The Mech Touch

Chapter 6029 The Importance of Warp Interdiction

"There is one more variable that has led to a positive result against the alien phasefighters. The phasefighters we fought against today were unable to display their full strength. As far as we know, each of them are equipped with small warp drives that enable them to traverse distances much faster than normal. The reason why they were unable to unlock their full mobility was because they were operating in the range of our powerful warp interdictors. This essentially cut down their greatest advantage, meaning that our mechs only managed to defeat a crippled enemy."

Everyone gathered in the conference room frowned at that. The Sentinel Commander indeed raised a valid point. The warp interdictors that the Larkinsons installed on many of theri combat vessels prevented the alien craft and vessels from deploying their own warp bubbles and thereby moving a lot faster in space.

Warp interdictors were essential to fighting against the native aliens. Trying to start a fight without these gadgets meant that the enemy held all of the initiative. The alien warships could advance and retreat whenever they wanted, and if they chose to fight, their superior mobility enabled them to outmaneuver an opposing mech force with much greater ease.

"So what you are saying that our mechs should have a harder time defeating the alien phasefighters if they are operating outside of the support range of friendly starships?"

"That is indeed what I am trying to convey, sir. Most of our battles so far are fleet-based engagements in space where our mech units are always accompanied by their carriers. These are situations where it is always possible to cover the entire battlefield with powerful enough warp interdiction fields. If our mech units have to fight away from our fleet or on the surface of a planet, then this condition may not apply anymore. In such instances, our second-class mechs will struggle to fight against the alien phasefighters. Only our quasi-first-class mechs will be able to achieve good results."

That caused Ves to frown even deeper. He understood and couldn't help but agree with Casella's logic.

The quasi-first-class mechs that Ves designed for his own clan were all equipped with transphasic flight systems. This allowed them to speed themselves up by forming relatively weak but functional warp bubbles. That should at least allow them to keep up with the speed of alien phasefighters.

The older and cheaper second-class mechs did not enjoy this particular luxury. The presence or absence of phasewater technology could make an enormous difference in any confrontation involving alien phasefighters!

The reason why Ves and many of his fellow Larkinsons never took the alien small craft seriously was because they had made great strides in pursuing quality over quantity. Their mechs had undergone massive upgrades compared to most other mech forces. They were ahead of the curve compared to the alien phasefighters.

However, as time went by, this disparity would most certainly reduce. The Larkinsons might not be able to enjoy their head-start for long. They all needed to be ready to treat alien phasefighters with the same degree of severity as human mechs.

Commander Melkor decided to share his own opinion on this subject.

"Those phasefighters take a lot of phasewater to build, so they cannot be cheap. The native aliens probably don't care too much. They control most of the territories of the Red Ocean, so they can afford to produce millions if not billions of phasefighters. It still takes a lot of resources to construct warships, but it is much cheaper to build carriers that can transport lots of phasefighters. After all, the carriers of the Torment Fleet are nothing more than large cargo ships that the orvens have hastily converted into carrier vessels."

The significance of phasefighters was therefore much greater on a strategic level. The Red Cabal and the major alien races all possessed a huge amount of industrial capacity, so they could churn out lots of transphasic small craft once they came up with adequate designs and retooled all of their production chains.

Ves could already predict that the aliens would probably reduce their dependence on expensive warships and begin to field lots of phasefighters!

This was both good and bad for red humanity.

On the one hand, phasefighters were not as big and intimidating to fight against. Many human mech forces were most comfortable when fighting against other mechs. The alien small craft were not exactly the same, but the similarities were still great enough that the divergences didn't matter.

On the other hand, the aliens already enjoyed an incredible numerical advantage in most aspects. Once they truly began to invest in phasefighters, they could easily field 10 times as many small craft as red humanity in a relatively short amount of time!

Additionally, it was much easier to fulfill the manpower requirements of phasefighters. They were inherently simpler than mechs so it took less years for an alien with an equivalent degree of intelligence to a human to become a proficient phasefighter pilot.

The alien pilots also did not have to satisfy an unreasonably restrictive condition such as suitable genetic aptitude either. As long as the alien species possessed good judgment, decent combat instincts and adequate reaction speed, they should easily be able to supply trillions of eligible pilots to the war effort!

There was no way to overcome this incredible disparity in numbers without resorting to other means!

Perhaps the most important factor that still gave mechs an edge over phasefighters was that the pilots of the former were able to break through and become much more powerful.

With the strength of expert pilots, ace pilots and god pilots, mechs would always maintain a qualitative edge!

There was no way the aliens could come up with similar means. The native aliens did not possess the ability to create a Kingdom of Phasefighters or whatever, and they were completely clueless about willpower cultivation.

It may be theoretically possible for extraordinary phasefighter pilots to emerge, just like how it was theoretically possible for mech pilots to advance without relying on the assistance of the Kingdom of Mechs.

In practice, there was no way that either scenario could happen. Cultivation was actually a delicate process. If anything went wrong, then that could already ruin a breakthrough!

Ves felt a lot better after making this conclusion. Phasefighters should not be able to dominate mechs entirely. His job should not be in danger anytime soon.

"Let's get back to the original topic." Ves said as he calmed himself down. "Seeing as alien phasefighters have become a trend in alien space, our mech community must develop more targeted counters against them. First, mechs expressly designed to counter phasefighters must be fast and ideally equipped with phasewater technology. If the latter condition cannot be satisfied, then any fight against these alien small craft will inevitably result in tragic outcomes."

Phasewater technology was simply too strong. It made a huge difference in any battle. Hyper technology might be able to reduce the performance gap, but the aliens weren't stupid. They were beginning to embrace hyper technology with almost the same degree of enthusiasm as red humanity!

"We also need a solution that can reduce our dependence on warships equipped with warp interdictors." Commander Melkor said. "It would be great if you can design a mech that can deploy a warp interdiction field to prevent the alien small craft from running circles around our mech units. It would be even better if the mech can suppress phasefighters in other ways as well."

The other two legion commanders at the table nodded in agreement with Melkor. Since the aliens were most definitely on track to field enormous quantities of phasefighters in the future, it became imperative to find effective ways to weaken them wholesale!

However, this was easier said than done. Ves frowned as he considered the issue.

"Warp interdictors are usually installed on starships for good reasons. They are generally large, powerful and require lots of energy in order to generate a warp interdiction field of sufficient strength. While there are smaller models of warp interdictors available, they are usually seen in first-class mechs. It is currently not realistic to equip warp interdictors onto second-class mechs as far as I know. The modules are too bulky and consume way too much energy. They also generate a lot of heat as well, which is a major problem in any space environment."

This was a challenging technical problem. It was not an issue to develop first-class warp interdictor mechs. At that tech level, it was not challenging to miniaturize warp interdictors to the point where they could be slotted into specialized mechs.

It was difficult to design an equivalent mech for the expeditionary fleet. His options as a mech designer was much more limited if he had to design a warp interdictor mech at the second-class or quasi-first-class level.

"Is it too expensive?"

"Partially." Ves replied. "Technology hasn't caught up yet. Second-class warp interdictors cannot be miniaturized to the same degree as their first-class counterparts. This means that I will have to design an entire heavy mech around this single function. Such a mech will be large and heavy. It also cannot do anything else as it also has to be equipped with a large power reactor and lots of heat sinks. Such a mech is an awful complement to light mech units that are assigned to go on the attack."

In other words, second-class warp interdictor mechs could only effectively be deployed in defensive combat, prepared ambushes and assaults on static locations.

"It is better than nothing." Commander Sendra said. "We are used to working with limitations. Even if we cannot use warp interdictors in most offensive actions, we can at least ensure the aliens will not be able to ruin us entirely if they launch attacks onto our vulnerable mechs. My Swordmaidens generally do not pilot light mechs, so they are sitting ducks if they have no hope of catching up to alien phasefighters."

The Swordmaidens needed warp interdictor mechs the most since they had no effective way of suppressing the fast and agile phasefighters at a distance!

Ves let out a sigh. "I will try to come up with a solution at the second-class level, but I won't lie to you. It will be difficult to design a viable mech with this function. Personally, I am hoping that the Red Association has made lots of progress on increasing the practicality of this tech. They have managed to do so with space suppressors, and it is natural to develop a convenient solution that works over longer ranges. I don't know how many years it will take, so I will try to come up with my own solution in the meantime."

That relieved the legion commanders. They did not want their mech forces to become shackled to their starships on a permanent basis. There were many different scenarios where it was better if mechs could operate far away from friendly starships or fortifications.

The Larkinsons talked a bit more about alien phasefighters. They analyzed the approximate performance of different mech types against these expensive but effective craft.

Most other mech types did not perform well against the alien small craft.

"Rifleman mechs cannot inflict enough damage to eliminate the phasefighters quickly." Casella noted. "Heavy artillery mechs possess the necessary firepower, but with the exception of our Transcendent Punishers, every other mech model will miss most of their shots against these mobile craft. The only medium or heavy mech type that can perform well against alien phasefighters are missileer mechs. As long as they are loaded with transphasic missiles, they should be able to take down multiple alien phasefighters, especially if they are accompanied by scout mechs that can provide more reliable targeting guidance."

The Sentinel Commander was correct, but her solution was not economical at all. Transphasic missiles were far too wasteful and expensive to be employed by most human mech forces!

The aliens on the other hand…