The Mech Touch

After conducting a number of basic tests, everyone gained a decent understanding of the power of the Minerva Mark II's new Command Field. Commandeered mechs or Knights became moderately more powerful than if they got boosted by the Mark I. The performance increase was not dramatic, but still yielded a lot of extra power when applied on a large scale. Enfeoffed mechs of Vassals received much greater benefits than before. Ves and Gloriana had specifically designed the Minerva Mark II to strengthen this specific aspect in particular. The results clearly showed that their efforts were not in vain. The Viscounts as Ves arbitrarily decided to call them gained access to enough true resonance to roughly match the performance of mid-tier expert mechs. Of course, these Viscounts still exhibited a large amount of shortcomings that made them inferior to true mid-tier expert mechs. These factors ranged from mech configurations to skills. There was simply no way for Casella's Command Field to bestow all of these missing factors to the mechs that received her strongest form of empowerment. Even so, granting 57 mechs the firepower of mid-tier expert mechs was impossible to match by any conventional force unless the disparity in numbers was enormous! This was especially the case when factoring in that each of these Viscounts benefited from the superior skill, control and intuition of a multi-tasking ace commander! "Casella, is there a way to redistribute the energy you expend on Enfeoffing mechs?" "Please elaborate, sir." "Instead of turning 57 mechs into Viscounts, can you turn 100 or 200 mechs into Barons?" Ves expanded his request. "There may be situations where you would rather have a battalion of low-tier expert mechs at your disposal rather than a company of mid-tier expert mechs." "Hmm. I can see that. Let me try." The Saint Commander began to alter the expression of her Command Field. It took a few minutes for her to mold her power in the desired fashion. Soon enough, around 160 mechs shone with the familiar intensity that many Larkinsons were familiar with in the past half year. "Not bad." Ves remarked. "160 Barons can do a lot of damage, especially if they are all heavy artillery mechs. Can you produce more Barons at this level of power, or have you reached your limit?" Casella clearly attempted to stretch her power further, but failed to produce any further results. "I am unable to do more… for the time being. It is as you have speculated. I have a finite 'pool' of energy that I can distribute to other mechs. There is not much flexibility at the moment. I can concentrate my energy into 57 Viscounts, but no further. Likewise, I can reduce the concentration and spread the same energy over three times as many Barons, but my power loses grip on mechs if I try to dilute it any further." Those were oddly specific limits. Ves did not really care too much. He was more than satisfied with the current results. Perhaps Casella would be able to employ her Enfeoffment ability in a more versatile manner after she increased her resonance strength and trained her Command Field further. In the meantime, the Premier Fleet and the Bluejay Fleet could make good use of the incredible boost in firepower of 57 Viscounts or 160 Barons. Ves still found it a pity that the Command Field's amplification still remained uneven. Unfortunately, the loaned true resonance did not increase the defenses and mobility of the Commandeered and Enfeoffed mechs to the same degree. This was already the case with the Mark I, and it was not that much different with the Mark II. "The increase in defenses is moderate while the increase in mobility is low." Gloriana concluded after analyzing the data. "The multipliers are higher, but not as much as we had hoped. All of the mechs empowered by the Minerva Mark II still amount to glass cannons. They can strike their enemies hard, but they cannot withstand as much damage. Clever operation and control can help the Knights and Vassals survive the storm of combat, but this may not work out so well if our adversaries have grasped the intelligence related to our Saint Commander." "That is why we added Dragon Scales as the second key resonating material of the Minerva Mark II." Ves mentioned. "We already tested how well it amplified our ace mech's physical defenses the day before. It is now time to utilize Dragon Scales as we originally intended." If Ves and Gloriana solely wanted to amplify the physical defenses of the Minerva Mark II, then they could have resorted to other resonating exotics with a much higher defense coefficient. For example, resonating with Solarium could amplify the physical defenses of the Amaranto Mark III by as much as 300 percent under ideal conditions! In contrast, the Minerva Mark II's exterior only became 70 percent tougher, which would not help the ace mech all that much if attacked by a greater phase lord. It was a good thing that Dragon Scales was originally designed to strengthen the defenses of spurs. When employed by an ace command mech, this effect successfully transferred over to friendly mechs as well as starships affected by Casella's Command Field! The Larkinsons proceeded to conduct very careful tests on unshielded mechs. Each of them endured attacks of different intensities in order to find out how much stronger their armor had become. "The results vary according to multiple variables, but the amplification falls within our expectations." Gloriana reported. "The physical defenses of Knights are at least 3 times better than before. The physical defenses of Barons and Viscounts are at least 5 times greater than normal. This is a remarkable increase that can save many lives and keep many more mechs active on the battlefield than before. As for warships… the effect of Dragon Scales is minimal due to their enormous surface area." This was a huge improvement! It was worth it to opt for Dragon Scales as the second key resonating material for the Minerva. Compared with a resonating material that improved the firepower of Commandeered and Enfeoffed mechs, Dragon Scales would keep mechs and more importantly their mech pilots alive across multiple intensive battles. This perfectly aligned with the priorities of the Larkinson Clan. The Larkinsons needed to grow through adversity, but also make sure that as many of its soldiers stayed alive long enough to benefit from the rewards. It would not do the Larkinson Clan any good to win 100 battles, but lose 99 percent of its soldiers in the process. Ves would rather raise the survival rate to 50 percent even if that meant that his clan lacked the firepower to win half of its battles. In any case, the inclusion of Dragon Scales meant that Casella's extraordinary offensive boost also came paired with a substantial defensive boost. It could not save her Commandeered or Enfeoffed mechs from all dangers, but they should still suffer much less casualties than before! "Let's proceed with the live practice sessions." Ves said. "We need to get a more realistic impression of how much of a difference these amplifications can produce. If the Minerva Mark II is anywhere near as effective as other ace command mechs, we can expect that any competition will massively favor the ones that are affected by the Command Field." This was the test that everyone was looking forward to. The data all showed dramatic performance boosts, but it did not feel real enough unless a bunch of empowered mechs fought against unempowered mechs. "Switch weapons to training mode." Ves instructed. "Set elimination threshold to 50 percent shield integrity. Let us start with pitting 200 Commandeered mechs against 400 unaffected mechs. In order to make this more interesting, let's split the RA mechs and Terran mechs evenly between both sides." This meant that one side did not field only RA mechs while the other side only fielded Terran mechs. It took a bit of time for the mechs to get organized. The mechers and the Terrans clearly did not enjoy fighting alongside each other. Their standards, mech doctrines and protocols differed considerably from each other. There was no way for them to establish any rapport in a short amount of time. They could only split off in their own detachments and try to fight separately alongside each other. Compared to the Terran mechs, the RA mechs enjoyed one significant advantage. Each of them benefited from shield link technology, which meant that they could pool their energy defenses. This made them a lot harder to eliminate! However, the Terran mechs were not completely helpless in the face of this superior tech. The Terrans already figured out that if they could put an obstacle between the shield links, they could interrupt the linkages. The RA mechs also relied heavily on support mechs that were dedicated to acting as shield link relays to optimize the shield link networks. So long as these support mechs got taken down first, it became much harder for the RA mechs to take advantage of shield link technology! "Are you ready? Start!" The mechs hailing from the side that belonged to the Saint Commander immediately began to light up with the tell-tale signs of true resonance. Casella had opted to transform 57 mechs into Viscounts while turning the remaining 143 mechs into Knights. While all of them consisted of first-class multipurpose mechs, Casella very deliberately turned Terran machines with a strong focus on melee combat into her Viscounts! These mechs that roughly gained the attack and defensive power of mid-tier expert mechs immediately rocketed forward! Although these machines were immediately met with intercepting fire from the 400 opposing machines, the defensive amplification from Dragon Scales helped to keep the Viscounts alive! In the meantime, the 143 Knights maintained their distance and methodically concentrated their pin-point accurate firepower on dozens of enemy targets at the same time. Although the Saint Commander was not an excellent marksman, her ability to handle different ranged weapons was still superhuman due to her high rank. It only took her a few salvos for her to understand the targeting rules of most of the high-tech weapon modules of her Knights. Their accuracy was already fairly high from the start, but most of the weapons simply did not miss anymore! Even before the Viscounts closed the distance, the Knights had already taken out a bunch of opposing mechs! Of course, Knights mainly concentrated their firepower on the opposing Terran mechs as they lacked the benefits of shield link technology. While the Terran mech contingent tried their best to make up for this shortcoming by fielding support mechs that were able to deploy remote azure energy shields, the huge volume of resonance-empowered attacks easily crumbled these barriers! The Knights may have only gained the firepower of quasi-expert mechs, but the modest amount of true resonance flowing through them made a huge difference! Even if the opposing mechs outnumbered the empowered mechs by 2 to 1, the former could not afford to direct any attention to the Knights. This was because the Viscounts had already closed the distance! Even if the Command Field did not boost mobility as much as offense or defense, the Viscounts still made good use of the limited advantage in mobility to quickly close the distance to the slowest opposing mechs. Energy shields quickly crackled as they withstood a torrent of ranged and melee attacks! The Viscounts did not just focus exclusively on attacking with their swords and spears. They were all multipurpose mechs, so they constantly launched accurate attacks with the compact but still relatively deadly ranged armaments. Their targets had no chance of withstanding these attacks! Even if the power of all of these weapons had been dialed back for training purposes, they still inflicted a lot more damage than the weapons of unempowered mechs. As soon as the azure energy shields of dozens of mechs dipped to 50 percent, they were already eliminated from the practice session. The 'defeated' mechs no longer took action and drifted away as if they were dead. The Viscounts continued to jump towards other enemy mechs. No matter whether they hunted down RA mechs or Terran mechs, it made little difference to the Enfeoffed machines. The performance gap was too vast and the drastically improved control meant that none of the unempowered mechs could mount an effective resistance! Even if they concentrated their firepower, the Knights or Viscounts that came under heavy fire could always last long enough to retreat and hide behind other friendly units. By taking full advantage of the benefits of the Minerva Mark II's new and improved Command Field, the practice session quickly came to an end. Of the 200 empowered mechs, none of them had fallen! Of the 400 unempowered mechs, each of them suffered defeat without exception! "Impressive!" Ves' eyes lit up. "This bout may seem unfair when it involves mechs on both sides, but when we get to fight against the native aliens, I look forward to steamrolling their forces without needing to deploy too many assets." This was the power of an authentic ace commander!