"Are you happy, Ves?"
"More or less."
Ves and Gloriana gathered together in order to make the arrangents.
After the Saint Commander made her choice, the pair of Senior ch Designers imdiately began to order a sizable batch of Dragon Scales.
They subsequently began to perform the initial calculations and simulations on how the Minerva Mark II would perform if her Command Field gained the benefits of Dragon Scales.
"It is difficult to estimate the increase in defensive performance on chs affected by her Command Field." Gloriana said while furrowing her brows. "There are too many variables at play. Based on the publicly available data on other ace chs that have made use of this key resonating materials, Knights can expect to beco at least 3 tis tougher at Casella's current resonance strength. Once she becos stronger and reaches the threshold of a senior ace pilot, I expect the multiplier to beco higher, but not in proportion due diminishing returns. Knights will only be 5 or 7 tis harder to destroy than before. That is still a good amount of improvent, but it is disappointing by the standards of ace chs. What are your estimates about Enfeoffed chs?"
"Barons should start with a multiplier of at least 5 according to my very loose estimates." Ves judged. "However, the scaling becos more and more detrintal as Casella's resonance strength continues to grow. At the latest stages of Casella's growth trajectory, Dukes and Princes should only beco 20 tis tougher to defeat due to the influence of Dragon Scales. Otherwise, their attack power will always far outpace their defenses."
This was a pretty massive increase, but it did not automatically an that Casella could turn any random group of chs into temporary ace chs.
There were still a lot of shortcomings that effectively caused them to be a lot weaker than genuine ace chs.
Even so, as long as the quantity was great enough, such a massive force of Dukes and Princes might be able to pose a credible threat against ancient phase lords!
At the very least, Commander Casella would probably be able to match the combat power of an RF dreadnought at this stage.
As Ves and Gloriana continued to run the numbers, they beca increasingly more convinced that the Minerva Mark II would beco incredibly useful to the Larkinson Clan and red humanity as a whole.
"Dragon Scales is a good match for Casella." Ves concluded. "It is not only able to help
her fulfill her goal of keeping her subordinates alive, but also allows her to empower lots of lee chs without fearing that they will drop like flies. The only issue is that the effects of Dragon Scales ironically scale poorly with any improvents in resonance strength. That is one of its biggest shortcomings. Commandeered and Enfeoffed chs will not experience any drastic improvents in defenses going forward."
Gloriana did not look too upset about this. "That is not as detrintal as it sounds. None of these chs are supposed to endure too many hits in a fight. Even if they cannot stop themselves from getting struck by enemy units, they only need to be resilient enough to withdraw under their own power. Small increases in defenses can be the difference between keeping the ch functional and seeing it crumble before your eyes."
ch designers conducted a huge amount of studies on how extensively they should raise the defenses of their products.
Excessive increases in defensive performance might keep the machines alive much longer than average, but the cost of doing so beca increasingly more exorbitant. Many clever ch designers and researchers had therefore sought to develop the perfect formula to calculate the optimum defenses to bestow on each ch design. While they failed to formulate a single universal formula that won the approval of the entire ch industry, their studies still revealed a lot of useful information.
The most important part was that the main concern that ch designers should have when improving the defenses of their machines was to determine how much they were willing to pay to push back the breakpoints of their products.
chs could endure varying degrees of abuse but still keep going.
If a hostile enemy force was able to land 5 attacks onto the machines on average, then improving the defenses of the latter just enough so that they could endure 6 attacks would lead to a massive increase in survival rate!
It could make the tougher chs raise their win rate from 50 percent to 70 or even 80 percent against the sa opponents!
Of course, this was a vast oversimplification of the kind of math and calculations that went into this kind of stuff.
All Ves needed to know was that the effect of Dragon Scales would continue to beco more useful as Casella grew stronger.
The law of diminishing returns was annoying, but at least it should not result in a completely flat line.
"Much will change once the Minerva Mark II cos online and takes charge of our first-class fleet." Gloriana told her husband. "Our entire approach towards combat will change. Not only will the chs under the influence of the Saint Commander hit much harder than before, but they can also withstand much more attacks. Over ti, Casella will also be able to Commandeer our starships, thereby causing them to enjoy the sa benefits to a lesser degree due to drastic increases in mass and volu."
"What are you trying to say, honey?"
"Are you not able to realize it yet? Think! Casella can easily turn chs that are considered cheap or less powerful into nearly unstoppable quasi-expert chs! She can multiply the performance of the cheapest first-class ch such as your Yellow Jacket into an asset that is just as powerful as the best first-class multipurpose chs of the Red Association! She can do so in such great numbers that she can practically lead a ragtag swarm of rcenaries and instantly transform them into a highly coordinated elite ch corps! Such a force can operate alongside our regular first-class fleet!"
Ves did not like the sound of that!
"Are you saying that the Saint Commander can bring greater value to our clan by operating outside of our first-class fleet and ch force?"
"Not always." She admitted. "There may be tis where it is better for her to empower our main ch troops so that they can drive away powerful phase whales or break open the defenses of enemy fortifications. Outside of that, we can gain far more by operating two powerful forces instead of a single extrely powerful one. Think about conducting raids in enemy territory. If we know that the defenses of the targets within our reach are fairly weak, we can instruct Saint Commander Casella to operate independently and use cash to hire a large amount of affordable rcenaries that are willing to fight under her direct control. What is important about this is that this stratagem remains viable even if you are only working with chs as basic as Yellow
Jackets!"
He understood the point that she was trying to make. The Minerva Mark II effectively opened up a lot of new options, but the most important one was that beca viable
for the Larkinson Clan to employ a lot of cheap rcenaries.
No matter how poorly they fought in a fight, as long as the basics were in place, Saint Commander Casella could always transform cannon fodder into elites!
Though Ves initially felt reluctant to entertain the notion of separating the Minerva Mark II from his first-class fleet, the more he thought about it, the more he
recognized its benefits.
Splitting up was often necessary in order to sweep an entire region of space or to
fulfill two important objectives at once.
Maintaining only a single fleet kept everything simple, but it also imposed a lot of
limitations.
Ves had already experienced monts in the past where he wished he had a second force in reserve or deployed in another region.
Having Saint Commander Casella lead a detachnt composed of cheap and disposable chs would be great.
There was one problem with this setup.
"Saint Commander Casella mostly cares about her fellow clansn." He said. "She
probably prefers to stay with our main fleet. If we try to make her lead a bunch of random rcenaries, then she will only do so if our main forces remain relatively safe in her absence. One of the sources of her pain cos from being separated from her brother when he died. She doesn't want to experience such a tragedy again." This might pose a few complications in the future, but it should still be manageable.
They just needed to figure out that fielding a second ch force comprised of rcenaries and other miscellaneous troops would make the clan safer. "Let us get back to work. Now that we have determined the combination of key resonating materials for the Minerva Mark II, there should be no further ambiguous about our vision for this ace ch."
The differences between the Minerva Mark I and Mark II finally beca significant
enough.
The latter was no longer a straightforward evolution of the forr.
Instead, the Mark II relied on two key resonating exotics to expand her repertoire and
plug one of her major shortcomings.
Mindstorm Alloy granted the Saint Commander to directly debilitate enemies within
the range of her Command Field.
This was a rare and precious ans for Casella to directly exercise her power on the
battlefield.
Compared to other choices such as empowering the luminar crystal rifle of the
Minerva Mark II, the effects of Mindstorm Alloy could be activated with very minimal
delay.
This was important as the Saint Commander could instantly generate a psychic storm onto enemies that were on the verge of killing vulnerable chs and ch pilots!
Other solutions might work, but only if they responded fast enough. Nothing could beat the speed of a psychic storm!
The power of such a asure should not be weak, especially if it was further amplified with a precious wholly intact ntalist Crystal.
Ves therefore considered Mindstorm Alloy to be a defensive asure as opposed to an
offensive asure.
Its job was to give Casella the ability to disrupt the thinking and activities of enemy soldiers long enough to bail out friendly chs.
A psychic storm could eventually grow strong enough to knock unprotected alien soldiers unconscious or outright turn them braindead if the Saint Commander continued to develop her resonance strength!
Even if the aliens developed counterasures to protect their precious minds against
her psychic assaults, she should still be able to conduct a lot of interference, thereby creating many openings for her Knights and Enfeoffed chs.
With the addition of the effects of Dragon Scales, every friendly ch operating under
Casella's Command Field should suffer minimal casualties so long as the battle was under her control!
If the Larkinsons previously lost hundreds of chs when fighting against an alien assault fleet, all of the improvents associated with the Minerva Mark II could reduce those loss figures to the single digits!
Aside from a rare handful of chs that got wiped directly from existence by the
primary gun batteries of an alien battleship, no other chs should be at significant risk of getting wrecked!
In fact, Casella's influence on the survival rate of chs and ch pilots would beco so drastic that Ves worried about whether it beca detrintal.
"If the Saint Commander pampers our standard ch units too much, the rate of breakthroughs will plunge." Ves said with concern. "She needs to exercise her power with greater restraint if we want other ch pilots to develop their own potential." "I can think of two possible solutions on the top of my head" Gloriana responded. "You can adopt my earlier suggestion and dispatch Saint Commander Casella elsewhere. You can also seek out more challenging enemy forces. We can take on elite alien fleets and win with confidence. There will be an elent of risk, but as long as our intelligence is accurate, we should be able to avoid most accidents, though we cannot
possibly account for every occurrence."
"That is what tends to get overconfident people killed."
"Hey, who is the daredevil among us, Ves?"
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