Chapter 6562 TEVA Gloriana hated the verdict. She strongly opposed the decision to offload her from the First Sword Mark III Project. Ves kind of understood why she fought so hard to remain involved. There was way more than her partial ownership of the First Sword at stake. Gloriana had also begun to fear whether the same line of argumentation could be used to kick her from subsequent high-ranking mech design projects, especially the ones centered around melee mechs! It was too late to start over with the Riot Mark III Project, but what about other high-ranking melee mech design projects? Other machines such as the Everchanger, the C-Man, the Greenaxe and the Lionheart were also expected to duel against hostile phase lords in the future. As long as their pilots broke through and became qualified to fight directly against the enemy champions, they would inevitably encounter foes equipped with Saint Piercer arms. It was not reasonable to command the ace melee mechs to avoid these high-priority threats and rely entirely on ranged suppression to take them down. The nature of spatial barriers made them incredibly resistant against every form of attack that was not sufficiently able to overcome transphasic defensive enhancements. This meant that such a phase lord could easily tank a huge amount of ranged attacks and wreak havoc on the human battle line! It took way too much time and effort for lots of mechs, powerful battleships or threatening ace ranged mechs to whittle down the spatial barrier and other defenses of such a phase lord. The chances of killing them from a distance was also far too small unless the humans possessed a special trump card. This meant that an exhausted phase lord could calmly retreat from the battlefield and come back a few days later to terrorize the human defenders yet again after he fully restored his condition! This was why it was necessary to deploy powerful melee champions against any phase lord, but especially the ones armed with Saint Piercer arms. A good ace melee mech might not be able to kill a phase lord by itself, but should at least pose enough of a threat to stall the native god's advance and lock him into place. Another important role of the melee mech was to maintain an active space suppression field in the proximity of the enemy phase lord. The more powerful the space suppressor module and the closer the distance, the stronger the weakening effect on the enemy's spatial barrier and other spatial abilities! This synergized extremely well with ranged support, making the attacks from all of the mechs, warships and individual champion units multiple times more effective. This had also become the established doctrine on the battlefield. Human High Command, a joint military command organization of the Red Three and the first-rate superstates, had collected all of the data and conducted a lot of theorycrafting before setting a guideline that team of ace mechs should always comprise of at least one ranged and one melee unit. While the theory was sound, I was a lot more difficult to implement in practice. Most ace melee mechs fared decently when pitted against typical lesser phase lords. However, they usually lasted a lot shorter when confronting greater phase lords. What was worse was that they fared especially poorly against greater phase lords that were well-connected enough to get their hands on a Saint Piercer weapon! If not for the fact that the production of these arms were bottlenecked, the native aliens would have been able to collapse the 4th defensive band by now! This raised the importance of developing countermeasures against the insane lethality of Saint Piercer arms. As a member of the Mech Supremacist Faction, the competence of Master Lilian Recins was never in doubt. She had access to the best resources and infrastructure a mech designer could desire, so she was one of the first to develop a reasonably effective form of defense against Saint Piercer arms. Many other mech designers, particularly defensive specialists, must be working hard to develop their own counters against Saint Piercer arms. This was one of the greatest strengths of the mech industry. As long as it identified an urgent need, a huge number of mech designers and supporting R&D institutions would work hard to develop an appropriate and cost-effective solution! As far as transphasic energized vibrometal alloy was concerned, it was not yet qualified to serve as a proper response to the threat posed by Saint Piercer arms. The underlying tech still underperformed and it was way too expensive to ever think about applying it onto mass production mech products. However, it was already effective enough when used to clad first-class ace mechs! Their design budgets were so high that they could easily afford to equip such an expensive defensive solution. The mediocre performance of transphasic energized vibrometal alloy against superdimensional weapons was a deceptive statement. It was true that armor plating made out of transphasic energized vibrometal alloy or TEVA Armor could not resist attacks from Saint Piercer weapons entirely, but it did this job a lot better than 99.999999999 percent of other materials! The same could be said for transphasic energized vibrometal alloy applied to weapons! TEVA Weapons could block sharp and powerful strikes from Saint Piercer weapons without fear of getting shattered into pieces! It was for these reasons and more that Ketis had already decided that it was absolutely essential for the First Sword Mark III Project to include Master Lilian Recins. Since the RA Master Mech Designer's design philosophy was fundamentally incompatible with Gloriana's design philosophy, it became clear that one of them had to be kicked off the project. "Honey." Ves assumed an impassive expression while turning to his wife. "Just give it up. Ketis has made a good point. Archetech is powerful, but it is not yet capable of solving this problem yet. Switching it with other tech makes complete sense." Though his wife wanted to continue to fight for her right to maintain her partial ownership in the First Sword Mark III Project, she was not that stupid. Now that Ves had heard Ketis out, he had decisively taken her side. The chain of logic between their choice was far too strong for Gloriana to break with her own feeble arguments. Since that was the case, Gloriana might as well give up this losing battle and concede while they still retained a bit of dignity. "Very well." She said as all of the tension left her body. "Since the two of you are committed to this direction, it is clear that I do not have a voice in the project anymore. It is just..." "I know what you are concerned about." Ves gently consoled his wife. "Archetech is still useful, especially for smaller and lighter mechs where space is at a premium. It has worked out great for an ace light skirmisher like the Dark Zephyr Mark III, and I am sure it will do wonders for ace ranged mechs such as the recently completed Amarranto Mark III and the Promethea Mark II. However, the situation is more complex when we consider ace melee mechs such as the upcoming Riot Mark III." "It is impossible for us to waste months worth of development time and reset the Riot Mark III Project by replacing archemetal with TEVA Armor." Gloriana growled. "Venerable Rosa Orphan has been waiting for an upgrade to her outdated machine for multiple years." Ves raised his palm in innocence. "I am not about to do that, Gloriana. What I wanted to say is that the entire mech industry is looking to counter the threat posed by superdimensional weapons. You happen to have forged a few connections with the Mech Supremacist Faction as well, right? It just so happens that the Mech Supremacists encompass a large number of highly resourceful and capable mech designers. The faction is also known for making a lot of attainments in materials science. After all, mechs rely on good metallic alloys to remain competitive with warships and other combat assets." His wife soon understood his train of thought. Her expression grew less morose when she saw a possibility of making a counterattack in the future. "Your idea has merit. I have not been in close contact with the Mech Supremacists as of late, but that was a mistake. If I reach out to them... I may be able to find a specialist or team of specialists in metallurgy and materials science to develop a new experimental alloy that can mitigate archemetal's vulnerability against superdimensional weapons!" Ves smiled. He was happy to lead Gloriana to a more productive line of thought. It was no fun trying to live alongside a woman who was depressed and frequently prone to outbursts. Every faction of the MTA and the RA was good in different areas. The Survivalist Faction was good at binding different parties to a common cause. On a technological level, the Survivalists tended to be pragmatic and did not favor specific solutions. They instead invested their research far and wide, hoping to create new synergies by combining multiple different fields together. The Survivalists also liked to create new solutions in advance and keep them in reserve until they were needed. Finally, the paranoid bastards also invested a lot in the development of super weapons. The RA Transhumanist Faction's interests were relatively more focused on biotechnology, human genetics, exobiology and so on. That did not mean their attainments in other fields were poor, but they were merely up to standard in areas outside of their core interests. The RA Mech Supremacist Faction generally possessed the strongest overall R&D capabilities. It was literally what the faction was all about, so its members always invested a huge amount of money and resources into all kinds of research and development initiatives. The Mech Supremacists were particularly keen on pushing the boundaries of hard sciences such as metallurgy, materials science, computing, theoretical and applied physics, energy science and more. In the past, Gloriana was aware of all of this, but she did not have the clout to gain the cooperation of the top mech designers and researchers of the Mech Supremacist Faction. The situation was different now. Gloriana had gradually realized her high potential, and while she still hadn't entered the big leagues yet, her greatest advantage was that she was married to Ves! Even if Gloriana did not deserve it, she would definitely be able to gain much more favored treatment from the Mech Supremacist Faction due to this positive factor! In a way, Ketis had taken advantage of her own connection to Ves. There was no way that a mech designer as busy and successful as Master Lilian Recins would have agreed to spend her time on the First Sword Mark III Project if not for this relation. Gloriana needed no more guidance and encouragement at this time. Her eyes glowed with a competitive spirit! "You are completely right, Ves! The Mech Supremacist Faction is so large that there must be many research teams working to develop a counter against superdimensional weapons. These teams must all be rivals or competitors towards each other. Master Lilian Recins is hardly the only one who is working to counter Saint Piercer arms. If I want to improve my archetech and make it more resistant against the new threat, then I should contact the faction and try to cooperate with one of the rivals of Master Recins! There has to be at least one metallurgist among the Mech Supremacists that are working to develop experimental alloys that can not only resist superdimensional weapons, but can also be used to make archemetal! If the development of this experimental product can be completed in time, then I might just be able to use it to improve the Riot Mark III Project!" Competition was one of the strongest motivators of a mech designer. Now that Gloriana sought to outdo Ketis and Master Lilian Recins, she would definitely put her full effort into this informal contest!