Chapter 5951 Two Important Advantages Ves found it difficult to rank the remaining three choices in consideration. The fourth, fifth and sixth upgrade tracks all possessed a lot of promise. They promised plenty of benefits, enough to give him a chance of defeating enemies that were normally too powerful to overcome through conventional means. Ves already achieved great success through regular channels. He was the most successful Senior Mech Designer in the new frontier, so he had no urgent need to obtain more basic forms of assistance. What he needed was access to rare, high-end resources that could be converted into powerful advantages. "It would be ideal if I can obtain more super-class resources." All three of the aforementioned upgrade tracks granted him a viable shot at obtaining resources that were powerful enough to upgrade relics comparable to the Mech Designer System! He needed to be able to harvest strategic resources that could be used to construct more powerful war weapons. There were two kinds of advantages that Ves valued in particular. The first was to obtain massive amounts of fairly powerful or unique resources that could broadly augment the combat power of human civilization as a whole. The resources not only had to be fairly good, but they also had to be available in greater quantities. Hyper materials was a good example of this. Compared to the previous age, the Age of Dawn sparked an immediate all-round improvement in the performance of mechs and starships. The reason? Hyper materials! It was a completely new category of resources that had real applications in and outside warfare. Adding them to any combat platform immediately elevated their performance. One of the reasons why red humanity was able to fend off so many alien raids in the past year was because the defending forces quickly gained an advantage in combat by relying on their newfangled hyper mechs and in certain cases hyper warships! The aliens were a lot slower in their efforts to figure out hyper technology and add hyper materials to their own homeships. Their adaptability to an entirely new branch of technology was a lot poorer. Even if the cosmopolitans stole red humanity's secrets and transferred a lot of scientific progress to the Red Cabal, the phase whales and other alien races still found it difficult to master hyper technology quickly! They lacked the historical legacies and a certain family of cultivation like the humans. The native aliens needed to build their understanding of hyper technology and its related concepts completely from scratch. This was difficult when many alien scientists and engineers had long considered phasewater technology to be the strongest and most superior discipline! It was not only strong on an objective basis, but it was also blessed by the descendents of the Elder Gods! However, all good things eventually came to an end. Ves did not expect this tech disparity to last forever. Most of the aliens weren't stupid. They may be a bit stodgy and slow to embrace change, but when humanity's forces continued to pummel their opposition by relying on the advantages of hyper technology, even the phase whales would be forced to admit that phasewater technology alone was not enough for them to prevail! This meant that it became more important to gain a source of unique resources that the aliens of the Red Ocean could not obtain as easily. The three upgrade tracks in question all promised to make this possible. The second advantage that Ves sought to obtain was to gain access to a small amount of extremely high-end resources. The former might be able to elevate the overall combat power of humanity's fighting forces, but these changes mattered less at the higher levels of confrontation. Witnessing the Dominion of Man in action made Ves a lot more cognizant on the crucial value of top-end resources. The Rubicon Spatial Transfer System and the Spark Reactor wouldn't have been as domineering if not for the extremely special resources used to transform their functionality! Super-class materials and True God-level entities were the sort of top assets that could truly make a difference in fights against the true powerhouses of the cosmos! If Ves wanted to give his products a qualitative edge against the likes of god pilots, god ships, True Gods and possibly even God Kings, then he needed to power up his best works with the most powerful resources that he could obtain. It was not impossible to design a mech with more commonly available resources that could pose a real threat against a True God, but he would have to work too hard to overcome this deficiency. A strong mech did not just depend on a strong pilot and an excellent design, but it was also contingent on the use of superior materials. This was why it became more important than ever to strengthen his efforts in this area. The biggest obstacle to obtaining super-class materials was that he had no way of obtaining them aside from negotiating with major human powers! Only the Red Two and the first-rate superstates possessed the power, numbers and infrastructure to produce or acquire a relatively small amount of top-end resources on a stable basis. Even then, they needed these highly strategic goods so much that they were almost never willing to trade them away! Though Ves could continue to play the diplomacy game, he would always suffer substantial losses if he tried to obtain the strategic materials necessary to elevate his mechs and starships beyond their usual limitations. Sure, his brilliant E-technology circumvented this problem to an extent, but it did not change the fact that a failure to obtain enough top-end resources would ultimately cause him and his clan to fall behind. Ves knew his shortcomings. He and his clan's refusal to strive for large, resource-rich territories limited their ability to solve this problem by themselves. If he understood the necessity of accumulating strategic resources sooner, perhaps he would have reduced his objections to colonization. Still, it was not as if the Larkinson Clan was in a good position to do so in the past. It was only recently that it had gained enough power, influence and clout to take possession of more lucrative territories and invest in their development. In any case, Ves needed to make a lot of strides to secure this crucial advantage. Even a small amount of super-class materials could elevate the combat power of a high-ranking mech by 20 percent, 30 percent or even 100 percent! "It's like implanting another version of one of Lucky's gems into a mech!" Aside from that, strategic resources could also be used to dramatically boost the power of the Larkinson Clan's future battlecruiser as well as other starships. He also couldn't forget about his personal equipment. The Unending Regalia badly needed an upgrade, and he also needed to develop an entirely new battlesuit to increase his combat effectiveness as a phase lord. Ves did not forget that he had painted a much bigger target on his back in the last few months. While the Red Two promised to bolster his security even further than what they had already done, he would be foolish if he assumed that was enough. The cosmopolitans and the native aliens couldn't be underestimated. Either of them were already threatening by themselves. Once they properly joined hands and coordinated their actions, ordinary measures no longer worked anymore! "Let's see how these advantages stack up against the three remaining choices." As far as mass resources was concerned, dimensional tear definitely scored the highest in this aspect. So long as Ves was able to create as many permanent dimensional tears as he wished, he could transform many barren star systems into resource-rich star systems! This would instantly change the balance of the Red War as red humanity obtained exactly what it needed to supercharge its military industries! Portal Exploration comes second. Ves needed to invest a lot of AP to create permanent two-way portals that led to resource-rich regions. However, two-way portals could easily turn into a security vulnerability. Since humans could pass through them, so could the aliens! Ves would have little choice but to collapse the exposed and vulnerable portals, thereby wasting the AP spent on forming them in the first place. This sounded anything but ideal. "I can't neglect the security aspect either." Random Being Acquisition scored the best in terms of security. It was practically tailor-made to kidnap powerful alien beings in the most risk averse manner possible. It sacrificed a lot of other options just to excel in this activity! Dimension Breach Creation scored a bit worse in security, but Portal Exploration posed constant dangers to Ves or anyone else who passed through the portals. The probability that something might go catastrophically wrong by opening up a portal was too great! Ves could not discount the possibility that he would accidentally open a portal to a planet where a powerful phase whale already resided. Once the powerful alien creature detected the portal, the phase whale might be able to block the portal or launch a counter invasion! "Dimension Breach Creation is a lot safer, but not the safest. The dimensional tears are too obvious. It will be difficult to hide their existence." In any case, Ves moved on to judging the remaining upgrade tracks by how well they scored in supplying strategic resources. It was a lot more difficult to judge this as there were too many unclear variables. He could only base his judgment on brief descriptions and a lot of guesswork. "I think that Dimension Breach Creation scores the highest in supplying strategic resources, but this depends heavily on how easy it will be to breach a resource-rich dimension." He knew they existed. Aeon Corona VII proved that it was possible to enrich a planet by exposing it with unknown higher-dimensional energies. He just did not know how much AP he had to spend to open a semi-permanent or permanent tear to the aforementioned dimensions. Portal Exploration scored the worst in this aspect. Space was big, and it was difficult to obtain coordinates to locations that were especially rich in resources. Super-class materials were exceedingly rare. The aliens would never expose their existence and locations so easily. Choosing this option meant that Ves needed to rely heavily on intelligence services to scout the right targets. Either the Black Cats or the many intelligence agencies of the major power needed to do a lot of work to discover lucrative targets. Even then, intelligence was anything but reliable. A lot of information could either be false, outdated or simply misinterpreted. Too much could go wrong in a hostile portal raid. "Random Being Acquisition removes much of the risk. It is more limited compared to the other upgrade tracks, but it is also the least likely to produce accidents, especially if its ability to capture stronger beings is limited without the corresponding upgrades." The limitations of this upgrade track were a bit too big, though. Ves could only extract value from a single being at a time. It did not matter if the alien in question commanded a homeship or owned a huge palace. The Time and Space Gate would not give Ves the opportunity to plunder all of the captive's possessions! However, if Ves wanted to acquire valuable organic tissue as well as powerful spiritual ingredients, then this option was by far the most convenient. To Ves, extraordinary organs as well as high-quality spiritual ingredients were his versions of strategic resources! He could do so much with them that he might not mind all of the other stuff he was missing out on. This was especially the case if he was able to capture phase whales and True God-level entities! "Each key resource taken from a True God is probably equivalent to a super-class material!" The prospect of upgrading Random Being Acquisition far enough to stably capture alien True Gods was the most compelling reason why Ves thought about settling on this choice. Even if he had to pay 1000 AP or even 10,000 AP just to capture a single random True God-level entity, then Ves would still earn a massive profit! "As long as the System is able to suppress these powerful entities as soon as they are taken away, the alien True Gods are nothing but giant collections of top-end resources in my eyes!" Ves derived a huge amount of enjoyment at the prospect of defeating powerful alien True Gods by using their own strength against these arrogant enemies! By using their own caracasses as raw materials, Ves became a lot more confident in his ability to develop true god-killing mechs!