The Subspace Submersible
Since information sometimes simply wasn't there to be found, I figured that might be the case and decided to run a search across the entire Gallery instead.
"Commander, can something that doesn't turn up on the Wiki really appear in the Gallery?"
"Of course. The Wiki tab only hosts thoroughly verified facts that have passed inspection by the Wiki Officers and their associated staff."
"Is that so?"
"Naturally there are people who post analysis threads in the Gallery too. But until those get verified by the Wiki Officers, they don't count as facts — they're treated as ordinary posts."
After giving Jessica that brief rundown, I checked the Gallery search results for Neranzara, found the analysis post with the highest recommendation count, and opened it at once to dig into the information.
But the moment I laid eyes on that ordinary-post analysis of Neranzara, a chill ran straight down my spine.
The reason was simple: that ship — the subspace submersible Neranzara — was, quite literally, a vessel operating on an entirely different dimension from every other ship out there.
[Neranzara Concept Art]
It's a ship that very occasionally turns up in ancient-empire-related ruins.
Size-wise it's a bit smaller than a destroyer, the armor is garbage, and every weapon it has is a torpedo. AA armament is just four anti-air missile launchers, so a handful of fighters diving on it will literally tear it apart physically.
If you think "ancient empire" means overtechnology, this thing is pretty far from that image.
But here's why it's absolutely broken:
It's the only ship in this entire game that can actually play the role of a submarine. Yeah.
Lore-wise it can slip into subspace — a dimension opposite our own — and from in there it just doesn't take hits while unilaterally wrecking the other side. Lmao.
You can't stay in subspace forever, sure, but level it up and kit it out properly and you can stretch that window pretty far.
Oh, and the only thing that can actually pound enemy ships from inside subspace is its self-regenerating special torpedoes. Don't bother loading regular torpedoes thinking you'll hit harder — they just race off into infinity inside subspace and vanish.
Why am I bringing this up? Because I once used one of these to render five battleships completely useless in a single engagement.
And hey, ancient empire ruins where you can pick these up are popping up all over the place right now, so I figure at least one person out there is going to get one. Anyway.
Man, that thing was pure honey. For real.
Plenty of other brick-wall comment chains were piled under the post, but the summary was clear: this was a ship that put the principle of "you can't hit me, but I will unilaterally beat the crap out of you" into practice.
"Incredible."
"It really is incredible."
Of course, right now it was the equivalent of a level-1 infant among supers, so it would need plenty of upgrades, proper equipment, and leveling going forward. But unlike a light carrier, where you had to grind levels by cycling fighters — dumping hundreds or thousands of minerals every single time — the thought occurred to me that just parking it safely in subspace and having it spurt torpedoes to kill pirates might be more than enough on its own.
And even if we hadn't obtained a Neranzara-class at all, the character our supers were hauling back as a captive — this Rain — was a thoroughly sweet reward in her own right.
I pulled up the character window I'd checked earlier and looked it over again.
One look at those traits sitting right there — Survivalist and Resource Management — told the whole story.
Rain's true identity was none other than the resource-buff character I had been searching for all this time.
[Rain Concept Art], [Stat Display]
Whether you pull her from the gacha or get her some other way, she's the resource supporter character that pretty much every user keeps at least one of on hand.
Her raw performance is absolute garbage for an S-grade, though.
Combat power is bottom-tier — put her on the front line and she won't even last against a B-grade super, let alone an A-grade. She'll take a beating and start wheezing. On top of that, her Survivalist trait means the second she thinks she's about to die, she'll throw her hands up and surrender just to stay alive.
But who the hell puts a resource supporter on the front line?
She was never meant to fight directly. You park her at the base and use her to boost resource intake rates.
So, on to the actual performance details:
She raises the base's inherent resource production rate by about 1.5×, and also improves resource-fleet mining yields by roughly 5%. Yeah.
That should be plenty.
"A resource-buff character. These are genuinely precious, you know."
"At last, our base will have someone like that as well."
Resource supporter. What a glorious title that was.
And just as the Wiki tab said, she couldn't fight directly and had no intention of trying — her only job was to sit at the base as a resource-buff totem. So there was zero risk of loading a once-betrayed woman onto a ship for leveling and having her seize the vessel out from under us.
That was why, the moment our supers brought Rain in, I laid out exactly that line of thinking.
The problem was what happened the instant I said it.
"Oh my, Commander — so you have no intention of dragging this girl around with you?"
"That's right. She just needs to stay planted at the base."
"Oh my, oh my, oh my. In that case…"
Our Grigori Griyanar fixed Rain with a look of pure manic glee, dragged her off somewhere — and a mere few hours later, presented me with Rain embedded in the base facility's flesh-wall, reduced to a living biological component, and showed her off with pride.
I found myself wondering where, exactly, I was even supposed to start objecting.
Nice Boat. (2)
Yeah… that wasn't what I told her to do.
Apparently getting the rug pulled out from under her had left Griyanaar more than a little irritated, because not only had she turned Rain into what was essentially a living bio-computer, she also tried to pitch a plan to make her a component in a living chimera production factory on the side.
"No. If you do that, the whole reason we brought her here for resource intake disappears."
"Tch."
"No more brain-rot schemes."
That kind of stunt would end her life as a resource supporter, so I cut Griyanaar's runaway nonsense off cold and settled for a configuration that kept her intellect intact while she remained half-fused with the base facilities.
But then the worry crept in — what if her favorability tanked another −200 and she got hit with some brutal debuff? Anxious for no good reason, I went to check on Rain's condition.
"Ooooh… is this… the true body of a monster?"
"Huh?"
"It feels like drugs are flooding into my brain and I'm so happy… but my reason isn't clouding over at all?"
"Uuuh?"
"I truly am grateful, Professor Griyanaar!"
"…???"
"Well, Commander? Just like you said — I changed it to a perfectly fine configuration, didn't I?"