Humans were not as unfamiliar with their alien foes as when they just arrived in the Red Ocean.
They all learned that so long as an enemy warship kept up her transphasic energy shield, any damage inflicted on the vessel would ultimately be wasted as the barrier regenerated back to full strength.
The only way to actually hurt the aliens was to inflict real material damage to the hull!
While the melee mechs were on their way to make this job a lot easier, it was unlikely for the mechs of the four remaining mercenary outfits to succeed in their job.
There were too few melee mechs and too many alien warships!
The problem became compounded by the need to keep melee mechs back in order to guard against the coming attack from the Grimly Brothers.
Many mercenaries realized that the only way to survive was to soften up the alien warships and take a few of them out at range.