Looking over these troops, and their instructor, Max was almost tempted to call Command and pretend they'd never found them. But, as luck would have it, Max actually enjoyed helping others learn, so before he told Central Command that they were simply wasting resources, he was going to spend a few days giving his all to see if these pilots could actually improve.
Right now, all they knew was the skills of a Corvette Pilot, with a Gamma Ranked system compatibility at the very best, and Max suspected that most of the instructors weren't even to that standard. How could cadets be expected to excel if they had never even learned what a proper pilot looked like?
Back on Kepler Terminus, all of the instructors were of a very high standard and simply preferred teaching to the battlefield or police duties. Here, they took what they could get.
[Move everyone back to the academy. If these Landers are functional, assemble them outside the gates in a staggered pattern barricade. We will make the academy our base of operations for now.] Max ordered, bringing sighs of relief from the infantry they just rescued.
They had feared that they would be sent out alone to face the Narsians since the ship they had arrived on had such a large infantry complement compared to the number of Mecha on board. It wasn't that they were cowards or incompetent, but before landing on the planet, they had never even seen one before and knew nothing about their attack patterns, strategies, or weapons.
With a Special Tactics Unit around, they could pick up tips and tricks from the gossip before they were assigned to go somewhere else and fight it out. If they were really lucky they might get to bring some of the mecha with them as well.
With a quick location entry from the infantry unit leaders, all six landers smoothly lifted from the ground and placed themselves in a semi-circle by the academy doors. Each Lander overlapped and left a large gap to move between them, allowing Mecha and troops to move in and out, but preventing any long-range fire from hitting the academy doors directly.
Truthfully it wasn't optimal, since they didn't know what sort of facilities the Academy built inside a hill actually had, and using the landers as a barricade put the repair facilities in the line of fire, but it was better than having the troops exposed, and they didn't have a safer spot for the Landers even if they wanted to protect them.
[Headmaster. Do you have Crusader Capable repair bays here at the academy?] Max asked, voicing his concern.
[One single bay. But we have a number of spare parts available. Since nobody on the planet has strong system compatibility we train a lot of repair and design techs instead and send them out to various space stations for assignment.] Colonel Sanders, in his Corvette Class training Mecha, explains.
That's a good sign. If they can keep everything up and running, all he needs to do is improve the skills of the Line Mecha pilots a little bit to see a big return on investment.
Most likely they have never learned the little tricks that make piloting much easier and are still doing things by the basic training book. Learning a personalized piloting technique that eliminates all the redundancies and wasted movements is what pilots do in the second half of their academy stay on Kepler Terminus after they have been introduced to the basics of piloting and learned to use the weapons targeting systems.
From what he saw, the Pilots here haven't even got that second part down. Though they stopped to fire, as expected of a rookie pilot, their aim was still horrible.
[Do you have training Simulators? If you do, I have some advanced programs from Kepler Terminus that I modified for my own training. It will give them help with their targeting.] Max suggests.
It will actually yell at them constantly in General Tennant's voice, but it does give good hints, all the ones that the General gave out to either him or Nico during their stay at the academy, as well as the basic ones that were already programmed into the advanced piloting simulators.
[Not the really fancy ones, but we have the full immersion VR headsets for every cadet.] The Colonel declares with a hint of unjustified pride. Those are kids' toys on Kepler Terminus, but they will do well enough. After all, he learned the basics using one.
It was a hacked one, with Pirated software and he was five years old, but that isn't the point. The point is that they will be able to give these pilots an upgrade in skills. Max's system wasn't active when he learned and he could still pilot better than what he had seen, so there is no good reason that these cadets can't.
[Once we're inside, gather everyone around and I will give them an update and let them know what's going on. Then I need to find out where they are currently with their system bonuses. Even if they hit fifty points total bonus by graduation, we could throw them in any spare Corvette Class units you have and call them Sergeants.]
The Colonel went quiet for a while but eventually agreed with Max's idea.
[If there is anyone who hit fifty points of bonus that is.] He muttered to himself inside his mecha.
From his point of view, this elite pilot has no idea how the standard of things works here on Sigmund. But if he can help the kids that the Colonel has guided for half their lives to survive the destruction of their planet, the old man is not going to do a single thing to stop or dissuade him from trying.
Losing so many of his students, even if they were at the very bottom of the barrel by Kepler standards was hard on his elderly heart. The only thing he had to be thankful for was that communications were so limited by Narsian interference that he didn't have to know the full scope of how the planet was doing and could focus just on his academy.
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