The Mech Touch

As the Red Tide Offensive began to cast a shadow over human-occupied space, a lot of pieces were moving to different places.

Ves had no doubt that human strategists and their alien counterparts were standing before giant projections displaying a map that contained many icons representing different forces along with their routes.

He wished he had access to a complete overview of the progression of the Red War as well, but he hadn't been invited to this very exclusive club.

It was not his turn to involve himself in the war planning of red humanity. His main responsibilities after the start of the Red Offensive were three-fold.

First, as the leader of the Larkinson Clan, he had to make sure his forces actively contributed to the war effort.

Second, as the newly appointed deputy chief council, he had to preside over the remaining sessions of the Interim Leadership Council without causing them to end up in disaster.

Third, as the inventor and chief developer of the Carmine System, he had to rush the ambitious and expansive Swarm Project to completion in just half a year.

On top of all of this, Ves also retained many of his old duties and responsibilities. His schedule still remained extremely busy as he found it hard to put down his obligations.

This was the inevitable fate of a successful individual. Those who managed to climb up to this height never did so by drifting along the current. Only by actively swimming upstream were they able to defy expectations and produce more dazzling results than their peers.

Ves felt as if he was at the top of his game. He had no desire to take a vacation anytime soon. Switching out his design schedule so that he could devote much of his work schedule towards the Swarm Project made him feel as if he was making a fresh start.

He decided to take advantage of his good mood and begin to work out the preliminary details of this mech design project. He immediately entered his design lab and started to draw up a few draft designs so that he could visualize the desired mechs.

"Meow~"

As Lucky laid on the desk, Ves continually flipped back and forth on the sketches that he had made.

The command mechs were relatively easy to design. They were meant to serve as simple and unpretentious machines that were decent in a fight but should mainly be used to supervise and direct swarms of subordinate mechs.

Since their ability to coordinate lots of Carmine mechs was more important than their direct combat abilities, Ves intended to design them with the mindset of working on an auxiliary mech.

That did not mean that he intended to neglect direct combat capabilities entirely, but he wouldn't obsess over it like he did when he designed the Ultimatum.

The subordinate mechs were much cheaper and more affordable than the command mech, but that required him to put extra attention and effort into their designs.

It was easy to design a relatively cheap mech, but it was a lot more difficult to make an affordable mech perform well enough on the battlefield.

It had been a long time since Ves designed a set of really cheap mechs, so he needed to spend additional time to get back into his old groove.

"The third-class mech designs should be relatively quick and easy for me to design." He judged.

As a former third-class mech designer, he only needed a quick refresher in order to be able to design a third-class mech with confidence.

The hardest part was to stop himself from adding design elements that were more customary in second-class mechs. A lot of solutions that worked well in those machines could easily double or triple the production cost of third-class mechs.

In any case, Ves originally envisioned the Swarm Project for the third-class mech market, so it was easiest for him to envision and preconfigure the pair of third-class mechs. He was just unfamiliar with all of the third-class mech parts that were available these days.

Even the third-class mech industry had begun to incorporate hyper materials into their products.

Naturally, a lot of the hyper materials consisted of low-grade materials that were extremely abundant across the Red Ocean. They were as ubiquitous as ordinary metals such as titanium, but many of them usually had durability problems that made them unsuitable for use in second-class mech designs.

"Third-class mechs are truly fragile." Ves sighed.

The more he explored the various options and possibilities for his third-class Carmine mech, the more he grew concerned at how easy it was to tear them all apart.

The Carmine mechs shouldn't have a serious problem when they were used to fight against other third-class mechs.

The problem was that the native aliens never played fair. They made use of their resource advantage to produce higher-performing phasefighters in bulk. The galactic net was filled with stories of how a lot of third-class mech forces got crushed by much smaller groups of phasefighters!

In essence, the native aliens frequently bullied third-class humans by deploying phasefighters that were effectively quasi-second-class or second-class in terms of cost and performance.

Frankly speaking, Ves felt that red humanity should do away with the strict division and stratification between the classes, but this was a political fight that he was unwilling to participate in. There were way too many powerful stakeholders who benefited from maintaining such a strong and rigid hierarchy.

"What matters now is to make sure my third-class Carmine mechs won't fall apart after suffering a couple of hits." He muttered.

There were a couple of design choices he could make that could facilitate their survival.

One of the first decisions he needed to make was whether the third-class Carmine mechs should put more emphasis on armor or mobility as their primary means of defense.

Armor was heavy, but easy to use. Whether Ves made use of modular armor systems or not, the Carmine mech pilots did not have to spend too much effort to effectively make use of armor as a defensive tool. They just had to prevent their opponents from landing multiple attacks on the same armor sections.

The downsides of relying on armor was that it would increase the production cost of the Carmine mechs. Thick layers of armor also decreased the mobility of the machines, causing them to become clumsier and difficult to reposition on the battlefield. If they happened to be put in a losing position, then their lack of mobility would doom not just themselves, but also the hope for their bonded users to pilot a mech ever again!

Mobility relied on keeping a mech light and maneuverable in order to preserve its existence. It was a more advanced form of defense, and required a considerable amount of training as well as courage in order to work. The main advantage was that lighter Carmine mechs were obviously cheaper and easier to produce in large quantities. More mobile Carmine mechs were also a lot more capable of running away from the enemy if the battle started to take a bad turn.

However, light Carmine mechs were bound to suffer horrendous casualties over the course of regular combat. The overwhelming majority of people who chose to pilot a subordinate mech of the Swarm Project would probably be amateurs who lacked professional piloting training. Ves really did not have high hopes in their ability to fully master the art of piloting a light mech.

Since Ves was not able to make up his mind between the two, he decided to bring it up with Jovy and Vector.

The two mechers teleported down to Ves' design lab and began to study the draft designs and accompanying notes.

"If you want to do a proper job, then I would argue that you design both versions of the subordinate mech at once." Jovy commented. "However, time is of the essence. We should not waste our time on luxuries that are ultimately dispensable. We can rely on third-party mech designers to design the corresponding variants after we have published the initial mech designs. We only need to present a good base model that can serve as the starting point for all of this exploration."

"I agree." Vector said. "This is not the stage where we should think about producing an entirely new mech ecosystem. It is enough to present a single Carmine mech for each class. If we have to choose between a lighter or a heavier version of the subordinate mech, I would choose the one that possesses the greatest amount of mass."

Ves raised his eyebrow. "Oh? Why do you prefer this version, Vector?"

"There are many possible reasons to favor the heavier version, but I will mention three of them in particular. First, there is much more room for modularity in a larger and heavier mech frame. There is more capacity to mount weapons and other systems onto the mech frame without needing to be concerned about overloading it. It is much more pleasant for third-party mech designers to develop variants of a Carmine mech that has plenty of room for customization."

"That is a valid argument."

"Second, it is easier to design a lighter variant of a rather hefty mech than the opposite. If there are customers who truly want to pilot a faster and more agile machine, they can go to a mech boutique who can selectively shave off the armor of an existing subordinate mech. Later on, third-party mech designers will most likely variants that benefit from optimized light armor layouts."

"That is also a valid argument."

"Third and most importantly, heavier mechs are less mobile. This is important because the Carmine mech pilots who make use of them are not able to abandon their positions and flee the battlefield so easily. You should not forget that amateurs with no actual combat experience are extremely brittle in terms of morale. As soon as they think their side is about to lose, they are likely to panic and flee on their own accord, thereby completely disrupting the arrangements of the field commanders and trigger a cascade that causes other friendly units to become affected as well."

That… was a darker and more serious argument than Ves expected from Vector.

It was also a very valid concern. There was no way that every Carmine pilot would possess the strong sense of duty and courage of most professional soldiers.

Carmine mechs were mainly designed to appeal to customers who were greedy for success.

They held the greatest attraction to people who wanted an easier path to power, but many of these folk were precisely the sort of individuals who prized their lives the most!

"You have presented very compelling arguments, Vector, but the downsides are also rather severe." Ves shared his thoughts. "The production costs will be considerable. A lot more resources will be spent on producing Carmine mechs when they could otherwise be used to produce normal mechs. All of these costs add up when hundreds of millions of Carmine mechs join the battlefield in the coming years."

"That is hundreds of millions of more war machines than before. The native aliens will have to expend much more effort to get past them all. Preserving our control over the border regions takes precedence over saving money. This is not the time to hoard our wealth."

That was a good opinion. Ves almost became convinced to go for the heavier version right away, but when he glanced towards Jovy, he saw that his old friend did not quite agree.

"What do you think, Jovy?"

"My colleague here is not wrong about the factors that make the heavier version into a useful addition to the mech market, but I personally favor the lighter version of the subordinate mech."

"Oh? That is interesting. Please share your thoughts. I am curious to hear what it is about the lighter Carmine mech that makes it more attractive than the heavier one."

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