who loved to play dirty and had no scruples about using dishonorable means to defeat an opponent.

"I need to use the Ferocious Piranha as a base since it already serves them well. What kind of addition can complement its performance?"

The second light mech design for the Flagrant Vandals had to meet three goals.

First, it needed to be quick enough to keep up with the maneuvers of the Ferocious Piranha. The Flagrant Vandal units shouldn't be shackled with slower mechs that restricted their tactical flexibility and forced them to wait until their heavier units caught up to their vanguard.

Second, the new mech design had to take advantage of the suppression produced by the Ferocious Piranha. One of the shortcomings of the light mech was that it could get close enough to affect enemy mech pilots with its glow, but did not necessarily have the capability to close in for the kill! This led to awkward situations where the Ferocious Piranhas just buzzed around enemy formations like aimless flies!

Third, the new addition had to be able to exert an additional form of suppression towards the enemy. Ves figured that since the Ferocious Piranha's disorienting glow wasn't enough to disable most elite mech pilots, perhaps his troops might achieve better results by stacking another suppressive glow on top of this effect!

In fact, the Larkinson Army was already capable of doing this to a degree. In the previous battles, there were several instances where the Flagrant Vandals combined forces with the Penitent Sisters. When their Ferocious Piranhas and their Valkyrie Redeemers both directed their glows towards the same targets, the enemy mech pilots displayed even less battle effectiveness than before.

This gave Ves a better idea on how the Flagrant Vandals should be distinguished from other mech legions.

Aside from specializing in fielding light mechs, Ves wanted the Vandals to excel at making the lives of enemy mech pilots hell!

By deploying a variety of suppressive glows, they could torment and discomfort enemies to such a degree that battles became a lot easier to win as a consequence!

By themselves, the Flagrant Vandals should be able to punch above their weight and dismantle equal opponents without suffering painful losses.

In cooperation with other mech legions, the Flagrant Vandals should act harassers and disruptors that plagued enemy formations in as many ways as possible so that other units such as the Avatars of Myth could smash through the opposition with greater ease!

This was a great strategy and one that should be effective against many different mech forces.

It might even be effective against alien forces if the circumstances were right. The existence of multiple different suppressive glows at least gave the Larkinson Clan additional solutions to different threats.

This was something he was keen to realize as the confrontation against the Olympus Mons had taught him that he should never stop working on new ways to defeat powerful opponents.

Now that he set his criteria, he just needed to come up with a good idea for a new light mech.

At this point, he and Gloriana had spent hours in the Masterwork Gallery. They had gone through almost all of the exhibition halls by now. Ves had already seen dozens of masterwork light mechs, each of which demonstrated all of the different ways this weight class could excel in battle.

He quickly ran his memories through the examples he had seen and felt that one of them fit the needs of the Flagrant Vandals.

He turned towards his wife. "Could we swing back to a couple of the earlier halls? I've gained a bit of inspiration for my upcoming mech design projects and I need to get back in order to observe additional details that I have missed."

"Sure. Just don't take too long. I want to tour a number of other places in Chance Bay as well." Gloriana replied.

As a mech designer, she could understand what Ves was going through. She too had been taking notes and gaining inspiration from all of these great works. As a masterwork mech designer herself, she found a lot of value in identifying what others excelled at in order to elevate their mechs up the second rung of the ladder.

The couple slowly floated back to one of the earlier halls they visited. Ves stopped before a mech that was designed and made in a completely different region of the galactic rim.

The light marauder he was scrutinizing at the moment was called the Checkered Gabardine. Its checkered pattern of several colors caused the mech's profile to look confusing and hard to distinguish from the naked eye.

It didn't help that every part of the mech including its weapon was coated in the exact same way!

Although these little tricks had relatively little influence in most mech battles due to the use of alternate means of observation, the Checkered Gabardine happened to employ other measures that obfuscated enemy observation.

The model it was based upon was not a stealth mech. The light marauder was definitely designed for frontline battle service, but it did so in a way by making it as difficult to detect and lock on to it while still retaining enough protection to survive a typical battlefield.

Therefore, if the bright and confusing pattern didn't already announce it, the Checkered Gabardine was not a true stealth mech.

That said, its various ECM systems and low energy signature made it so that it was damn hard to detect under any circumstances. Even if the enemy discovered its presence, they still wouldn't be able to land a lot of hits onto this bizarre-looking masterwork mech.

The Checkered Gabardine was not only quick and agile, but it also incorporated a number of sophisticated active ECM systems that each threw the enemy's sensor and targeting systems into further confusion!

Mech pilots could no longer trust the input of their mechs as the quality and accuracy of the incoming data dropped to a distressing level. The result was that a lot of attacks that should have hit in ordinary circumstances went wide!

Even Gloriana was impressed. "I don't blame you for taking another look at the Checkered Gabardine. The way the lead designer integrated all of these different ECM systems in a light frame without overburdening it is genial."

She was right, though the lead designer of the original mech design had to make a lot of compromises in order to preserve its powerful mobility and ECM capabilities.

For one, its offensive capabilities weren't that impressive. Its submachine gun was so light and weak that it was more of an afterthought unless it fought against another light mech. Its twin knives were thinner than usual because the design didn't incorporate a lot of arm strength.

Despite the lackluster attack and defensive properties of the Checkered Gabardine, its strengths enabled the masterwork mech to fight differently from any other machine. It achieved many brilliant feats at the hands of several skilled and creative mech pilots.

What each of these mech pilots had in common was that they worked around the limitations of the Checkered Gabardine and made the most out of its advantages. Superior mobility and excellent ECM systems allowed this potent mech to sneak up to enemies in many different circumstances!

"The Checkered Garbadine is sort of like an ancestor to the Dark Zephyr." Ves remarked. "Their tech and strength levels are different, but the concepts are roughly similar."

The Dark Zephyr had already proven the concept that superior mobility augmented with additional evasion-oriented systems was a winning formula. The Larkinson Clan wouldn't have been able to take out the formidable Gauss Baron so easily during the Battle of Fordilla Zentra if Venerable Tusa didn't believe his mech could carry him all the way to one of the enemy capital ships by himself!

That solo attack run was already a legendary feat in the clan! Other light mech specialists looked up to Venerable Tusa due to how much he exemplified their ideal!

Although it wasn't practical for Ves to translate the Dark Zephyr's configuration into a standard mech form, it could still serve as a useful guide on how he should approach his next light mech design project.

"My next design project will be based around a light ranged mech…" Ves decided.