The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1578

Chapter 1578 The Return of Starfighters

The concept of small spacecraft or starfighters enjoyed mixed success during humanity's ascendance and dominance over the galaxy.

Swift, agile and cheap, starfighters performed fairly well as cheap weapon platforms that could harass large, sluggish targets from a distance.

In fact, humanity initially deployed drones to serve this role, but they became too prone to hacking. Any rival with a bone to pick could sneak in and sabotage the AIs controlling the donres, causing them to fire on their allies instead!

This meant that piloted starfighters actually played a respectable role during the Age of Stars and Age of Conquest.

Yet when humanity finally started to fight against the big boys of the galaxy, the downsides of fielding starfighters became very prominent.

Their small size meant that they became exceptionally vulnerable to massive, ship-scaled armaments with huge areas of effects. In fact, detonating a few nuclear missiles or anti-matter bombs in the middle of a formation was enough to wipe out hundreds of them at a time!

Casualties mounted to such an extent that the romanticism surrounding starfighters quickly faded. Deploying starfighters in the middle of a battle between huge warships was as idiotic as deploying infantry in a battle between mechs!

Just a few powerful weapon discharges was enough to kill huge swathes of annoying ants!

Even after the end of the Age of Mechs, the rise of mechs eclipsed every other weapon platform during the Age of Mechs.

Certainly, starfighters were more viable than before. The absence of warships in most of human space meant that smaller weapon platforms could actually play a role.

Sadly, when starfighters were pitted against mechs, the latter always gained the upper hand.

The advantages of mechs over starfighters were very clear.

Mech pilots were practically born for the job. When paired with a suitable mech, they made their machines come to life. Skilled mech pilots distinguished themselves by directly controlling many functions of a mech to make the most of their machines.

In contrast, starfighters piloted by norms lacked the advantages of a man-machine connection. Though cheap, the dependence on automation and the lack of fluidity in employing starfighters meant that they always fared worse against an equal force of mechs.

States stopped pumping money into making starfighters because the costs outweighed the benefits. War during the Age of Mechs had subsided into smaller, more focused conflicts centered around conquering territory and pushing ideologies.

Once the Age of Mechs took off and everyone began to fall in love with mechs, the Mech Trade Association began their fatal assault on alternate weapon platforms!

A whole swathe of weapon platforms such as starfighters, defensive platforms and the like were subject to numerous restrictions!

Their use in human conflicts had to be constrained at all costs!

Certainly, the MTA made a very persuasive argument for their case. When the outcome of a conflict solely depended on mechs, the damage inflicted to the parties involved was a lot less severe than if other weapon platforms entered the mix!

The benefit of mechs on the other hand was that its numbers were always finite. The amount of mechs a state could field would always be limited by their limited pool of manpower.

Only around 3.5 percent of humans possessed the right genetic aptitude to pilot mechs. Of that 3.5 percent, only a portion of them actually became mech pilots.

By narrowing the scope of human infighting to battles between a small number of highly-trained professionals, much of human vigor would still be preserved after the end of a war.

In other words, less people died.

Scarred by the mass deaths and genocides that characterized the latter days of the Age of Conquest, many humans embraced this logic.

The approval of the masses, the power wielded by the MTA and the tacit consent of the CFA all supported the new policies.

Since then, the restrictions on starfighters and other competing weapon platforms came into force!

Both Ves and Gavin recalled the history surrounding the ruling that was meant to put the nail in the coffin for starfighters.

Therefore, Ves was a bit surprised to hear that they would be making a return.

"Has the MTA approved?"

"They did." Gavin nodded. "Every state intending to mass produce starfighters has received the greenlight to pull out all the stops. Since aliens aren't entitled to the protections enjoyed by humans, we don't have to abide by as many restrictions."

It would be stupid to fight with one hand tied behind your back against the aliens. In fact, people even began to wonder whether they would be allowed to construct warships again.

Unfortunately, that was a bridge too far for the Big Two. For now, deploying lots of starfighters was the most a state could get away with at this time.

"Now that I think about it, resorting to starfighters make a lot of sense." Ves mused while rubbing Lucky's back. "Starfighters are simply smaller and mobile versions of defensive platforms that are placed in the orbit of planets. The biggest downside to orbiting defensive platforms is that they have to wait for the sandmen fleet to come within firing range before they can do their jobs."

At that stage, a sandman fleet almost reached the end of its destination! Even if hundreds of defensive platforms orbited a planet, just one sandman vessel had to go through and make landfall in order to wipe out a city of millions!