I Had a Plan for Everything, Probably? (1)
"Well, that would definitely pack a serious intimidation factor…"
Even as she said it, though, she was radiating a thick aura of isn't that still kind of dangerous?
I snapped my fingers in agreement.
"Exactly. To put it bluntly — later on, I'm scrapping every cruiser I own except the Overseer and the Kanhel-class."
"Whoa…"
"Commander, wouldn't that be far too risky? Even so, cutting the destroyers that aggressively seems excessive…"
When they still looked thoroughly unconvinced, I decided it was time to lay out the plan I'd been assembling in my head.
"Mm, mm. I get why you'd react that way."
"Thank you for understanding, sir."
"But there's a solid reason we absolutely have to shrink everything cruiser-class and below."
I said it — then immediately added that the plan wasn't one hundred percent ironed out yet. The thought that I was just stalling again made me grit my teeth and go for it.
"What is that reason, Commander?"
"Simply put: I build my entire fleet out of nothing but capital ships — battlecruisers and light carriers at minimum — and then…"
"And then?"
"I live off the fees I charge as a mercenary to other solo players. People like me, with no clan of their own, who poured everything into small ships and are desperately short on capital hulls!"
— Boom!
The instant the words left my mouth, Jessica set off a party popper she'd produced from god-knows-where, matching the energy perfectly.
"I see. In that case, it could actually be a rather sound approach."
"Right?"
"Resources will cost more, of course — but mercenary hire rates will normalize over time, and eventually drop even lower."
"That's exactly it. You nailed the key point."
Belial, standing in front of us, clapped and offered her approval at the whole display…
But Marianne, beside her, tilted her head, still looking unconvinced.
"Oppa, I think the idea itself is fine."
"Good to hear."
"But other commanders are going to think the exact same thing, you know?"
"…Hmm."
"If everyone else is thinking it too, it's not going to boom the way you're imagining."
Marianne's sharp observation hit home — she had a real point.
Even so, I had my own reasons for pushing this through.
The whole plan hinged on facilities like the Mercenary Bureau and the Beast Ship Hatchery. The ones at our base had no numerical caps on hiring or production whatsoever.
Other players? Their Mercenary Bureaus came with hard hiring limits.
They might not eat the player's own Fleet Points — but they still ran on their own separately allocated point pools. Exceed that pool, and the system decided you no longer had the capacity to hire. Additional contracts simply locked out.
And it wasn't just the Mercenary Bureau. The same applied to every faction "office" stationed at a base — the equivalent of our beasts.
Each one got a different point allocation based on base level. Even maxed out on points and level, you were looking at roughly two to three hundred points. Ship count capped at around thirty hulls, tops.
From any other player's perspective, mercenaries and faction fleets were textbook white elephants.
None of that applied to me.
Other commanders had some mid-tier envoy from a faction camping at their base. I had the Pirate Empress herself — Marianne, leader of the Pirate Union — and Luka, a princess from the absolute top tier of the beast hierarchy.
And somehow, because of that, hiring and raising both mercenary and beast fleets cost me zero points.
Of course, as my earlier comments probably made clear, I hadn't known any of this myself…
I'd only sketched the bare bones of the plan and was still fretting over the small-ship problem one night, when I decided to clear my head by browsing the gallery.
[Screenshot certifying a battle against Icarus's fleet]
Dude claimed the Pirate Empress and still doesn't spam mercenaries with minerals.
Just rolls up with his own fleet and fights clean.
Kinda hot — like a villain fighting with his power sealed.
What.
Through a post written by someone who claimed they'd fought me, I learned that I had been — without even knowing it — a pure power build the entire time.
Obviously I didn't just take it at face value.
Some absolute bastards would meticulously photoshop screenshots, or arbitrarily cook the numbers on settings and stats before posting. So I banished the sleep that had been creeping in and immediately started digging through the wiki tab.
Sure, someone might say, couldn't the wiki be fabricated too?
Fortunately, the wiki tab wasn't a free-for-all where users could cook whatever they wanted — more like a rigorously maintained wiki from my previous life. It wasn't managed by rankers with armbands like me; the operators ran it directly. Even the original writers couldn't casually edit entries. It was trustworthy enough to rely on.
So there I was, internally making excuses for the wiki tab for reasons I couldn't quite explain, hunting down the information — and sure enough, everything that anonymous user had said was sitting right there, written out cleanly by a wiki officer.
[Base setup illustration]
Like I said before, faction offices and mercenary bureaus are similar but different, and they draw from completely separate point pools.
By now you all know the real problem: these things have ridiculously awkward point and ship-count limits.
If you think you're wrong about that — relax. You're exactly right.
I've said it across this whole tip series: the structure is so fundamentally broken that unless you're a total newbie, or you're in a knife-fight so desperate that even one extra ship matters, these things are barely worth using.
And the really infuriating part?
You can only hire them as entire "mercenary companies." So the point caps and company sizes constantly refuse to line up.
You have to reroll at random — but company listings only refresh once a day automatically, plus one free manual refresh. That's it. No more.
Okay, this system pisses me off so much I started rambling. Here's the summary:
1. Both the Mercenary Bureau and faction-dispatched fleets (working title — actual names differ by faction) have hard caps on recruitable Fleet Points.
2. It's not just points — ship count is capped too.
3. The truly cursed part: faction dispatches let you pick what you want, but the Mercenary Bureau forces you to hire by whole "company" units only.
4. Every company has different ship inventories and point costs, and you can't just freely pick the one you want.
5. You get two changes a day — but one of those is the automatic daily refresh, not something you control. Yeah.
6. How the hell did I ever play this garbage game?
Anyway. It's a dogshit system, and the Mercenary Bureau gets rightfully roasted as a white elephant.
There's exactly one exception. What if you successfully claim the Pirate Empress?
Then every single one of those miserable "limits" at the Mercenary Bureau just vanishes.
Lore reason: the Empress's connections kick in. Any commander who holds the Empress can hire with zero restrictions — the system trusts her endorsement alone.