The Mech Touch

"Are you happy, Ves?"

"More or less."

Ves and Gloriana gathered together in order to make the arrangements.

After the Saint Commander made her choice, the pair of Senior Mech Designers immediately began to order a sizable batch of Dragon Scales.

They subsequently began to perform the initial calculations and simulations on how the Minerva Mark II would perform if her Command Field gained the benefits of Dragon Scales.

"It is difficult to estimate the increase in defensive performance on mechs affected by her Command Field." Gloriana said while furrowing her brows. "There are too many variables at play. Based on the publicly available data on other ace mechs that have made use of this key resonating materials, Knights can expect to become at least 3 times tougher at Casella’s current resonance strength. Once she becomes stronger and reaches the threshold of a senior ace pilot, I expect the multiplier to become higher, but not in proportion due diminishing returns. Knights will only be 5 or 7 times harder to destroy than before. That is still a good amount of improvement, but it is disappointing by the standards of ace mechs. What are your estimates about Enfeoffed mechs?"

"Barons should start with a multiplier of at least 5 according to my very loose estimates." Ves judged. "However, the scaling becomes more and more detrimental as Casella’s resonance strength continues to grow. At the latest stages of Casella’s growth trajectory, Dukes and Princes should only become 20 times tougher to defeat due to the influence of Dragon Scales. Otherwise, their attack power will always far outpace their defenses."

This was a pretty massive increase, but it did not automatically mean that Casella could turn any random group of mechs into temporary ace mechs.

There were still a lot of shortcomings that effectively caused them to be a lot weaker than genuine ace mechs.

Even so, as long as the quantity was great enough, such a massive force of Dukes and Princes might be able to pose a credible threat against ancient phase lords!

At the very least, Commander Casella would probably be able to match the combat power of an RF dreadnought at this stage.

As Ves and Gloriana continued to run the numbers, they became increasingly more convinced that the Minerva Mark II would become incredibly useful to the Larkinson Clan and red humanity as a whole.

"Dragon Scales is a good match for Casella." Ves concluded. "It is not only able to help her fulfill her goal of keeping her subordinates alive, but also allows her to empower lots of melee mechs without fearing that they will drop like flies. The only issue is that the effects of Dragon Scales ironically scale poorly with any improvements in resonance strength. That is one of its biggest shortcomings. Commandeered and Enfeoffed mechs will not experience any drastic improvements in defenses going forward."

Gloriana did not look too upset about this. "That is not as detrimental as it sounds. None of these mechs are supposed to endure too many hits in a fight. Even if they cannot stop themselves from getting struck by enemy units, they only need to be resilient enough to withdraw under their own power. Small increases in defenses can be the difference between keeping the mech functional and seeing it crumble before your eyes."

Mech designers conducted a huge amount of studies on how extensively they should raise the defenses of their products.

Excessive increases in defensive performance might keep the machines alive much longer than average, but the cost of doing so became increasingly more exorbitant.

Many clever mech designers and researchers had therefore sought to develop the perfect formula to calculate the optimum defenses to bestow on each mech design.

While they failed to formulate a single universal formula that won the approval of the entire mech industry, their studies still revealed a lot of useful information.

The most important part was that the main concern that mech designers should have when improving the defenses of their machines was to determine how much they were willing to pay to push back the breakpoints of their products.

Mechs could endure varying degrees of abuse but still keep going.

If a hostile enemy force was able to land 5 attacks onto the machines on average, then improving the defenses of the latter just enough so that they could endure 6 attacks would lead to a massive increase in survival rate!

It could make the tougher mechs raise their win rate from 50 percent to 70 or even 80 percent against the same opponents!

Of course, this was a vast oversimplification of the kind of math and calculations that went into this kind of stuff.

All Ves needed to know was that the effect of Dragon Scales would continue to become more useful as Casella grew stronger.

The law of diminishing returns was annoying, but at least it should not result in a completely flat line.

"Much will change once the Minerva Mark II comes online and takes charge of our first-class fleet." Gloriana told her husband. "Our entire approach towards combat will change. Not only will the mechs under the influence of the Saint Commander hit much harder than before, but they can also withstand much more attacks. Over time, Casella will also be able to Commandeer our starships, thereby causing them to enjoy the same benefits to a lesser degree due to drastic increases in mass and volume."

"What are you trying to say, honey?"

"Are you not able to realize it yet? Think! Casella can easily turn mechs that are considered cheap or less powerful into nearly unstoppable quasi-expert mechs! She can multiply the performance of the cheapest first-class mech such as your Yellow Jacket into an asset that is just as powerful as the best first-class multipurpose mechs of the Red Association! She can do so in such great numbers that she can practically lead a ragtag swarm of mercenaries and instantly transform them into a highly coordinated elite mech corps! Such a force can operate alongside our regular first-class fleet!"

Ves did not like the sound of that!

"Are you saying that the Saint Commander can bring greater value to our clan by operating outside of our first-class fleet and mech force?"

"Not always." She admitted. "There may be times where it is better for her to empower our main mech troops so that they can drive away powerful phase whales or break open the defenses of enemy fortifications. Outside of that, we can gain far more by operating two powerful forces instead of a single extremely powerful one. Think about conducting raids in enemy territory. If we know that the defenses of the targets within our reach are fairly weak, we can instruct Saint Commander Casella to operate independently and use cash to hire a large amount of affordable mercenaries that are willing to fight under her direct control. What is important about this is that this stratagem remains viable even if you are only working with mechs as basic as Yellow Jackets!"

He understood the point that she was trying to make. The Minerva Mark II effectively opened up a lot of new options, but the most important one was that it became viable for the Larkinson Clan to employ a lot of cheap mercenaries.

No matter how poorly they fought in a fight, as long as the basics were in place, Saint Commander Casella could always transform cannon fodder into elites!

Though Ves initially felt reluctant to entertain the notion of separating the Minerva Mark II from his first-class fleet, the more he thought about it, the more he recognized its benefits.

Splitting up was often necessary in order to sweep an entire region of space or to fulfill two important objectives at once.

Maintaining only a single fleet kept everything simple, but it also imposed a lot of limitations.

Ves had already experienced moments in the past where he wished he had a second force in reserve or deployed in another region.

Having Saint Commander Casella lead a detachment composed of cheap and disposable mechs would be great.

There was one problem with this setup.

"Saint Commander Casella mostly cares about her fellow clansmen." He said. "She probably prefers to stay with our main fleet. If we try to make her lead a bunch of random mercenaries, then she will only do so if our main forces remain relatively safe in her absence. One of the sources of her pain comes from being separated from her brother when he died. She doesn’t want to experience such a tragedy again."

This might pose a few complications in the future, but it should still be manageable.

They just needed to figure out that fielding a second mech force comprised of mercenaries and other miscellaneous troops would make the clan safer.

"Let us get back to work. Now that we have determined the combination of key resonating materials for the Minerva Mark II, there should be no further ambiguous about our vision for this ace mech."

The differences between the Minerva Mark I and Mark II finally became significant enough.

The latter was no longer a straightforward evolution of the former.

Instead, the Mark II relied on two key resonating exotics to expand her repertoire and plug one of her major shortcomings.

Mindstorm Alloy granted the Saint Commander to directly debilitate enemies within the range of her Command Field.

This was a rare and precious means for Casella to directly exercise her power on the battlefield. Your journey continues at

Compared to other choices such as empowering the luminar crystal rifle of the Minerva Mark II, the effects of Mindstorm Alloy could be activated with very minimal delay.

This was important as the Saint Commander could instantly generate a psychic storm onto enemies that were on the verge of killing vulnerable mechs and mech pilots!

Other solutions might work, but only if they responded fast enough. Nothing could beat the speed of a psychic storm!

The power of such a measure should not be weak, especially if it was further amplified with a precious wholly intact Mentalist Crystal.

Ves therefore considered Mindstorm Alloy to be a defensive measure as opposed to an offensive measure.

Its job was to give Casella the ability to disrupt the thinking and activities of enemy soldiers long enough to bail out friendly mechs.

A psychic storm could eventually grow strong enough to knock unprotected alien soldiers unconscious or outright turn them braindead if the Saint Commander continued to develop her resonance strength!

Even if the aliens developed countermeasures to protect their precious minds against her psychic assaults, she should still be able to conduct a lot of interference, thereby creating many openings for her Knights and Enfeoffed mechs.

With the addition of the effects of Dragon Scales, every friendly mech operating under Casella’s Command Field should suffer minimal casualties so long as the battle was under her control!

If the Larkinsons previously lost hundreds of mechs when fighting against an alien assault fleet, all of the improvements associated with the Minerva Mark II could reduce those loss figures to the single digits!

Aside from a rare handful of mechs that got wiped directly from existence by the primary gun batteries of an alien battleship, no other mechs should be at significant risk of getting wrecked!

In fact, Casella’s influence on the survival rate of mechs and mech pilots would become so drastic that Ves worried about whether it became detrimental.

"If the Saint Commander pampers our standard mech units too much, the rate of breakthroughs will plunge." Ves said with concern. "She needs to exercise her power with greater restraint if we want other mech pilots to develop their own potential."

"I can think of two possible solutions on the top of my head." Gloriana responded. "You can adopt my earlier suggestion and dispatch Saint Commander Casella elsewhere. You can also seek out more challenging enemy forces. We can take on elite alien fleets and win with confidence. There will be an element of risk, but as long as our intelligence is accurate, we should be able to avoid most accidents, though we cannot possibly account for every occurrence."

"That is what tends to get overconfident people killed."

"Hey, who is the daredevil among us, Ves?"

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