5035 The Long Approach The approach was the tensest and most nerve-wracking phase of the battle. While the Phobos had done an excellent job at immobilizing the orven battleship as well as the other larger ships of the raiding fleet, it could not deal that much real damage unless the alien warships dropped their transphasic energy shields. It was up to the other mechs of the Golden Skull Alliance to finish the job! While a large number of melee mechs as well as other short to mid-range mechs fanned out into a loose swarm and approached the enemy position from multiple directions, the two sides had already started to shoot against each other. The orvens and the weird eight-limbed aliens identified as the wheednars weren't stupid. Their gun batteries which consisted of a mix of long-range laser cannons, hard-hitting kinetic cannons and fast-firing particle cannons began to blanket the approaching swarm with lots of firepower! Most of the powerful gun batteries mounted on the alien warships were designed to damage other warships, so they were not entirely suited to swatting down mechs, especially at longer ranges. Though the newer classes of alien warships started to adopt configurations that excelled at demolishing large numbers of small craft, the lower tech and outdated warships of the wheednar race lacked this capability! As a result, the slow firing rates of most warship cannons severely hampered the amount of approaching mechs they could fell! The only downside was that each direct hit pretty much obliterated a mech without question! There was practically no chance for a mech pilot to save his life by ejection because the attack came so quickly that the entire mech, cockpit and everything else had either been vaporized or crushed into countless pieces! It was like a large-scale game of Russian roulette. No amount of defense could save a mech and mech pilot from embracing oblivion! The only consolation was that the highly dispersed mech formations and the dispersed approach angles lowered the killing efficiency of the enemy warships to the extreme. Still, Ves did not like it that dozens or so clansmen died without any way to save themselves. He felt relieved when he noticed that most expert mechs and ace mechs did okay. Their pilots possessed extraordinary intuition that easily allowed them to evade any impending attacks that could punt a serious dent in their expensive machines! However, it was unrealistic for the Golden Skull Alliance to win an engagement against an alien fleet by relying solely on high-ranking mechs. "We need to find a better way to start a battle against an alien fleet." Ves remarked to General Verle. "We can sustain this kind of loss rate in the first couple of battles, but we will be bleeding most of our veteran mech pilots if we continue to fight like this. Even weaker alien fleets will be able to make us bleed." General Verle remained impassive. "The current results are already good considering the tonnage and firepower of our opponent. We deliberately picked a stronger target in order to test our combat effectiveness and forge all of our fighting forces into a more cohesive whole. Suffering casualties is unavoidable. The most we can do is to make the aliens pay as much as possible for each pilot they manage to kill." andasnovel.com Ves did not like the approach of spending the lives of his Larkinsons like currency anymore. He may have been more open-minded in the past, but that was when the Milky Way constantly disorged batch after batch of hopeful mech pilots. Now that red humanity was on its own, he needed to do much more to preserve the life of every single combatant. The supply of manpower would soon dry up as states such as Davute preemptively snapped up as many pilots as possible to defend their territories against the coming alien onslaught! "Do you have any ideas on how we can do better?" Ves asked. "I mean, I already intend to upgrade all of our mechs to their quasi-first-class equivalents over time, but that will probably take a few years to complete. We need to whip up a few stopgap solutions in the meantime." "There are not many convenient options to mitigate the losses at this stage of a space battle, sir. We can either rely on superior artillery suppression, faster interception speeds or highly effective area ECM measures to do better." It was nearly impossible for a bunch of mechs to outgun a warship. Scale mattered and the latter always enjoyed a decisive advantage! While the expeditionary fleet actually boasted a lot of fairly powerful bunker mechs that could overwhelm the defenses of an enemy warship through sheer volume of fire, their effective ranges were not that great! The entire expeditionary fleet did not dare to stray within the effective range of the enemy alien warships. While it was still possible for energy weapons attuned for maximum range to successful hit a target, the complexities of space movement, the severe effect of beam dispersal and the difficulty of nailing the right angles meant that a lot of energy beams ended up hitting nothing! The only mechs that defied the odds were the Transcendent Punishers. Though Ves had come to dislike the design choices he made for the first true artillery mechs of his clan, he could not deny that they were pretty useful and effective as bunker mechs under the right circumstances. The Eye of Ylvaine cleverly focused their extreme range damage output on the smaller wheednar warships. The alien frigates and destroyers ordinarily relied on their smaller hulls and warp-enhanced acceleration to remain elusive and evade many long-ranged attacks. However, their transphasic energy shields were much weaker and broke much faster when subjected to massed attacks! This was normally not that big of a deal as long as they remained mobile. When Ves studied the performance of the artillery mechs employed by the other alliance partners, he could clearly see that they had no hope of landing consistent hits against those dancing alien warships. They had little choice but to aim their cannons at the largest and most unwieldy alien warships. These metal tubs in space easily resisted the large amount of relatively small caliber attacks for the time being. Even if their energy shields slowly depleted over time, their weapons kept firing without being subjected to any pressure! Ves was glad to see that his Transcendent Punishers attained much more results at this stage. Despite the extreme ranges, the targeting guidance from Ylvaine made it so that around 30 percent of the positron cannon attacks struck a smaller wheednar warship! As this minor race could not build any good warships, the sustained fire from several hundred Transcendent Punishers eventually wore down the defenses of the alien vessel. Once her energy shields fizzled out, her hull immediately became beset with a multitude of attacks! The little wheednar warship did not boast a strong hull, which was fairly typical in the Red Ocean. The distant artillery strikes easily punched through their hull armor and started to drill into the compartments underneath. The wheednar destroyer belatedly tried to spin her hull and flee to the rear of the partially crippled orven battleship, but it was too late! "Warship destroyed! Her hull has broken in half and her main power generator has exploded!" A brief cheer spread through the bridge of the Spirit of Bentheim, but everyone soon calmed down. The wheednar fielded dozens more warships, a significant amount of which consisted of much larger and tougher cruisers! Even so, the Eye of Ylvaine significantly reduced the threat towards friendly mechs by taking out the warships that were most effective against small craft! The wheednar frigates and destroyers mounted a lot of smaller and faster firing gun batteries. This was why they actually needed to be taken out first! "Our mid-range rifleman mechs are starting to open fire! Commander Casella Ingvar is doing her best to enhance the firepower of the Avatars of Myths and the Living Sentinels!" The Avatars of Myth fielded the greatest number of Bright Warrior Mark H's, though the Living Sentinels also possessed a fair amount of the highly adaptive modular mechs. Many of them were currently configured for ranged combat. They had deployed in a large but fairly dispersed swarm centered around the Minerva. The living expert mech currently glowed with gold. Soon enough, over a thousand rifleman mechs around the expert command mech faintly started to glow in gold as well! Ever since exotic radiation started to affect the Red Ocean, Commander Casella Ingvar had noticed that it had become easier and less strenuous for her to Commandeer a large amount of other mechs. It was as if E energy radiation compensated for much of the effort that she previously had to supply by herself! This not only allowed her to empower more mechs at high efficiency, but also enhanced the power of her Commandeered mechs a little further! The difference became evident as soon as a lot of ranged mechs opened fire! Compared to the ranged mechs fielded by the likes of the Adelaides and the Boojays, the Larkinson rifleman mechs not only attained higher hit rates due to Casella's strong guidance, but also depleted the enemy transphasic energy shields much more effectively due to the enhancement of true resonance! When it came to fighting against warships, Ves had to admit that the Minerva was a lot more effective than any of the other expert mechs in the fleet! The Amaranto that remained in the rear and the Promethea that accompanied the other mechs forward all had their good points, but their resonance-enhanced firepower was ultimately constrained to a single mech frame. "The defenses of the alien warships are depleting at a faster rate!" "Another wheednar destroyer has lost power!" "The alien warships are beginning to direct more firepower towards our mechs!" "Spread out further and focus on evasion!" The Avatar and Sentinel mechs produced remarkable results while fighting with the help of Commander Casella Ingvar, but that also turned them into higher priority targets! The mechs fielded by the other alliance partners endured less pressure as a result as their firepower wasn't as effective. Ves groaned. "Our mechs are too good!" This was not the result that he wanted to see. He did not want his clan to incur the most losses just because they attracted the most attention. It was not just the mechs Commandeered by Casella that attracted a lot of enemy attacks. The Nullifier Battalion of the Battlecriers also started to inflict a lot of effective damage to the alien warships despite their limited numbers! So far, the Nullifiers were the only Larkinson standard mechs equipped with heavy transphasic luminar crystal rifles by default. This made them a lot more effective against any transphasic defenses, and the aliens clearly felt the difference as the elite battalion crumpled an entire wheednar frigate by themselves! Naturally, this caused the elite mechs to become another focus of enemy attacks! Ves gnashed his teeth at the sight. "We can't go on like this. I need to design a new auxiliary mech that can deploy a large interference field of sorts that can mess up enemy targeting solutions. We can't throw them at a fleet of enemy warships in the clear anymore!" General Verle's projection nodded in agreement. "That is a good idea, sir. I know of a handful of commercial mech models that claim to do the same, but their costs are prohibitively expensive as they rely on special tech and materials to reduce the effectiveness of enemy sensor systems. Will you be able to design a mech that is more effective than the products on the market?" "Definitely." Ves replied. "I already have a good idea on how I can accomplish this in a more cost effective manner." "How much time will you take?" "That is hard to say. I think I can complete the design within half a year, but that is assuming that I won't get distracted." Ves already had his hands full with a bunch of existing commitments, but he believed he could still squeeze enough time to design a new mech that should successfully give his mechs a better chance to survive the coming battles!