The Mech Touch

The Fey Project as Ves envisioned it had the potential to amplify the combat effectiveness of the Larkinson Army!

It was not a mech model that could smack down difficult adversaries by itself. Quantity alone was not enough to defeat truly challenging opponents.

However, the Fey Project could serve as an excellent force multiplier for the main forces of the Larkinson Clan.

The most basic luminar crystal gun fey could instantly multiply the volume of fire of the Larkinson Army by several times as long as they were fielded in large quantities!

Even if these fey could never be as precise and good at tracking fast-moving targets, they could still be useful in laying down a lot of suppressive fire!

Besides, it did not take as much skill and precision to strike a large warship. So long as tens of thousands of spurs simultaneously attacked any target, any form of defense would buckle under the overwhelming barrage, especially if the energy guns were transphasic!

The expense was too great, though. Ves had not made up his mind whether he would be willing to squander any phasewater to construct transphasic spurs. It sounded like an excessive luxury.

Energy also became a serious issue. If the Larkinsons employed all of the spurs as extra sources of ranged firepower, then they would only be able to make their presence felt in the first half of a battle.

It was like mounting five or seven full-sized energy weapons onto the same mech!

The volume of fire at the start would be great, but the mech would eat away its energy reserves so rapidly that it risked turning into an empty shell after only ten minutes had passed!

Though Ves supposed he could ask for help from Master Benedict yet again, this was not an optimal solution.

The Fey Project as he envisioned it had the potential to become one of the most useful core mechs of the Larkinson Army.

Ves felt the need to keep its development as in-house as possible. He not only wanted to maintain the confidentiality of its design, but also thought that he and his fellow designers needed to solve their own problems.

If their first response to any difficult problem was to call for outside help, then what was the point of becoming a mech designer?

Once Ves completed his presentation of the Fey Project, he brought up another demand.

"The Fey Project will certainly help with defeating alien warships once it is finished, but we can do so much more. As battles against alien warships will become more ubiquitous, we need stronger ranged firepower. To be more precise, we need a stronger bunker mech model that can better our starships as well as a stronger rifleman mech model that can contribute a lot more firepower to any offensive actions. Do you have any proposals that fits these categories?"

Everyone remained silent for a time.

"None of us specialize in designing ranged mechs." Merrill O'Brian spoke up. "In fact, over half of us are only competent in designing melee mechs. You are the closest to a ranged specialist in our department."

"..."

That was correct. While Ves had a lot of confidence in his ability to design ranged mechs, he already added a lot of work to his plate. It became increasingly more difficult to work on more and more ranged mech design projects.

He had little choice for the time being. Unless Zanthar Larkinson finally managed to break through and form a design philosophy centered around luminar crystal technology, Ves could not truly count on anyone else in the Design Department!

Ves let out a sigh. "Alright. Let me explain what I have in mind. As you all know, I have accepted three major mech commissions from Davute. The first one I will be working on is what Master Decimus Horst and I have taken to calling the Supremo Project. It is a purely landbound artillery mech that we project can play an extremely useful role in planetary combat. While it can function as a bunker mech in a pinch, it is not really optimized for this purpose. The main armaments of this artillery mech are its kinetic cannons that can fire high-explosive shells. These weapons are great in a planetary environment, but they are not nearly as adequate in space due to their average muzzle velocities and lack of gravity."

He briefly expanded upon the Supremo Project, but did not go into too much detail as it was a product designed for a client instead of the Larkinson Clan.

"An artillery mech as effective as this can help our clan as well." Gloriana said with growing interest. "Can we field this new mech ourselves? It can massively strengthen the branches that we have established on different planets such as Davute VII."

Ves smirked. "Of course I did. I would not easily agree to design an excellent mech for a client if I cannot make use of my own work. In any case, Davute mainly cares about preventing the Supremo Project and future commissioned mechs from being employed by Karlach and its other regional rivals. Our clan is not a direct competitor to the colonial state so the Davutans don't care too much if we field the new heavy artillery mech model ourselves."

This was basically another aspect of the trade between Ves and Davute.

The colonial state would get a powerful living mech that came with a number of unique and incredibly strong features courtesy of Ves.

The Larkinson Clan would gain the option of fielding a powerful new heavy artillery mech that was co-designed by a Master Mech Designer who specialized in this mech type!

Since both sides wanted to make good use of the Supremo Project, they had a strong incentive to do their best!

While the Supremo Project could potentially help the growing Larkinson Clan defend its various planetary branches a lot more effectively in the future, it was not as applicable in space combat.

The rules of combat were entirely different. Range mattered a lot more, and the only way to produce an effect similar to indirect fire was by employing guided missiles.

Ves was not yet willing to design a missileer mech despite its high potential. The effectiveness of missiles directly scaled to how much it cost to make them. The very best transphasic missiles were blazingly fast, possessed enormous effective ranges and could detonate warheads that were dozens of times more powerful than equivalent attacks from other conventional weapons!

However, the use of high-end missiles would deplete the Larkinson Clan's supply of potent exotics and phasewater at record speeds!

Ves would hardly have anything left to fabricate more quasi-first-class mechs if this was the case!

This was why he decided to turn back to an old and familiar mech model.

"I intend to design the next iteration of the Transcendent Punisher at the same time or a little later than the Supremo Project." He announced. "The Transcendent Punisher Mark I and Mark II have served our clan well in many battles. Few adversaries are able to withstand the uncannily accurate volleys from our Ylvainain bunker mechs. I intend to bring it up to quasi-first-class standards and add a couple of new features that should massively increase its combat effectiveness."

The former was straightforward, but the latter sounded a bit too vague. Nobody knew what Ves had in mind, but it was clear that he still needed to work on his new solutions before he was ready to share his latest results to everyone.

In any case, the Transcendent Punisher Mark II could no longer keep up with the current caliber of opponents. Ves also disliked many of its design flaws that he had yet to address due to his ignorance on how good heavy artillery mechs were supposed to work.

Ves had great plans to reinvent this staple mech and change its configuration of armaments to better excel at fighting warships!

"Once we introduce the Transcendent Punisher Mark III to our fleet, it will make our fleet a lot more impregnable." He grinned. "This is because its transphasic cannons will integrate a higher proportion of phasewater than the weapon systems of our other standard mechs. We will all be counting on this mech model to defend our starships against many possible threats. It is not wise to be too stingy about spending phasewater when our lives and the lives of our own families are at stake."

Nobody disagreed with that. There were many differences between transphasic weapons. One that incorporated ten times as much phasewater was much more effective at wearing down the energy defenses of phase lords and alien warships!

The amount of phasewater needed to transition all of the mechs of the Larkinson Clan to quasi-first-class standards just went up by a large margin!

The expeditionary fleet urgently needed to raid a huge stash of phasewater in order to keep up with Ves' wild ambitions!

After informing his clan about his intention to start development on the Transcendent Punisher Mark III, Ves turned his attention to his demand for a new rifleman mech.

"We have several existing ranged mech solutions in our mech roster. The problem is that their mech concepts and weapon configurations are mainly optimized for mech combat." Ves explained his views on this topic.

The central projection displayed a Bright Warrior Mark II in a typical rifleman mech configuration.

"This is our most common general purpose ranged mech. It is fairly good at its job and is quite flexible due to its highly modular design features. However, it is lacking in hard power and does not fit the needs of mech pilots who are highly skilled in ranged combat."

That was a common shortcoming of a versatile and more accommodating mech model.

A cannoneer mech showed up next.

"Then we have the Eternal Redemption. The design is horribly outdated due to our rapid growth. Its superheavy gauss cannon packs a good punch, but it is only effective at middle to shorter ranges. Its ammunition capacity is also horribly limited as it always tends to run out of rounds before it has even managed to breach the defenses of a formidable alien warship. Finally, it is limited to the Penitent Sisters, which severely restricts how many of them we can field in our expeditionary fleet."

Juliet slightly frowned as Ves kept criticizing a mech model utilized by her mech legion, but she could not refute the points.

The central projection changed to show a pair of slimmer and lighter machines.

"Next, we have a pair of submachine gun-wielding mechs in the form of the Valkyrie Redeemer and the Stingripper." Ves continued. "While they function as serious ranged mechs, their light and fast-firing ranged weapons are solely designed to fight against mechs and other small craft. They lack the caliber and punch to deal effective damage onto warships. Their effective ranges are also horribly low. These are the last ranged mechs I would pick if I had to muster up a force to confront a fleet of alien warships."

The Valkyrie Redeemer and the Stingripper were not weak. Their glows were incredibly useful and synergized well with their technical configurations.

However, the Larkinson Clan had fought against enough alien warships to learn that fancy tricks could not completely make up for an absence in hard firepower!

Ves looked at every Journeyman in the eyes. "All of these older mech models worked out well enough for us in the Age of Mechs, but now that we have entered the Age of Dawn, we cannot put so much emphasis into fighting small craft anymore. We need to introduce a new line of ranged mechs that excel at damaging warships. I put a bit of thought into what we need, and I have come up with a new mech concept that should give us the mobile ranged firepower platform that we can comfortably field in large numbers."

The central projection unveiled a draft design that was unlike any of the other mechs displayed before.

The entire meeting room fell utterly silent as every Journeyman became gobsmacked at the sight of the craziest idea that Ves had unveiled in this session!

"Uhm, sir?" Dulo Voiken tentatively raised his hand and asked.

"Yes?"

"Is that... an elephant?"