When the Kraken Overeats
Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-what.
As absurd as it was, the thing had simply pigged out so hard that it had come down with indigestion and tanked its own condition.
"Haha. This is ridiculous."
"You're telling me. I feel the same way, Commander."
Faced with a situation that absurd, Jessica and I both felt hollow laughter rising unbidden.
Of course, it wasn't as if the mechanic had appeared out of nowhere, or as if I hadn't known about it.
[Colossal Monster Ship Concept Art], [Proof Shot of Overeating Trait Acquired]
You know how monster ships will sometimes just straight-up eat the other guy in close combat?
Small monsters eat fighters, big monsters eat ships — that kind of thing, yeah.
They're living organisms by lore, so it tracks, and if you've ever fought a monster-ship player in a fleet battle you've probably seen one of them charge in and start chomping your hull. So yeah, everyone knows monster ships eat stuff.
What most people don't know is that those same monster ships can get indigestion or overeating.
Even the people who know about it almost never see it with their own eyes while playing, so go figure.
My guess is the devs put it in as a balance patch of sorts — if monster guts were black holes that just swallowed everything forever, every other player would be completely screwed.
Anyway, enough rambling. Here's the actual point:
It's rare as hell, but every so often a monster ship will eat more ships in a single battle than its assigned capacity allows, and that's when the trait procs.
Once it finishes digesting, the ship does get a tiny bit stronger (we're talking shell thickness up by like 0.1 mm), but the important part — as you can see from the proof shot — is that while the trait is active, the ship is just garbage.
It doesn't shave the final result of the buff calculation. It slashes the base values first. Which means it hits like a truck.
That said, like I mentioned above, this almost never happens to monster ships — so monster players, feel free to keep feeding your pets. lol
As that recently written wiki tip made clear, the idea that monster ships could suffer from "overeating" had been part of the game's long-standing lore since day one.
Which meant the hollow laugh I was letting out had a little joy mixed into it too — joy that the Kraken had slaughtered the enemy so thoroughly it had actually managed to trigger Overeating.
Once I realized that, I also realized I didn't need to worry about the Kraken's condition at all.
"Still. Can't pass up a proof shot."
"Haha..."
If I survived this battle, I was going to post living proof of the "monster ship overeating" most players had only ever heard about. So I decided to photograph the Kraken looking miserable and bloated from overeating.
And roughly five hours later—
"The Kraken looks fine now."
"So it does."
After a stretch of pressing its belly against a nearby asteroid and other equally undignified efforts to work off the indigestion, the Kraken had finally finished digesting the ships it had pigged out on. Watching it bounce around full of energy again, I felt a deep sense of satisfaction.
Not that the Kraken was my kid or anything — I wasn't getting joy out of the bouncing itself.
Ah. At this level, that's sweet enough.
Part of it was that my small, precious Kraken had gotten a little stronger — but the rest of the fleet had racked up plenty of good news too.
"Commander, the fighters on the newly built light carriers seem to have stacked enough experience."
"Oh? So the leveling's done, then."
Our first light carrier — the one that had been bounced around for lack of level and used as a meat shield for the Kraken's fighters — had fought hard in the brutal clash against the player running three light carriers of his own. It had gone in with its own onboard weapons instead of fighters, rammed a patrol ship into scrap with a ramming charge, and put in such a performance that its level had climbed high enough to actually pull its weight now.
In superhuman terms... roughly level 25?
Borderline, but enough that one light carrier could finally do a light carrier's job.
And on top of that, among the three ships we'd... acquired — no, successfully captured — from the enemy player, there was another light carrier.
Shockingly, that one had been raised so cleanly that its level was slightly higher than not only my own light carrier, but the Kraken itself.
Hell yeah, bartender!
The other two were a light cruiser and a heavy destroyer, so all told, the combat power of the "main force" under my direct command had grown considerably from this battle.
But of course, nothing in this world is pure profit...
Because the main force had taken so little damage, the mercenary companies that had been holding the line and making up the bulk of the fleet's strength had been absolutely gutted.
"Commander, I have a report..."
"Mm."
"First, two of the mercenary companies took such heavy losses that they terminated their contracts and withdrew to the Pirate Union home base."
"Only two?"
"One more was wiped out so completely there was nothing left to report — the contract canceled automatically."
"Oh."
Out of the twelve mercenary companies we'd started with, a full quarter — three of them — had been ground down so thoroughly they'd left the fleet. And that wasn't the end of it.
"Another three companies lost over thirty percent of their fleet strength and are effectively under total-loss status, undergoing emergency repairs at base."
"Hmm..."
"And three more barely lost any ships to sinking, but more than fifty percent of their fleet is heavily damaged and needs repairs."
"...Uuughhh."
Hearing that even the remaining mercenary companies — aside from the last three — were in terrible shape left me feeling thoroughly unsettled.
And there was one more problem on top of all that: the captured light carrier.
"Commander. You can't use this thing right away."
"What."
"The enemy put up a hell of a fight during the capture, and their commander went berserk trying to scuttle it. The engine section's wrecked, and the whole ship is full of smashed-up systems."
"Wh-wh-wh-wh-what."
"We can jury-rig it with organic monster components for now, but even if the fighters can still launch, don't expect much from mobility or onboard defenses."
"...Wonderful."
The damage was worse than expected. Professor's diagnosis was that we couldn't put it to use as things stood.
The thought that I might have just won a Pyrrhic victory started blooming, fresh and unwelcome, in the back of my mind.
I hate victories that leave only scars. (2)
We'd fought a fairly successful battle, sure.
Even so, the fact that we were still outmatched in raw combat power hadn't changed one bit.
"Jessica. So you're saying we only have nine mercenary company fleets left?"
"Yes, Commander."
After a battle that big, I felt the need to get a proper look at the current state of our fleet.
And for that, I decided to start with the mercenary companies — the ones that had just lost a quarter of their strength. No. Effectively a third of them, wiped out cold.