The Mech Touch novel Chapter 5122

"We need to get closer!"

The distance between the Spirit of Bentheim and the alien warships still precluded many ranged mechs from taking part in the ongoing firefight.

Only the most extreme mechs and warships possessed the capability to strike targets across a distance of over a hundred-thousands of kilometers, especially when both sides actively maneuvered around in space.

The Spirit of Bentheim avidly put her newly upgraded main thrusters and maneuvering thrusters to good use. As massive and sluggish the factory ship may be, she was able to move considerably faster in space than she ought to, especially once she began to engage the warp function of her superdrive at a low setting!

The spatial distortions produced by the superdrive made it a little more difficult for the factory ship's sensors to make more precise and delicate observations of their distant foes.

However, the distortion factor was not too great so long as the superdrive did not generate a strong warp babble.

The ship also tapped into the sensor systems of nearby drones and hidden listening posts in order to gather more data.

As the powerful secondary laser cannon batteries of Stingray 1 kept trying to strike the maneuvering Spirit of Bentheim, the Macharia Excelsia also did its best to exert more pressure on the opposing vessels.

The alien ships all began to accelerate and maneuver in ways that inhibited the powerful ace mech from launching repeated strikes at any single starship.

Saintess Ulrika Vraken was not at fault. She managed to attain an impressively high hit rate with a positron rifle that was not optimally designed for long-ranged combat. She demonstrated superhuman skill, judgment and control over her mech with each and every shot fired by her potent machine!

Ves would have loved to have several more ranged ace mechs at his disposal.

In fact, if Patriarch Reginald Cross hadn't impulsively decided to join the Warborn, this phase would have become a lot more effective!

Even if the Mars could not possibly match the hit rate of the Macharia Excelsia, its ARCEUS System granted it a much higher volume of fire, thereby giving the ace hybrid mech a lot more chances to produce repeated hits!

As Ves observed the proceedings while he seated on his elevated command throne, he formed many different thoughts.

It would have been nice if his forces included a specialized mech unit that could deal effective damage at this range.

He briefly held a discussion with Commander Casella Ingvar about this topic.

"Under normal circumstances, it's not technically feasible to fabricate weapons that can effectively hit targets at this extreme distance." He told her. "It can only be done if a weapon is especially designed for this mode of combat and is fabricated with the utmost precision and care."

"Can you produce such a weapon, sir?" Casella asked while she remained on standby in her Minerva. "It would help our clan out a lot if our main fleet can still contribute to a battle against warships while remaining outside the effective range of our most dangerous opponents. It is frustrating to have so many mechs at our disposal that are forced to remain idle."

"Our clan doesn't have the capabilities to produce the ultra-precision rifles that you are asking for." Ves regretfully shook his head. "I am not trained and experienced in this specific area of fabrication. I will need to spend a lot of time in virtual simulation training to shore up my skills. The real limitation is our production equipment. I have a set of excellent first-class production machines including the AP-VEX superfab, but even they cannot help me attain the insane level of precision required to produce a laser rifle that can fire beams that are both precise and cohesive enough to actually hit a distant target."

This was why the Transcendent Punishers did not even bother to fire despite their reputation for landing shots by relying on the prescience of their design spirit.

Ylvaine could make all of the predictions he wanted, but if the luminar crystal cannons and the gauss cannons were so technically shaky that no amount of calculation could perfectly predict where a shot would actually land, even he would get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of possible outcomes!

"You can overcome this by buying a new set of production equipment, am I correct?"

Ves nodded. "That is true. A materializer will be able to solve most of our technical problems in this regard, but they can be ridiculously expensive. This is the most advanced industrial precision production machine mastered by the human race. Do you know how much it costs to obtain a relatively affordable production unit?"

Casella frowned. "I have heard that it is not cheap."

"Try 5 billion MTA credits."

The expert pilot almost lost her composure when she heard that sum!

"That is... considerably outside of our budget."

"Only first-raters have the financial muscle to play with materialization technology. That said, it is not entirely out of the question for us to get our hands on a device. I think the Red Association allows us to exchange a working materializer for around 1 billion MTA merits or so, but we will have to defeat several more alien raiding fleets in order to redeem such an extravagant reward. Do you think that is a worthwhile goal for us to work towards?"

Casella shook her head. "I understand your point. We will lose more than we can gain if we try to overreach and chase after a reward that we are not yet qualified to handle."

"That is also why I am not in a hurry to upgrade our forces to first-class standards even if we technically have the funds and means to do so. We will throw away our strong position in the second-class community only for us to get pushed to the very bottom of the first-class community. We will promote to first-raters when we are truly ready to do so, and not before."

Ves did not object to selectively procuring pieces of high technology in advance. What was important was that they paid for themselves by providing greater value in return.

The first-class workshop and lab equipment along with the brand-new Hyper Chamber all opened up a lot of promising opportunities.

He did not think that adding an expensive materializer to his factory ship would make that much of a difference.

"So there is no realistic way for us to fight at these distances in the short term, sir?" Casella asked.

"Probably." Ves replied. "Technology is undergoing rapid changes in the Age of Dawn. There may be ways to increase the precision of long-ranged weapons without sacrificing too much. We will just have to wait and see. Perhaps the aliens have the tech we want."

"Let us hope so. We should try to keep these puelmer ships as intact as possible."

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