Normally, a pair of light chs would find it hard to fight against a combination between a space knight and a rifleman ch.
While the chances of a ranged ch hitting a light ch was not that big, they were not zero. Even a single lucky hit could already decrease the battle effectiveness of a flimsy machine by thirty percent!
This ant that the light chs needed to disable the enemy machines in a tily manner in order to avoid getting downed.
While the Deceptor Project was ard with a ranged weapon itself, the problem was that the Bright Warrior in space knight configuration could easily intercept enemy fire from a single direction!
If there were two Deceptor Project chs in this scenario, then at least they could have split up and attacked from opposite directions. The current setup didn't allow for that so the space knight shouldn't have much of an issue neutralizing the Deceptor Project's damage output.
What did trouble the Avatar chs was that they also had to defend against the Ferocious Piranha. If the two Vandal light chs attacked the Avatar chs in a pincer maneuver, then the defensive ch would need to decide which one it should repel.
As the practice battle played out, the Avatar ch pilot in question made the right decision.
The Deceptor Project was only ard with a submachine gun and posed less of an acute threat.
The Ferocious Piranha on the other hand could easily make quick work of the Avatar ranged ch when it ca close, so it had to be stopped at all costs.
The fight proceeded exactly as expected. The two ranged chs were providing support while the lee chs sought to overco each other.
The Avatar space knight was not fast and agile enough to land a hit on the Ferocious Piranha. However, it was more than capable of frustrating the opposing ch by putting its large shield in the way of every attack.
It was virtually impossible for the knives wielded by the Ferocious Piranha to break the shield, so the light ch needed to maneuver around in order to inflict real damage.
The problem was that the attacker needed to make much more extensive movents than the defender. The Avatar space knight only had to rotate and reposition itself slightly in order to keep up for the most part.
The Ferocious Piranha made several attack passes, most of which yielded little success.
There was a difference, though.
The Ferocious Piranha hadn't activated its glow. The Bright Warriors hadn't done anything special either. Ves wanted all of the chs involved to fight under normal conditions so that he could establish a baseline.
Now that he knew what to expect from the Deceptor Project under normal circumstances, he was ready to see what a difference the glows would make.
"Ferocious Piranha, please activate your glow."
When the light ch in question did so, the battle imdiately reflected the changes.
Both Avatar chs perford less smoothly than before. Their chs pilots had to shift their concentration and expend ntal resources in order to keep their minds together.
Despite the debilitating effect, every elite ch pilot learned how to endure suppressive glows! It was part of their standard training these days!
Since they were so accustod to working under these conditions, the highly-trained Avatar ch pilots did not perform that much worse than before. They gritted their teeth and toughed it out as they continued to focus on beating their respective foes.
"Is this all?" A Vandal officer asked as he and his comrades watched the mock battle.
"It's not over yet." Ves said. "Let's see how the Deceptor Project can supplent the Ferocious Piranha's glow."
The Ferocious Piranha had to stay fairly close to the enemy in order for its glow to have effect. The light skirmisher buzzed back and forth, which constantly forced the Avatar space knight to keep up with the constant repositioning.
While it was fairly easy for the defensive ch to make a slight adjustnt, the way the Ferocious Piranha kept circling around while occasionally threatening to perform a dive attack quickly began to make the Avatar ch pilot disoriented.
It was harder to keep track of everything when there was a lot more dynamic movent. The glow of the Ferocious Piranha exacerbated this problem even further.
"This is a familiar scenario for both sides."
The Avatars of Myth and the Flagrant Vandals constantly held practice bouts between each other. Whether they fought against each other in virtual simulations or live practice sessions, they collided against each other so much that they were highly familiar with the chs, tactics and thods employed by their rivals and adversaries.
The constant repositioning of the Ferocious Piranha was a way for the Vandal ch pilot to increase the disorientation effect.
Having encountered this situation before, the Avatar ch pilot turned his mind into a rock and tried to remain as calm and stable as possible in order to keep up with the enemy's dynamic movents.
When the Vandal light skirmisher unexpectedly broke pattern and perford an attack pass, the Avatar space knight quickly responded by putting its shield in the right place to intercept the enemy assault.
"What?!"
The defensive ch slightly blundered by allowing the Ferocious Piranha to almost bypass its defenses.
The Avatar space knight should ideally blunt the enemy light skirmisher's attack by catching both its knives at the center of its shield at an angle that allowed for deflection.
While the Avatar ch pilot got the angle right, he misjudged the positioning!
When the Ferocious Piranha circled around to perform another attack pass, the Bright Warrior with the shield almost made another mistake!
"A space knight pilot of his caliber shouldn't be making this mistake twice in a row!"
"What is going on?!"
The Ferocious Piranha did not carry a lot of ECM systems so its movents should be easy enough for a typical ch to track. However, the reality was quite different.
The Avatar ch pilot tried to stabilize his mind even further, which allowed him to concentrate even better despite constantly being subjected to the Ferocious Piranha's glow.
Yet despite doing so much to turn his mind into a rock, it beca even harder for the poor fellow to properly intercept the increasingly trickier Vandal light skirmisher!
Once the Vandal ch pilot caught on to the changes, he began to make more aggressive moves. The Ferocious Piranha dove in at more creative angles, and more often than not ca close to bypassing the space knight entirely!
"It's happening!"
When the Ferocious Piranha swung around and perford its twelfth attack pass, the defending ch not only misjudged the positioning but also the angle of approach!
These crucial mistakes allowed the Ferocious Piranha to soar past the Avatar space knight at a steep angle and launch telling blows at the Avatar rifleman ch that was supposed to be safe from this kind of an attack!
Though the Ferocious Piranha only tapped the Bright Warrior ard with a ranged weapon, the fact that it got through in the first place represented a substantial failure on the part of the Avatars of Myth!
"It's not the Ferocious Piranha. It's that new ch! It's truly doing sothing to the perception of the Avatar ch pilots!"
Most clansn already heard about so of the details of the new Deceptor Project. Ves didn't work hard to keep it a secret and its codena pretty much spelled out its capabilities anyway.
When the Ferocious Piranha ca around to repeat its earlier success, both Avatar chs beca a lot more on guard.
Yet despite paying much more attention to the trajectory and movents of the Vandal light ch, the light skirmisher almost managed to circumvent the space knight once again!
"This is definitely not a coincidence anymore!"
"How the hell does this work?!"
After three more attack passes, the Ferocious Piranha managed to fly underneath the space knight and hit the underside of the ranged ch with its weapons!
Even if the damage was not that substantial, the pattern beca increasingly clearer. The Avatar ch pilots were failing to keep up with the Ferocious Piranha sohow!
The strangest part of all of this was that the results did not grow better over ti. The Avatar ch pilots tried several tricks and adjusted their ntality multiple tis, yet that only seed to drag their performance down even further.
By the ti the Avatar rifleman ch got hit over a dozen tis, Ves finally saw enough.
"Stand down! The test has ended. Please check your systems before returning to your mothership. Thank you for your cooperation."
Ves studied the data logs as the chs slowly flew back to the main fleet. He rewatched the footage of the successful attack passes and saw that the Avatar space knight was trying to defend against a ch that ca from a slightly different direction, angle and timing than in reality!
He smirked. "The Deceptor Project is truly working brilliantly with the Ferocious Piranha."
When the ch of the hour finally returned to the Spirit of Bentheim, Ves gathered the test pilot as well as the visiting Avatar cadre together.
"You've all seen what the Deceptor Project can do." Ves said as he gestured towards the machine in front of them. "In simple terms, its a light harasser ch with a twist. While the Deceptor Project does not possess strong offensive and defensive capabilities, what is truly special about my new ch model is its combination of mobility and utility."
"Utility, sir?"
"The glow." Ves smirked. "It's not that obvious at first, but once you begin to pilot it, you will see what a difference it can make. While the ch isn't able to achieve any drastic results by itself, it can achieve a much greater effect if it teams up with the Ferocious Piranha. You saw what happened to those hapless Avatar chs, whose pilots should not be strangers to suppressive glows. While it was the Ferocious Piranha that was truly taking advantage of the misjudgnts of its opponents, it is the Deceptor Project that is responsible for creating these invisible openings."
He called up the footage of one of the successful attack runs and paused when the defensive ch tried to fend off the incoming attacker.
"You can see where the chs are located. The defensive Bright Warrior is here while the Ferocious Piranha over there. The latter is approaching the forr from this direction at this speed. Look closely at the space knight. Do you think it is making the right response?"
Even though the Flagrant Vandals were mostly offensive ch pilots, they still knew enough about the basics to know there was sothing amiss.
"The space knight is just a bit off. It looks as if it is responding a little too late or sothing."
"It's not just the timing that's wrong, but also the angling of the shield. It's too steep, which increases the possibility that our Ferocious Piranha can slide right past its side."
"The Avatar ch pilot managed to mistake the positioning as well. He should have moved his ch or shield more to the left!"
Ves smirked. "You're all correct. According to the judgnt of the defending ch pilot, the attacking machine was actually located here and was approaching from this angle."
He drew a fake ch in the paused footage and drew a line that indicated its probable trajectory.
Although the non-existing ch partially overlapped with the real Ferocious Piranha, it was just a bit different!
Perhaps a distracted or lesser-skilled ch pilot might make such a misjudgnt, but the Avatar ch pilots were supposed to be better!
"Are you saying… the new ch can do all of this?"
Ves smugly nodded. "Exactly. Haven't you noticed the best part of all of this? No matter how much the Avatar ch pilot tried to concentrate on the Ferocious Piranha, his performance didn't improve at all! His actions were completely counterproductive! Instead of focusing on the obvious target, what he should have really been doing was to resist the subtle glow that was impairing his perception of reality."
"Uhhh…."
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