The Mech Touch

Up until now, the Larkinson Clan's approach to glows was just to make use of them whenever convenient. There was hardly any greater thought behind their use because they were just there already.

The Avatars of Myth, which was arguably the greatest user of glows in the Larkinson Clan, just took whatever mech that Ves shoved at them. It was up to them to figure out how to make effective use of the new glows.

This was a rather faulty approach. What actually needed to happen was for Commander Melkor to approach Ves and request the addition of a mech that fulfilled a certain role or requirements. The needs of the Avatars had to fit its chosen doctrines and approaches.

"This is something that we can work out in the future." Major Verle remarked. "Right now, it's more important to formulate and verify each mech force's respective development trajectories. Once we exit the Nyxian Gap, we can review all of the battles we have waged and use the conclusions to confirm our plans."

"You're the expert in this matter. I will defer to your judgement." Ves waved his hand.

He needed to remind himself that he was primarily a mech designer, not a military strategist. There was no need for him to provide his input on every single issue.

That said, his work as a mech designer was influenced heavily by what kind of mechs the Larkinson Clan needed to win its battles.

Verle brought up the next leg that propped up his unified doctrine.

"Let's move on to elite development. As you can probably surmise, elite development is all about training and developing our various elite mech troops. In our case, that is every mech pilot aside from the ones belonging to the Living Sentinels. Our clan is quite unusual compared to other nomadic, spacefaring powers. Usually, a nomadic clan of our scale only employs a single mech force that is exclusively used to defend its fleet. Nothing more, mostly because there is no need."

Originally, Ves only started off with the Avatars of Myth. He later decided to narrow their scope as elites and founded the Living Sentinels to fill up the void. After that, various other forces such as the Battle Criers, Swordmaidens and Flagrant Vandals merged with the Larkinson Clan while still retaining their unique identities.

A mech force with a strong, decades-long martial tradition was more than the sum of their mechs, mech pilots and other assets. They formed a cohesive, synergistic whole that employed time-tested strategies, distinctive training and strong specialization to achieve far greater results than a band of random mechs and mech pilots could ever accomplish!

Ves disliked waste and did not wish to throw all of those advantages away. While that had led to the fracturing of the Larkinson Clan's fighting forces, the growing diversity was not universally bad.

"As long as the Larkinson Clan can manage and combine the specialized mech troops effectively, then the disadvantages of fracturing our fighting forces and splitting up our attention are tolerable. We just need to invest sufficiently in not only their individual development, but also how to combine them together. That is the third leg of our doctrine which we will discuss later."

"Hmm." Ves tapped his fingers against his desk. "So you are saying that our clan should decisively focus on quality rather than quantity."

"Correct, sir. This fits best with our circ.u.mstances. Compared to other organizations, our Larkinson Clan has an abundance of capital. This affords us the luxury to spend enormous sums of money on better mechs and mech pilots."

"We could spend that money on expanding the Living Sentinels as well. Right now, the LMC is doing fantastic in terms of selling mechs and collecting a lot of licensing fees. There is no reason why we can't invest all of that money into acquiring more mechs, sh.i.p.s and manpower."

Major Verle grinned and crossed his arms. "We have already undergone a major expansion. One of the reasons why we are picking fights with Nyxian pirates is to merge the old and new clansmen together. I doubt you want to repeat this cycle too much. Also, a large fleet protected by average-quality mechs and mech pilots is much harder to manage and defend than a smaller fleet which is protected by a smaller core of elites."

That was true.

"Are you happy with our current lineup of mech troops?"

"Not entirely, sir. If we want to invest fully in elite development, then we need to expand our roster with at least two other units. One needs to specialize in long-ranged artillery and wide-area bombardment. The other one should focus on special operations and stealth operations.".

"Neither of the two sounds easy to set up." Ves looked a little pained.

"It's possible but very difficult to set them up from scratch." Verle admitted. "The best option is to acquire existing mech troops that already specialize in these areas."

"Is that difficult?"

"Perhaps. I'm not sure. Usually, artillery mech troops are mainly in the hands of states and ruling powers. Stealth mech troops are largely exclusive to state intelligence agencies. Do you think you can just knock on the doors of a state and offer to buyout either of them? I think not. Our best bet is to travel to a collapsing state and be on the lookout for rats that are trying to flee a sinking ship."

The Flagrant Vandals used to be one of those fleeing rats. Unlike their fellow critters, the Vandals just happened to flee in a specific direction.

"If I had known that, then I would have directed my clan to consider the option of poaching other Brighter units." Ves grimaced.

In hindsight, that was a missed opportunity!

"You don't need to fret over these matters. Wars always take place in the galaxy. While certain conflicts such as the Komodo War are too dangerous for us to approach, there are always smaller conflicts where our clan can safely swoop in and recruit some of the elites nurtured by the losing side of a war. Otherwise, we need to nurture these elite mech units from scratch, and that is a long process as it takes decades to formulate and mature their martial traditions."

"I'll keep that in mind once we cross into other star sectors. It would be best to acquire these new additions before we enter the Red Ocean. What about the Living Sentinels, by the way?"

"As our only non-elite mech force, the Sentinels serve as a counterweight of our elites. We can't defend the Larkinson Clan by relying entirely on the latter, after all. They Sentinels will primarily orient their development towards static or defensive warfare. This poses significantly less requirements in terms of capital and manpower, but the Sentinels will have to rely more on quantity to compensate."

"That is acceptable." Ves mused. "Our clan isn't backed by a state. Our clan's population will never surpass that of a settled planet. Limited manpower will always be one of our biggest bottlenecks. That said, with a successful mech designer like me in the clan, money won't be a major issue. Even if the mech pilots of the Sentinels are of a lower standard, we can still make up for that by issuing higher-quality mechs to them. Of course, our elite mech forces will also enjoy this benefit."

"That's also the largest vulnerability of developing our elites. They never come cheap, sir. Much of what our clan is trying to do rests on the premise that there is an abundant supply of money. From my understanding, business is booming at the LMC. How long will that last? What if our mech company enters into a slump again? The upkeep of elite mech troop is multiple times higher than a regular mech troop, and that is assuming that waste and embezzlement is minimal."

"While you have raised a good point, I think we can manage the risks. If our clan's income ever dries up, we don't immediately have to sell off our most valuable mechs and sh.i.p.s. Running them is expensive, but as long as we acc.u.mulate enough savings, we can still hang on for a couple of years while we attempt to restore our income. If that doesn't work, we'll just downsize."

Even though Ves spoke lightly about this problem, he still understood that this might become a very real threat some day, especially when the scale of the Larkinson Clan had ballooned.

Major Verle moved on to his last point. "The two strategies I've mentioned previously complement our third strategy. Maneuver warfare fits well with our strengths and weaknesses. Take for example the opposite, which is attrition warfare."

He stretched out his palms and pressed them together.

"The most basic mech battles is quite simply a brawl that directly pits one group of mechs against another group of mechs."

The major began to rub his palms back and forward. The resulting friction generated some rubbing noises.

"Such a battle is waged by grinding each other mechs against each other until one side gets tired, loses confidence or runs out of mechs."

Ves looked at Verle rubbing his palms as if his fingers were cold and needed to warm up. "The way you put it sounds as if anyone who fights their battles in this manner is stupid."

"It's not stupid. It's just not suitable to everyone, especially smaller powers such as our clan. Our pool of mech pilots is only in the thousands. How can we compare against the likes of states that can call up millions of mech pilots? Much of the Komodo War has descended into attrition warfare because both sides are simply too strong, numerous and prepared. Neither the Friday Coalition or Hexadric Hegemony exhibit any holes in their defenses which can easily be exploited. The only way for either state to win the war is by pitting their strengths against the other state's own respective strengths."

"This is something that we should avoid as much as possible." Ves remarked. "The modest losses we have sustained so far has hurt our clan quite badly. We'll be set back a lot if we lose just a thousand mech pilots."

"I agree, sir. This is why our Larkinson Clan should try its best by leveraging our high-quality mechs, our ability to generate disparities in morale and our investment in elite mech forces. There is no better way to do that by specializing in maneuver warfare."

"What does that actually mean?"

"Well, that's a bit of a lengthy story, sir. You should have already seen it in action plenty of times in our previous battles against the Nyxian pirates. In short, it's attempting to win a battle by employing our strengths against the enemy's weaknesses."

The senior mech officer stopped rubbing his hands. Instead, he kept one palm stretched while extending just a single finger with his other hand.

Instead of pressing the finger into the palm, Verle exagerattingly circled the finger around until it poked sharply into the back of his stationary palm!

"We aren't cavemen anymore, Ves. We humans have developed many more refined tactics and strategies. A battle doesn't have to be won simply by destroying more mechs than the enemy. We can instead make clever use of our strong elite mechs to attack critical enemy assets. Think of targeting their officers, commanders, carriers, ranged mechs and so on. If nothing else, we can always employ our elites as cavalry and attack the flanks of an enemy formation. The Swordmaidens happen to excel in this tactic."

Ves nodded. He could still remember how the Swordmaidens easily caused the strong and troublesome Allidus Archons to collapse by nipping at their flanks.

The Avatars of Myths on the other hand were locked in a frontal engagement against the pirate elites, which was the more stupid way to fight.

Even so, the Swordmaidens could have never pulled off their brilliant feat without the Avatars pinning the enemy mechs down.

"We still need at least some of our mechs to fight the enemy head-on, right?"

"That is so. The typical hammer and anvil tactic can't work without them. This is why combining different mechs and different mech troops is so important. We cannot neglect the role of slower and defense-oriented mechs even as we rely mainly on maneuverable mechs to achieve our victories."