The Mech Touch novel Chapter 4842

Chapter 4842 Competitive Perfomance

The next few days passed by without incident.

The Davutans continued to put a huge amount of effort into maintaining security.

Kotor City became busier and busier as people continued to forget about the earlier attacks. A lot of tourists and residents did not want to miss the opportunity of a lifetime and eagerly partook in the celebrations!

A lot of Larkinsons participated in the various tournaments and achieved mixed results.

The mech pilots of the Larkinson Clan were highly skilled and possessed plenty of real combat experience.

However, it was far too difficult for them to stand out from the crowd without the benefit of living mechs.

It soon became clear to people like Ves that much of the training and improvements of the Larkinson mech pilot were centered around living mechs.

Without the benefit of the deep partnerships and synergies with their bonded machines, the Larkinson mech pilots weren't actually all that great.

Sure, they were good alright. Many of them easily met the standard of elites.

The problem was that the Red Ocean was filled with talent. The organizations that brought lots of mech pilots to the new frontier always prioritized quality over quantity.

Ultimately, this meant that the Larkinson mech pilots always had a tough fight on their hands as soon as they fought against other elite mech pilots.

The Larkinsons even fought against familiar friends and acquaintances in the mech arenas.

The Glory Seekers, the Cross Clan, the Adelaide Mercenary Company and the Boojay Family all sent their own mech pilots to test their mettle and see where they stood relative to other pioneering organizations.

The personalities and fighting styles of all of these mech pilots diverged considerably, but their overall results were much closer than Ves expected.

In a situation where all of the mechs were equal and where the terrain did not convey any special advantages, it was hard for a mech pilot to defeat equally skilled opponents on a consistent basis.

All Ves learned from observing these matches was that his Larkinson mech pilots were good enough to fight against most but not all elite opponents.

There were certain groups of mech pilots, particularly those that hailed from the most formidable special operations units of the Federal Military, that truly managed to push the generic tournament mech models to their limits!

Their excellent skills, high combat experience and higher-than-average genetic aptitudes easily enabled them to win at least 70 percent of the matches against his Larkinson mech pilots!

This margin of victory was not too overwhelming, but clearly taught Ves and many other overinflated clansmen a lesson.

There were other pioneering groups that had brought over the stars of their respective regions.

There were mech athletes that won numerous championships and knew how to work around the limitations of tournaments better than everyone.

There were grizzled war veterans who had an endless bag of tricks under their sleeves and won impossible matches by relying on their beastly instincts.

There were even rich and privileged scions who hadn't been pampered at all. Instead, each of these wealthy descendants received the best possible training that they could buy, up to and including receiving personal tutoring from expert pilots!

Compared to all of these frighteningly skilled opponents, most of the Larkinson mech pilots still seemed immature and rough around the edges in comparison.

His men still had a long way to go before they could truly outfight any of their peers under completely equal circumstances. It might not even happen as the Larkinson Army did not really focus on training its men to excel in mech competitions.

"Don't feel too bad about the fact that none of our mech pilots have won any tournaments." General Verle consoled Ves during one of those competitions. "I already had an inkling that our men wouldn't be able to go much further. We may have the MSTS, but our strongest rivals have other excellent if prohibitively expensive training methods at their disposal."

Verle dropped by the VIP booth as he happened to be in the neighborhood. He had plenty of reasons to pay close attention to how his men fared against the best of what Davute had to offer.

Ves nodded when he heard his analysis. "Our clan's dependence on living mechs is our greatest strength... and possibly also our greatest weakness."

"There is no need to exaggerate the downsides of our approach, Ves. We both know that if our clansmen can participate in these tournaments with the machines that you have painstakingly designed, our winning percentages would be a lot higher. I dare say our clan can even bring home a few trophies."

Ves shrugged. "It doesn't matter. These tournaments and competitions aren't all that important to us. It would be nice if our clansmen can rank at the top and increase our fame this way, but we have already managed to stand out by winning actual battles. Our mech legions are all geared towards defeating serious enemies on the battlefield. That is what matters. The rules aren't fair either, and that plays to our advantage as we can make a lot more preparations."

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