The Mech Touch

Was it easy to blind an expert mech?

"It's possible." Ves guessed.

It almost never happened. Confrontations between expert mechs took place every day in the Komodo War, but Ves had never heard of a story where a bunch of electronic warfare mechs managed to interfere with the sensor systems of a powerful mech.

As Ves gained more interest in this train of thought, he began to research this topic more seriously.

Of course, he did not research this topic by himself. He commanded his new Product Research Department to deploy some manpower to study this topic.

With an army of analysts at work, Ves only had to wait a few days to obtain a comprehensive report. The document he received distilled everything he wanted to know without any superfluous data. If he wanted to dive deeper, he could easily follow up on the references.

As it turned out, blinding expert mechs was possible.

It was just hard. It got harder with each subsequent generation.

Sensor tech became more sophisticated over time. Competition relentlessly drove innovation. Component developers constantly sought to raise resistance against ECM, jamming, interference and other strange effects. Those who failed to keep up would not be able to sell their sensor systems anymore!

There were immense trans-galactic corporations who investigated every exotic, every tech and every combination to see if they could harden sensor systems more.

The most important criteria to judge a sensor system wasn't precision or range, but resilience!

"There is too much jamming on the battlefield!"

Weapons fire already made it difficult for sensors to resolve accurate readings. When thousands of mechs fired their positron beams at once, how could such an enormous discharge of energy not mess up any sensors that were sensitive to electromagnetic emissions?

On top of these chaotic discharges, a lot of modern mechs possessed at least some ECM functionality.

Most of the time, they were fairly weak and basic, granting them some ability to hide against long-ranged sensors.

However, once a large amount of mechs grouped up, the interference they generated overlapped, forming a stronger field that frustrated targeting systems, spoiled precise readings and generated other effects.

There were mechs that were designed to do more than throw up an interference field for self-protection.

These auxiliary mechs carried or integrated powerful directional arrays. Designed for electronic warfare, these machines were capable of projecting interference across a distance!

It was similar to how a person across the street waved at Ves before shining a very bright flashlight in his eyes. It was annoying as hell and disturbed his vision!

At the level of mechs, this flashlight actually consisted of very sophisticated components that operated along principles that were countless times more complicated than projecting a simple beam of light in someone's eyes.

What Ves found curious was that electronic warfare mechs constantly faded in popularity.

In the earlier mech generations, they were quite a regular sight on the battlefield. It was worth fielding them because they truly did interfere with the aim of long-ranged mechs.

However, as the Age of Mechs progressed, sensor development continued to overtake electronic warfare development.

It made less sense to deploy mechs dedicated to electronic warfare.

They weren't necessary in small-scale combat. Mercenaries almost never bothered with them as it made more sense to field an extra mech that possessed actual teeth.

If a hundred electronic warfare mechs all focused on disturbing the sensors of an enemy mech company, then they might be able to disturb most but not all sensor systems.

"This makes no sense. It is much more straightforward to deploy a hundred combat mechs and wipe out the enemy mech company the old-fashioned way."

After all, electronic warfare mechs dedicated most of their capacity towards their interference capabilities. There was hardly any power or space left for self-protection.

Only larger organizations such as mech armies fielded these kinds of mechs as only deploying them in greater numbers allowed them to achieve substantial effects.

To be honest, Ves wasn't too well-versed in how mech militaries fielded these auxiliary mechs. There were major differences in third-class and second-class EW mechs that strongly affected their use. There were also a lot of different tech and methods that targeted specific sensor systems.

"There are too many variables!"

A mech contained at least several dozen different sensor systems. Was it easy to blind all of them at the same time? No! An EW mech simply didn't have the capacity to accomplish such a feat by itself.

The story was a bit more complicated when there were more mechs in the equation, but generally most combatants on the battlefield considered EW mechs to be a nuisance. It was already good enough if these unassuming machines were able to reduce an enemy's sensor range by 10 percent or drop their resolving power by 15 percent.

"These effects hardly make a difference in small-scale battles." Ves shook his head in disappointment.

Of course, these results mainly applied to situations where both sides maintained technical parity, which wasn't always the case.

"The Friday Coalition and the Hexadric Hegemony are roughly equal in this regard."

He was sure the truth was more nuanced, but he was just an outsider. Perhaps some mechs designed by specialists in electronic warfare achieved more stellar results, but Ves didn't have access to this kind of information.

What he did know was that no Hexer electronic warfare mech ever succeeded in blinding a Fridayman expert mech.

"It's futile!"

When Ves read this part of the report, he learned the main reason why expert mechs were so darned hard to interfere with. It was not necessarily their tech.

A second-class sensor system was still a second-class sensor system. No matter if the tech and materials cost 10 million hex credits or 10 billion hex credits, they were still inferior to first-class sensor systems.

Just because the more expensive system was 1000 times more expensive didn't mean it was 1000 more effective. Diminishing returns played a very important role!

"It's actually just 10 or 20 times stronger or something." Ves muttered.

He didn't have enough information to know the exact disparity.

Whatever the case, if it was just the quality of sensor systems alone, then it should have been possible for 100 EW mechs to heavily interfere with the sensor systems of an expert mech.

Yet this didn't happen. If it worked, then the Hexers wouldn't have hesitated to employ this solution!

"It's energy!" Ves uttered. "Expert mechs have too much energy!"

Expert mechs were incredibly powerful machines, but that wasn't solely due to resonance. In order for a high-performance mech to hit hard and move fast, it was essential to supply enough energy to sustain these exertions!

With their incredibly luxurious power reactors, expert mechs were able to supply an abundance of power to every function. Their flight systems were able to accelerate a lot faster. Their rifles unleashed much more devastating beams. Their swords hit several times harder!

Sensor systems also enjoyed this bounty. When they were designed with elevated power supplies in mind, they became so effective and so resistant against interference that only thousands EW mechs could ever hope to hinder their performance!

Who would ever be so extravagant to deploy so many EW mechs at once? It was impractical!

It didn't matter if one form of electronic warfare was a little more effective than another form. Specialties didn't matter either. An expert mech's resonance that was infused with force of will naturally resisted a range of harmful effects.

"In conclusion, blinding expert mechs is not cost-effective."

The Hex Army either had to field thousands of EW mechs or deploy a single first-class EW mech.

This was a galaxy-wide consensus. Perhaps there might be exceptions such as luring expert mechs into pockets of warped or anomalous space, but such instances simply didn't happen in the Komodo War.

"The Hex Army is in a real bind." Ves grimaced.

It was truly difficult to overcome the disparity in expert mechs. Ves wasn't sure how much additional foreign expert pilots the Coalition managed to pressed into action. Estimates ranged from 10 percent to 30 percent.

What was worse was that difference was widening over time!

With their superiority in numbers, the Fridayman expert mechs were able to defeat more Hexer expert mechs!

If 1 Fridayman expert pilot died for every 2 Hexer expert pilots, then the Coalition would occupy an unstoppable advantage in just a couple of years!

Ves already read reports that the Hexers were adjusting how they deployed their expert mechs. While their survival rates increased when they grouped up in greater numbers, they weren't able to cover enough units anymore.

The absence of just a single expert mech exposed thousands of regular mechs!

"In other words, the Hex Army is trying to keep as many of its expert pilots alive by trading the lives of many more ordinary Hexer mech pilots."

This was a painful and unsustainable trade! No matter how much assistance the Blessed Squire and Valkyrie mechs provided to the Hexers, they were only effective against mortals!

The Hex Army already attempted some experiments where hundreds of Valkyrie Redeemers activated their Marked For Death abilities against a Fridayman expert mech.

The sight was exceptionally grand. The third eyes of the Valkyrie Redeemers projected hundreds of beams in the direction of the enemy expert mech!

Unfortunately, the enemy demigod did not pause. Instead, it soared forward until it entered into the midst of the Valkyrie Redeemers and proceeded to slaughter them with unrelenting sword strikes!

Not even unleashing simultaneous Shock And Awe Pulses managed to do more than cause the expert mech to pause for a fraction of a second!

Ves looked dismayed when he learned of this disastrous trial. "My products simply aren't designed to confront expert mechs."

There was no shame in admitting this fact. It wasn't as if other mech designers achieved anything better. Not even dignified Masters solved this problem!

This was why the Hexadric Hegemony continued to lose the advantage in the Komodo War. The Hexer Masters must all be wracking their heads over the Friday Coalition's crucial advantage.

What about him? What power did he possess to affect this unfavorable situation?

"Regular glows don't affect expert pilots.. do they?"

Ves didn't actually know the answer. He became so intrigued by it that he left the design lab in order to perform a study.

While his expert pilots did not have any expert mechs, it was enough for him to conduct some simple tests on Venerable Joshua while he was piloting the Quint.

"What do I have to do, sir?" The expert pilot asked while his Quint was standing in the middle of a giant test chamber.

"Just stand still."

A number of different LMC mech models approached the Quint. Ves had already unlocked the restrictions of their glows so that they were able to act against a friendly Larkinson.

What he found out was that expert pilots weren't actually immune to glows. Their willpower was just too strong. Fear and other emotions simply weren't strong enough to shake their convictions.

"It's like stopping a battleship by putting a frigate in the way. There's no way the latter can slow down the former!"

Yet the fact that glows weren't blocked at the gates gave Ves an opening.

Was every glow ineffective against the Quint?

As LMC mech after LMC mech attempted to influence the masterwork mech piloted by an expert pilot, Ves perceived no noticeable drops in performance in either of them. Not even the Sanctuary managed to dampen Joshua's lively will!

Ves had already lost hope at this point. When the first production copy of the Crystal Lord Mark II marched forth, he hardly paid attention to the proceedings. His mind was already following another tangent.

"Sir!" Venerable Joshua called over the communication channel. "I think I'm feeling something. It's faint, but this new Crystal Lord makes me feel as if I'm looking at a sparkling gem."

"What? Please confirm that, Venerable."

"It's not enough to interfere with my perception, but there is definitely something strange about this Crystal Lord!"

Ves sat up straighter in his chair. Was there more to the Crystal Lord Mark II than he initially thought?

He felt a bit absurd. As the lead designer of this recent mech model, how could he be ignorant of this interaction?!