With time to kill during their travel back to the front lines, Max got to work analyzing and optimizing their new complement of Mecha as Sylvie finished them.
Unlike the ship itself, the alloys weren't quite primitive. Instead, they were mostly ceramic armoured, which was energy efficient to produce, despite its complex structure, with the downside that it was brittle and considered a wear item, replaced after battle.
Unlike the Mecha that Max was used to, which were repaired and maintained with the same basic structure for decades or even centuries, these were designed to be modular and easy to section out and rebuild between engagements.
As long as your repair bay had the parts, you could have the whole armour set and a limb replaced in under an hour.
It wasn't ineffective, just a different approach to battle that needed more logistics staff than was usually sent with a Kepler military unit. But with bioengineered soldiers suited for every task, they could have all the logistics staff that they wanted, and they wouldn't see it as a failing to get into a better job.
The weapons on the unit he was inspecting were the impressive part. While the Fusion Core of the World Ship had been designed to a lower standard than the plasma weapons of modern human Mecha, the Plasma weapons on the Mecha were incredibly advanced.
They were designed for planetary combat, which the Great Enemy also seemed to prefer, given the way that they blockaded planets they attacked to prevent space battles. So, they contained a smaller reserve of gases for the Plasma weapons, but they had the ability to filter and purify multiple input gases to alter their output against different targets.
It was an interesting proposition, but Max could see how it would work. Most energy shields were optimized against certain wavelengths of energy. Changing the wavelength or type of energy that you were using would defeat the purpose of the optimized shielding and reduce the output power that your weapons needed.
It was identical in theory to the way that they had made the variable Disintegrator able to alter its pattern to get past shielding.
"You know, Sylvie. These weapons have really stood the test of time. The Mecha themselves are designed for a different style of combat than our generals advocate for these days, but the weapons would work with any combat style that they are put in." Max commented as he worked.
"Thank you. I had a role in choosing these ones when we were first deployed. After careful analysis of the war zone, this is the selection that I approved and created for the inventory." The AI explained.
"You did a good job. This is the smallest class you created, I believe. Or did you make one smaller than the ten-metre class?" Max asked.
"No, these are the smallest on board. The lighter units were previously determined to be inefficient due to limited power output. Also, the zone that I was assigned to was known for enemy biomechanical war machines in the ten-metre class, as well as heavily armed mobile armour."
Max remembered those. The energy beings had warped the growth of certain soldiers to meld them completely with their Mecha in a horrific three-way combination of mortal, mechanical and demonic entities, with the lesser Energy Being providing the loyalty and blood thirst that the Great Enemy demanded.
They hadn't seen many of those in this wave of attacks, but there had been some reports from within the alliance of possessed machines, which might be the same thing.
"Should we alter the remaining units to better suit the modern battlefield?" Sylvie asked.
"Only a little. While the ablative armour is outdated, it is effective. We just need to improve the energy shielding over the units, and then it will be a much smaller issue without altering the design.
So, what I suggest is that we alter all the power plants to this new design, and then add the Void Shield generators to them, in addition to their existing refractor shield. That should bring them up to modern standards and allow for faster charging of the weapons systems for an increased firing rate." Max decided.
Sylvie hummed happily as she worked, a noise that Max was beginning to equate with the verbal equivalent of the loading screen, or the spinning loading cursor icon.
"Done. The remaining units will be made to that spec, while the existing ten percent of the force will be held in reserve until upgraded." She announced.
"That is acceptable to me. Will the rest of the production be finished before we make it to the combat lines? We might not have the crew yet, but it is best if we can get the equipment prepared in case of a need for emergency deployment." Max asked.
"It will be. But what sort of emergency deployment could we do without Pilots?" Sylvie asked.
"How are your Piloting skills? We let the AI on the Drone vessels make all the tactical decisions, and it pilots all the drones while the Androids Pilot the Mecha." Max explained.
He could acutally feel the projection vibrate under his hand as Sylvie processed the concept that she might be asked to pilot the entire ship full of Mecha in the future. She had never extended herself beyond the ship before, much less tried to split her processes into that many pieces.
The calculations said that it was possible, and that the Mecha computers could be used as additional processing cores to continue running her subroutines if they were cut off from the whole, in the same way that the Androids functioned.
It would take some work to create a codebase for her to work with. No, wait, she had one to work with. If she just used the digital data from Nico, she could use it as the base for her piloting programming, as the Cyborg had already digitized all the relevant data. Then she would implant her own personality and code over top, and program it into an emitter and the data banks of the Mecha.
"It will take approximately three days for me to adapt my programming and the Mecha to prepare for remote Piloting by AI." She announced once the calculations were complete.
"Alright then. Prepare the contingency plan, so we are ready if we are attacked before we have a crew ready."
