Was it easy to blind an expert ch?
"It's possible." Ves guessed.
It almost never happened. Confrontations between expert chs took place every day in the Komodo War, but Ves had never heard of a story where a bunch of electronic warfare chs managed to interfere with the sensor systems of a powerful ch.
As Ves gained more interest in this train of thought, he began to research this topic more seriously.
Of course, he did not research this topic by himself. He commanded his new Product Research Departnt to deploy so manpower to study this topic.
With an army of analysts at work, Ves only had to wait a few days to obtain a comprehensive report. The docunt he received distilled everything he wanted to know without any superfluous data. If he wanted to dive deeper, he could easily follow up on the references.
As it turned out, blinding expert chs was possible.
It was just hard. It got harder with each subsequent generation.
Sensor tech beca more sophisticated over ti. Competition relentlessly drove innovation. Component developers constantly sought to raise resistance against ECM, jamming, interference and other strange effects. Those who failed to keep up would not be able to sell their sensor systems anymore!
There were imnse trans-galactic corporations who investigated every exotic, every tech and every combination to see if they could harden sensor systems more.
The most important criteria to judge a sensor system wasn't precision or range, but resilience!
"There is too much jamming on the battlefield!"
Weapons fire already made it difficult for sensors to resolve accurate readings. When thousands of chs fired their positron beams at once, how could such an enormous discharge of energy not ss up any sensors that were sensitive to electromagnetic emissions?
On top of these chaotic discharges, a lot of modern chs possessed at least so ECM functionality.
Most of the ti, they were fairly weak and basic, granting them so ability to hide against long-ranged sensors.
However, once a large amount of chs grouped up, the interference they generated overlapped, forming a stronger field that frustrated targeting systems, spoiled precise readings and generated other effects.
There were chs that were designed to do more than throw up an interference field for self-protection.
These auxiliary chs carried or integrated powerful directional arrays. Designed for electronic warfare, these machines were capable of projecting interference across a distance!
It was similar to how a person across the street waved at Ves before shining a very bright flashlight in his eyes. It was annoying as hell and disturbed his vision!
At the level of chs, this flashlight actually consisted of very sophisticated components that operated along principles that were countless tis more complicated than projecting a simple beam of light in soone's eyes.
What Ves found curious was that electronic warfare chs constantly faded in popularity.
In the earlier ch generations, they were quite a regular sight on the battlefield. It was worth fielding them because they truly did interfere with the aim of long-ranged chs.
However, as the Age of chs progressed, sensor developnt continued to overtake electronic warfare developnt.
It made less sense to deploy chs dedicated to electronic warfare.
They weren't necessary in small-scale combat. rcenaries almost never bothered with them as it made more sense to field an extra ch that possessed actual teeth.
If a hundred electronic warfare chs all focused on disturbing the sensors of an enemy ch company, then they might be able to disturb most but not all sensor systems.
"This makes no sense. It is much more straightforward to deploy a hundred combat chs and wipe out the enemy ch company the old-fashioned way."
After all, electronic warfare chs dedicated most of their capacity towards their interference capabilities. There was hardly any power or space left for self-protection.
Only larger organizations such as ch armies fielded these kinds of chs as only deploying them in greater numbers allowed them to achieve substantial effects.
To be honest, Ves wasn't too well-versed in how ch militaries fielded these auxiliary chs. There were major differences in third-class and second-class EW chs that strongly affected their use. There were also a lot of different tech and thods that targeted specific sensor systems.
"There are too many variables!"
A ch contained at least several dozen different sensor systems. Was it easy to blind all of them at the sa ti? No! An EW ch simply didn't have the capacity to accomplish such a feat by itself.
The story was a bit more complicated when there were more chs in the equation, but generally most combatants on the battlefield considered EW chs to be a nuisance. It was already good enough if these unassuming machines were able to reduce an enemy's sensor range by 10 percent or drop their resolving power by 15 percent.
"These effects hardly make a difference in small-scale battles." Ves shook his head in disappointnt.
Of course, these results mainly applied to situations where both sides maintained technical parity, which wasn't always the case.
"The Friday Coalition and the Hexadric Hegemony are roughly equal in this regard."
He was sure the truth was more nuanced, but he was just an outsider. Perhaps so chs designed by specialists in electronic warfare achieved more stellar results, but Ves didn't have access to this kind of information.
What he did know was that no Hexer electronic warfare ch ever succeeded in blinding a Fridayman expert ch.
"It's futile!"
When Ves read this part of the report, he learned the main reason why expert chs were so darned hard to interfere with. It was not necessarily their tech.
A second-class sensor system was still a second-class sensor system. No matter if the tech and materials cost 10 million hex credits or 10 billion hex credits, they were still inferior to first-class sensor systems.
Just because the more expensive system was 1000 tis more expensive didn't an it was 1000 more effective. Diminishing returns played a very important role!
"It's actually just 10 or 20 tis stronger or sothing." Ves muttered.
He didn't have enough information to know the exact disparity.
Whatever the case, if it was just the quality of sensor systems alone, then it should have been possible for 100 EW chs to heavily interfere with the sensor systems of an expert ch.
Yet this didn't happen. If it worked, then the Hexers wouldn't have hesitated to employ this solution!
"It's energy!" Ves uttered. "Expert chs have too much energy!"
Expert chs were incredibly powerful machines, but that wasn't solely due to resonance. In order for a high-performance ch to hit hard and move fast, it was essential to supply enough energy to sustain these exertions!
With their incredibly luxurious power reactors, expert chs were able to supply an abundance of power to every function. Their flight systems were able to accelerate a lot faster. Their rifles unleashed much more devastating beams. Their swords hit several tis harder!
Sensor systems also enjoyed this bounty. When they were designed with elevated power supplies in mind, they beca so effective and so resistant against interference that only thousands EW chs could ever hope to hinder their performance!
Who would ever be so extravagant to deploy so many EW chs at once? It was impractical!
It didn't matter if one form of electronic warfare was a little more effective than another form. Specialties didn't matter either. An expert ch's resonance that was infused with force of will naturally resisted a range of harmful effects.
"In conclusion, blinding expert chs is not cost-effective."
The Hex Army either had to field thousands of EW chs or deploy a single first-class EW ch.
This was a galaxy-wide consensus. Perhaps there might be exceptions such as luring expert chs into pockets of warped or anomalous space, but such instances simply didn't happen in the Komodo War.
"The Hex Army is in a real bind." Ves grimaced.
It was truly difficult to overco the disparity in expert chs. Ves wasn't sure how much additional foreign expert pilots the Coalition managed to pressed into action. Estimates ranged from 10 percent to 30 percent.
What was worse was that difference was widening over ti!
With their superiority in numbers, the Fridayman expert chs were able to defeat more Hexer expert chs!
If 1 Fridayman expert pilot died for every 2 Hexer expert pilots, then the Coalition would occupy an unstoppable advantage in just a couple of years!
Ves already read reports that the Hexers were adjusting how they deployed their expert chs. While their survival rates increased when they grouped up in greater numbers, they weren't able to cover enough units anymore.
The absence of just a single expert ch exposed thousands of regular chs!
"In other words, the Hex Army is trying to keep as many of its expert pilots alive by trading the lives of many more ordinary Hexer ch pilots."
This was a painful and unsustainable trade! No matter how much assistance the Blessed Squire and Valkyrie chs provided to the Hexers, they were only effective against mortals!
The Hex Army already attempted so experints where hundreds of Valkyrie Redeers activated their Marked For Death abilities against a Fridayman expert ch.
The sight was exceptionally grand. The third eyes of the Valkyrie Redeers projected hundreds of beams in the direction of the enemy expert ch!
Unfortunately, the enemy demigod did not pause. Instead, it soared forward until it entered into the midst of the Valkyrie Redeers and proceeded to slaughter them with unrelenting sword strikes!
Not even unleashing simultaneous Shock And Awe Pulses managed to do more than cause the expert ch to pause for a fraction of a second!
Ves looked dismayed when he learned of this disastrous trial. "My products simply aren't designed to confront expert chs."
There was no sha in admitting this fact. It wasn't as if other ch designers achieved anything better. Not even dignified Masters solved this problem!
This was why the Hexadric Hegemony continued to lose the advantage in the Komodo War. The Hexer Masters must all be wracking their heads over the Friday Coalition's crucial advantage.
What about him? What power did he possess to affect this unfavorable situation?
"Regular glows don't affect expert pilots.. do they?"
Ves didn't actually know the answer. He beca so intrigued by it that he left the design lab in order to perform a study.
While his expert pilots did not have any expert chs, it was enough for him to conduct so simple tests on Venerable Joshua while he was piloting the Quint.
"What do I have to do, sir?" The expert pilot asked while his Quint was standing in the middle of a giant test chamber.
"Just stand still."
A number of different LMC ch models approached the Quint. Ves had already unlocked the restrictions of their glows so that they were able to act against a friendly Larkinson.
What he found out was that expert pilots weren't actually immune to glows. Their willpower was just too strong. Fear and other emotions simply weren't strong enough to shake their convictions.
"It's like stopping a battleship by putting a frigate in the way. There's no way the latter can slow down the forr!"
Yet the fact that glows weren't blocked at the gates gave Ves an opening.
Was every glow ineffective against the Quint?
As LMC ch after LMC ch attempted to influence the masterwork ch piloted by an expert pilot, Ves perceived no noticeable drops in performance in either of them. Not even the Sanctuary managed to dampen Joshua's lively will!
Ves had already lost hope at this point. When the first production copy of the Crystal Lord Mark II marched forth, he hardly paid attention to the proceedings. His mind was already following another tangent.
"Sir!" Venerable Joshua called over the communication channel. "I think I'm feeling sothing. It's faint, but this new Crystal Lord makes feel as if I'm looking at a sparkling gem."
"What? Please confirm that, Venerable."
"It's not enough to interfere with my perception, but there is definitely sothing strange about this Crystal Lord!"
Ves sat up straighter in his chair. Was there more to the Crystal Lord Mark II than he initially thought?
He felt a bit absurd. As the lead designer of this recent ch model, how could he be ignorant of this interaction?!
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