Our Base Is Level 7 Now! (2)
Given how thoroughly our fleet had been chewed up, leveling Hresvelgr was essential if we wanted to claw our way back to a respectable combat strength.
Unlike the Kraken, though, Hresvelgr came with two distinct drawbacks when it came to leveling.
First problem.
—BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!!
"Truly a glorious sight."
"It is pretty spectacular, I'll give you that."
With thousands of missiles screaming out on its own, dumping overwhelming firepower on the unaffiliated pirate bands and raiding parties that respawned at random was the easy part. The problem was that if those enemies simply refused to spawn, there was no way to level the ship beyond aimless "maneuver drills" and the like.
"Looking at the Kraken, that thing was a breeze to raise, wasn't it?"
"It really was."
The Kraken might have been called an assault carrier, but strictly speaking it was a living monster. If there were no enemies around, you could just toss it captured ships slated for scrapping, aging hulls, or even raw resources, and it would level up — grow — on its own.
Our Hresvelgr, on the other hand, was an ordinary mechanical warship built by the Earth Federation, as the Norse mythology name made plain enough. Needing actual combat to level was, in that sense, only natural.
Of course, the flip side of monsters having such broken leveling methods was that other factions' ships performed far better at low levels. But since we were talking about growth through leveling right now, I decided not to dwell on that.
And that first problem only made the second one worse.
Namely: there wasn't much time left before the players finished clearing the current event and the next one kicked off.
[Proof that I searched the gallery for keywords like "event clear"]
Did a quick search on the gallery and there are already close to 20–30k clear confirmation posts alone.
At this rate, half the player base is gonna clear within a week tops, right?
[Image estimating the ratio of players who don't use the gallery]
Gallery active users are supposedly around 110k, and just from those we've already got close to 30k clears.
But the thing is, most players don't even post or comment on the gallery — they just lurk.
Factor those people in and you've gotta figure at least 100k to 200k have already cleared.
[Event clear confirmation shot]
People keep talking about how the random rolls can give you something that doesn't match your build.
Even so, they clearly designed the level so that anyone can clear it.
For dungeon exploration types, just throwing in a single SSS-grade superhuman is enough to clear. And according to my friends, the ship exploration events are just a matter of tossing in a few fast ships and spreading them out, so...
"Hmm."
There was a lot of noise in those threads, but the takeaway was simple: in three days to a week at most, the overall player clear rate would blow past fifty percent. Which meant the time left to level our Hresvelgr-class was painfully tight compared to when we'd leveled the Kraken.
And separate from Hresvelgr's leveling, I still had other things to handle.
"Oh, Commander?"
"What is it."
"The base upgrade is complete!"
"Oh."
Base Tier 7 Upgrade Complete!
That was it — our long-forgotten Base Tier 7 upgrade, the one that had taken so long I'd nearly written it off, had finally finished.
"At last!"
"I believe the phrase is 'at long last,' isn't it?"
"That doesn't matter. What matters is that we don't have time to sit around."
I dismissed the long-awaited construction-complete message and, as always, pulled up the facilities list. And as always, I found myself groaning at the utterly deranged prices I still couldn't get used to.
> Available Base Upgrade Facilities
> Additional Docking Facilities (Minerals 15,000 / Rare Resources 2,000)
> Resource Warehouse (Minerals 9,000 / Rare Resources 500)
> Aviation Command (Minerals 252,700 / Rare Resources 35,000)
> Fleet Association (Minerals 350,000 / Rare Resources 49,000)
> Special Design Bureau (Minerals 181,500 / Rare Resources 55,000)
"Ughhh..."
It wasn't enough that they now demanded rare resources on top of minerals — a single building cost enough to make the entire base's operations wobble. Anyone would groan looking at numbers like that.
But only for a moment.
"Jessica, how many resources do we have left?"
"About 400,000 minerals, and rare resources are at 50... uhh... around 53,000?"
"Perfect."
Hearing we had just enough resources left to build at least one of them, I settled in for some serious deliberation.
Our Base Is Level 7 Now! (2)
After deep contemplation, I reached a conclusion worthy of a red-blooded battleship enjoyer.
Sure, we'd gotten our hands on a pure glass-cannon spear meta with zero tanking — but how could I possibly give up on a proper gunnery slugfest?
Granted, in this game regular battleships were really just for plinking damage from ultra-ultra-ultra-long range, so they were a bit removed from the fantasy I had in mind...
Ah, but I can't resist a fleet decisive battle.
Real-man trait: good at fleet decisive battles.
That meta never went out of style, so I was about to slam the build button on the Fleet Association (expensive as hell), following the call of my fleet-battle-loving soul.
It would eat a lot of minerals and rare resources, sure — but this event hadn't been the kind that burned through resources anyway, so I figured it wouldn't be a huge problem.
Or at least, that was the plan, until I tried to start pumping out some real-man battleships during the event window.
"Commander, even so, I really don't think that's the right call."
"What."
Our bunny-bunny Jessica immediately shoved an objection in my face.
"What do you mean by that, Jessica?"
"What do I mean? You already know perfectly well, Commander. You keep trying to chase these ridiculous romantic notions, so someone has to grab you by the leash."