With the weapon systems that Ves and Gloriana selected, the overall strengths of their heavy artillery ch already beca clear.
The ch design codenad Cat's Paw was primarily set up to resist a modest amount of very strong opponents.
It excelled in inflicting single-target damage. Just half a dozen Cat's Paw chs would have allowed the Larkinson Clan to repel or outright defeat the powerful second-class chs of the Coalition Reserve Corps while suffering much less casualties!
Back then, the CRC chs slaughtered third-class chs with the ease of butchering pigs. The vast performance differences between lesser chs and greater chs was simply too great.
Whenever Ves played back the archival footage of the Battle of Kesseling VIII, he despaired at the great difficulty of inflicting actual harm to the well-armored chs of the Friday Coalition.
Even if Ves upgraded his entire ch roster to second-class, tougher and stronger chs still posed considerable threat.
What he needed the most was a solution that could crack the tough shells of powerful opponents. He was willing to make a lot of tradeoffs and sacrifices in order to secure this capability.
The Xcordon gauss cannon system truly suited his needs. Its size, mass, material requirents and production difficulty were all within acceptable paraters.
More powerful gauss cannons no longer fit the Cat's Paw fra, while weaker models significantly declined in strength. The choice that Ves settled upon was just right.
What Ves liked the most was that the Xcordon possessed character. It was a gauss cannon model that did not shy away from the fact that it was mainly geared towards propelling ultra-heavy rounds with as much kinetic energy as possible.
It was a plain, brutal cannon that did not resort to convoluted technology or highly unusual exotics to achieve its full potential.
With his extensive knowledge on ballistic weapons and kinetic weapons, he could keenly tell that the Xcordon was designed with ruggedness and reliability in mind. Despite the great forces acting on the cannon whenever it fired at its maximum power, its strong and well-designed structure was continually able to endure the punishnt.
The chance that the Xcordon malfunctioned or broke down was very low as long as it was properly maintained!
Even without recent maintenance, the weapon system was still rugged enough to function with only a minor reduction in power!
Compared to the rather generic Hexer-developed positron beam cannons and rapid-fire pulse cannons, Ves believed the gauss cannons would beco the defining weapons of the Cat's Paw design!
Just imagining the sheer amount of destruction his Cat's Paws could inflict on second-class chs excited him to no end. His passion for this project quickly grew!
Both Ves and Gloriana observed the current state of their draft design. After hastily slotting in the new components they licensed, They were able to estimate many of the ch's performance paraters.
"If we integrate everything correctly while bleeding as little efficiency as possible, then this heavy artillery ch isn't a waste of 600 million hex credits."
Ves nodded. "I agree. Spending 600 million hex credits for a ch that can pierce the armor of most second-class chs with a single hit is well worth it in my eyes. It's not fantastic against overwhelming numbers, but we can leave that responsibility to other chs."
"That said, the physical components are just one aspect of our ch design. Have you decided its divine aspects yet? What proto-god do you intend to add to the Cat's Paw?"
Ah. That was a very important question. To be honest, Ves struggled over his options. He could rely on one of his existing design spirits, but none of them complented a heavy artillery ch design to a fantastic degree.
The alternative was to create yet another spiritual product. He hadn't done so after he conducted the huge ritual which birthed the Superior Mother.
He knew that as long as he gathered a couple of suitable spiritual fragnts and used up a little life-attributed energy derived from the life-prolonging treatnt serum, he could create a very powerful spiritual product.
The problem was that he didn't feel like doing so at this ti. If it wasn't completely necessary, he wanted to conserve his resources.
He only possessed so much high-grade serum! Wasting it on creating frivolous or redundant spiritual products would only bite him in the butt in the future.
While Ves kept thinking, Gloriana made a surprising suggestion.
"You don't have to invent sothing new when a ready-made solution is already available. Do you still recall the Deliverer? With Prophet Ylvaine inhabiting the design, he was able to lend his precognitive abilities to any Ylvainan ch pilot!"
Ves grunted. "You don't have to remind . While it is admittedly one of my more innovative ch designs, it's not exactly relevant now that we are far away from the Ylvaine Protectorate."
"I disagree." She shook her head. "Didn't we absorb thousands of Ylvainans in our clan? The True Ylvaine Dynasty has pretty much rged with us, providing us with crucial trained and skilled personnel at a ti when we weren't able to hire enough Brighters to expand our newly-founded clan. Those Ylvainans may have cut off their relations with the Protectorate, but they are still as faithful as ever!"
"Even if that is the case, a Larkinson is a Larkinson. The point of outsiders joining our clan is to transform them into Larkinsons. I have no intention of encouraging any of the adopted Larkinsons to keep their foreign cultural traditions alive!"
Gloriana's projection appeared increasingly more disgruntled. She placed her hands on her hips.
"Ves! I know you have misgivings about our Ylvainan-born clansn, but you are wasting an extrely precious opportunity here! It is one thing to set aside this option for a comrcial ranged ch model because it is too disruptive, but when it cos to our own defense, we should pull out all of the stops! Isn't this why we set a very high budget for our Cat's Paw Project? Since you are readily willing to invest a substantial amount of money in the design and production of our heavy artillery chs, I don't see why you need to hold back on the choice of proto-god!"
"Do we even have enough Ylvainan ch pilots to man all of the Cat's Paw chs?"
"There are hundreds! Our factory ship only needs eighty chs while the combat carriers can only accommodate half-a-dozen or a dozen. Whatever the case, there are enough Ylvainan ch pilots that are already proficient in marksmanship and who can be trained to pilot a heavy ch to et the manpower requirents."
Even if that was the case, Ves still felt very reluctant to entrust the primary defense of their future factory ship and other important vessels to a design spirit which he didn't entirely trust.
He always harbored so suspicions about Ylvaine's spiritual fragnt. Unlike many of his other design spirits, it was derived from an actual human and was too scheming for his liking.
This was especially so when Ylvaine's spiritual fragnt began to hook up with Jas Ylvaine-Larkinson!
The two seed to have achieved a synergistic bond which had made both of them greater than the sum of their parts.
While Ves did not object to reusing Ylvaine's spiritual fragnt as the design spirits of other ch designs, the Cat's Paw ch design played an extrely critical role.
He would rather entrust this great responsibility to the Golden Cat. At least Ves had no doubt that she was completely committed to the survival of the Larkinson Clan!
"Are you thinking about putting the cat in charge again?" She accused him. "As much as I adore her, you shouldn't run to her every ti you want to design a ch that is related to our clan. Just look at our Cat's Paw ch objectively. It possesses two major weapon systems that are very powerful against highly-armored targets that aren't very strong on the mobility front. However, aside from relying on its weaker rapid-fire pulse cannons, the Cat's Paw doesn't offer a strong defense against smaller, fast-moving targets!"
"I thought we already decided to leave that job to our other chs?"
"Even if that's the case, it is still useful to invest in increasing the accuracy and hit rate of the weapons of our chs! Do you think that every heavily-armored second-class ch is slow? Both the Friday Coalition and the Hexadric Hegemony are able to field nurous assault chs that are both tough and fast! Aside from that, many expert chs all start off with at least good mobility no matter how much mass they carry!"
She made a persuasive argunt. Even if Ves planned to invest in a strong targeting system for his Cat's Paw ch and even if the ch was able to receive much more accurate targeting data from the ship it was riding on, the fact of the matter was that its weapons would still miss most of their shots.
The positron beam cannons may be able to land a hit at near-relativistic speeds, but the ECM employed by chs made it significantly harder to make a successful strike at extre ranges.
Even though chs were very big compared to a human, at very ranges, even a tiny error induced by ECM could make a shot go hundreds of ters wild!
As for the Xcordon gauss cannons, the Cat's Paw should have a considerably easier ti targeting opponents at dium range.
At these ranges, the effectiveness of ECM systems sharply dropped. The very powerful sensors and ECCM systems of a starship was easily able to overco most interference, which ant that most ranged weapons had a much easier ti in landing a hit.
However, as fast as a gauss cannon round could be propelled into space, they still traveled substantially slower than the relativistic speed of a positron beam!
Though it wasn't as bad as third-class ballistic weapons, ch pilots still needed to make continuous predictive judgents and lead their aim in order to land a hit on a fast-moving, evasive target.
Unless Ves incorporated high technology that solved or circumvented so of these issues, he could not get around the fact that highly maneuverable opponents were the bane of his Cat's Paw chs!
The conventional answer to this problem was to accept this weakness.
The unconventional answer was to try and mitigate this inherent shortcoming.
The more he thought about it, the more Ves felt compelled to borrow Ylvaine's predictive capabilities.
The Deliverer design already proved that the spiritual fragnt was capable of fulfilling its promises. He didn't need to fumble around with figuring out the right spiritual construct to add the right triggered ability to the ch. Ylvaine was pretty much able to do it all by himself as long as the recipient was an Ylvainan ch pilot!
He decided to make contact with Ylvaine's spiritual fragnt in order to sound out its willingness to lend its power once again.
He closed his eyes and concentrated his mind. Just as his mind made contact, Ylvaine already sent a positive reply.
The fragnt had already anticipated his request and enthusiastically assented to it before he even asked!
Ves abruptly broke his concentration. "Goddammit!"
Both Ylvaines always possessed the uncanny ability to predict his questions and actions even when they had no right to know them beforehand.
Yet whenever Ves asked them to predict sothing more pertinent such as the likelihood of encountering a serious threat in the next 24 hours or whether he was able to gather 100 million MTA rits within a decade, they both played stupid and muttered so mumble jumble!
The cheeky behavior of Ylvaine's spiritual fragnt reminded Ves once again why he hesitated in using it as a design spirit in the first place. Yet the great enthusiasm it showed also worried Ves a bit.
If Ylvaine's spiritual fragnt actively encouraged him to use it as a design spirit for the Cat's Paw design, didn't that an this decision might have a very great impact in the future?
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