The combined fleet almost reached the border of the civilized space. In the past week, the engineers and other spacers focused entirely on making their ships FTL-worthy.
The surviving Larkinson ships that all sustained damage over the course of the campaign should still be sound enough to travel faster-than-light.
It was the pirate ships that generated a lot of concern. The FTL drives that the pirates smuggled out of civilized space should all be sound, but there was no telling what kind of traps or safeguards they contained.
From the start, a dedicated team of chief engineers had disassembled these large but delicate devices to inspect each and every single subcomponent.
The team detected a handful of traps, proving that the Allidus Alliance indeed buried so nasty surprises in their own FTL drives.
If the Wodin Warriors hadn't dispatched a massive quantity of superior engineers to assist in the process, the Larkinson engineers would have gone crazy by now. The complexity of FTL drives, especially larger ones, outright exceeded what they could understand.
Only engineers who spent decades serving aboard capital or very large subcapital ships were qualified to work with the heavy-duty FTL drives. Those military engineers usually served for life in the military or large trading companies. Due to their vital expertise, the Larkinson Clan failed to attract them during the previous recruitnt round.
Fortunately, it was different now. The Larkinson Clan earned an imnse amount of prestige, and the LMC beca more famous by the day. The most desirable professionals no longer turned up their noses at what they previously thought to be a flash in the pan. A growing number of high-skilled job seekers converged at Cinach in order to be part of the rising stars.
Ves already received word that the MTA dispatched a small investigation fleet to perform extensive studies on the Gravad Knarlax and the surviving escort warships.
To be honest, the warships weren't all that interesting once their novelty had passed. Their power solely ca from the fact that they were able to scale their crude weapon systems to imnse degrees. When one of the Gravada Knarlax's main cannons exceeded the mass and volu of multiple chs, they did not need to be sophisticated in order to demolish other ships!
There must be other reasons why the MTA was so eager to examine them. Perhaps the chers wanted to gather so clues about the Nyxian Gap's production capabilities. Maybe they wanted to ascertain the capabilities of Nyxian shipwrights.
Whatever the case, if not for the preliminary agreent between Ves and Master Willix, the MTA would have nabbed the prize ships the instant they returned to civilized space!
Ves knew that his next talk with Master Willix was crucial. Its outco not only affected his future, but also the future of the Larkinson Clan.
He grew more apprehensive about his chances. Master Willix had to go out of her way to accommodate his demands. He had to offer so very compelling argunts to make it worth her ti.
"If I fail, the consequences are unimaginable…"
Despite his concerns, he still made sure to make the best use of the ti he had left. He not only wanted to wrap up the remaining two design projects, but also create the wedding bands of his dreams.
When Ves called up an overview of the Cat's Paw and Ferocious Piranha designs, he was quite pleased at what he saw. In the last few weeks, both projects had made large strides. The latter one was already complete barring its spiritual components.
"Well, I might as well take care of that imdiately."
He delved into the schematics of the Ferocious Piranha in order to familiarize himself with the final iteration of the third-class design.
Originally, the Ferocious Piranha was supposed to be a light skirmisher derivative of the Doom Guard.
Fast, light and premium, the Ferocious Piranha basically utilized the Doom Guard's glow in an offensive capacity. Putting this powerful glow on a very mobile package opened up many more opportunities to debilitate opponents.
The only complication that stalled the project was that the Doom Guard's glow had changed.
It shifted from striking terror into people's hearts to generating a rapidly-fluctuating field of contrasting emotions.
Suffice to say, such a drastic change significantly changed the usage of the Ferocious Piranha.
The greatest advantage of the old glow was that its ability to induce fear was great at clearing crowds. Even when enemies close to an active Doom Guard managed to flee its range, their fighting spirit had already collapsed, causing them to keep running!
This was not the case with the new glow. Once Lufa replaced the position vacated by Nyxie, the glow produced by the Doom Guard ntally disabled those who failed to maintain their focus.
The chs piloted by people affected by this condition either drifted away or convulsed. This turned them into sitting ducks which could be shot at will. However, once the chs exited the range of the new glow, their pilots usually regained control pretty quickly.
Overall, Ves believed that most custors preferred the old glow over the new one, but that did not an the latter was impractical.
"In the right circumstances, a single Ferocious Piranha should be able to annihilate an entire ch company by itself!"
This was unlikely to happen. Spaceborn chs rarely fought in tight formations, so there should always be a lot of enemies that were able to remain outside of the range of a Ferocious Piranha's glow.
In addition, tests of the Doom Guard also showed that as long as the ch pilots by its glow were not total garbage, they eventually wrestled back so control as they beca accustod to the cycling emotions.
"What if there are multiple Ferocious Piranha's, then?"
Ves tried to imagine how a squad of his new ch model fared against a typical ch company. The odds should be substantially better, but their overlapping glows barely grew stronger.
"Wait a minute."
He suddenly recalled that he developed a little trick that increased the effectiveness of overlapping glows. While the improvent was rather modest, he already received early indications that it worked!
Ves easily tweaked the Ferocious Piranha design so that the glow of each individual ch varied just a little bit. By inducing these minor differences, stacking multiple of them together should produce a noticeably stronger effect.
"In fact, I should apply this trick to all of my chs."
He called up a special docunt in his implant and added it as a standard rule.
This was sothing he had recently been working upon. He wanted each ch design to conform to a standard template. This leveled the playing field between his products as much as possible.
Right now, the template already contained a lot of requirents. A proper LMC ch should be alive, possess the potential to grow, carry his signature look, reach a high standard of reliability, be capable of conjuring up a phantom projection, be able to enhance itself up to a hard cap of 25 Ves, limit the effectiveness of its glow and more.
These were the standard requirents that every LMC ch designed by Ves and Gloriana had to et. He might apply another template if he collaborated with other ch designers such as Ketis or Master Willix, but he would still try his best to implent his standard.
Once Ves applied every requirent dictated by his standard LMC ch template, the Ferocious Piranha design beca significantly more useful in his eyes.
The addition of the retraction dial provided the ch design with a lot more flexibility in utilizing its disorienting glow.
The phantom projection the ch was able to project consisted of a large and rapidly-moving school of piranhas.
This costic addition was the successor to the particle generators that he had previously used. He beca inspired by the giant silhouettes that appeared whenever his forces engaged their battle formations.
In order to camouflage the future usage of battle formations by his ch forces, Ves simply decided to add the ability to project giant 'totems' to all of his chs!
By themselves, the phantom projections were just illusions. Enemy chs could easily see through them or filter them out. However, when used in conjunction with other properties such as glows, the phantom projections might be useful.
In the case of the Ferocious Piranha, projecting a rapidly-moving school of piranhas in the presence of enemies that were already affected by a debilitating glow might tip them over!
"Phantom projections not only look great in footage, but also complints our psychological warfare doctrine."
That it was able to provide cover for the effects of authentic battle formations was still the most important reason why he implented this requirent. The power of the network derived from Master Huron's work was so potent that Ves wanted to turn it into one of the Larkinson Clan's exclusive strengths!
As Ves turned his attention back to the Ferocious Piranha design, he thought about what kind of triggered ability he should add to it. The Doom Guard already ca with a pulse ability, though it wasn't very strong.
"Hmm. I'm actually a bit afraid of adding any extra functionality."
The Ferocious Piranha was already strong. While it lacked the Valkyrie Redeer's ability to affect enemies at a distance, up close its Doom Guard-like glow was very fatal to weaker opponents!
Of course, the biggest advantage to the Ferocious Piranha was that its glow did not harm the ch pilot and any friendlies!
By adding a part of Qilanxo, her influence successfully prevented Zeigra and Lufa from harming the people who were supposed to fight alongside the Ferocious Piranha.
This made the spaceborn light skirmisher a lot more practical to use! Together with the retraction dial, its suppressive glow shouldn't be able to harm anyone unless its current owners willed it. It beca a lot easier for the Ferocious Piranha to fight as part of a larger unit or formation!
These compelling advantages put the Ferocious Piranha far ahead of its competition in the sa price class. While the premium light skirmishers designed by other ch designers might perform better in so aspects, hardly any of them ca with the ability to directly cause nearby enemy ch pilots to lose their minds in battle!
That said, the performance of the ch was still fairly good. Much of that was due to its generous budget, which was extravagant even by the standards of other expensive light skirmishers.
Costing 1.5 tis more than a Doom Guard, the LMC made it abundantly clear that the potent advantages of the Ferocious Piranha ca at a price.
It took a lot of courage to design an expensive light ch. No matter how much Ves invested in its armor system, the fact that it was limited to thin layers ant that it could never resist as much damage as a dium ch.
If the enemy managed to land a heavy blow onto the ch, then 3 million hex credits would pretty much go down the drain!
This was one of the main reasons why custors were very reluctant to spend money on expensive light chs. No matter how much they excelled at evasion, just one lucky hit or a blanket of fire was all it took to ruin them! Most custors would rather purchase cheaper chs and throw so unimportant ch pilots in their cockpits.
"Light chs are often synonymous to expendable chs." Ves grimaced.
Since he knew that, he wanted to make sure that the buyers of the Ferocious Piranha did not treat the ch model the sa way. Inflating its price was a good way to make sure that his custors truly cared for them. After all, no one wanted to waste an expensive investnt!
"Well, that's all I can do for you, Ferocious Piranha. The rest is up to you. I hope you will revolutionize the ch market even further."
The comrcial potential of the Ferocious Piranha exceeded that of the Crystal Lord Mark II!
User Comments
0 comments from readers