Alliances and Backstabs
And the moment Jessica said that, description windows for the facilities began cascading open in front of me, as if of their own accord.
Faced with description windows that practically screamed Please don't abandon us!!! with every pixel of their being, I felt something twist oddly in my chest. Even so, I had no intention of reversing a decision I'd already made.
"In our current situation, starting with a bunch of minor upgrades still wouldn't let us keep pace with other users or the pirates."
"Is that so…"
Confirming how firm my resolve was, Jessica seemed to accept that there was nothing more worth saying. She simply nodded, making clear she would carry out the order I'd given.
"Then is there anything else you'd like me to handle, Commander?"
"Hmm… anything else."
Of course, the matter at hand wouldn't even begin for at least another two days, so Jessica's question was really about what I needed her doing right now. I turned it over for a while, considering this and that, until—
Come to think of it, I've got nothing.
No matter how hard I thought, nothing useful came to mind. I dropped the brooding pose and spoke to her in a low voice.
"I don't think there's anything more to add. Handle the rest as you see fit."
"Understood, Commander."
The moment the order landed, Jessica dove straight into her work. I opened the community myself to see what information was floating around today—and, of course, left the global chat open beside it so I could catch any important news in real time.
As always, the global chat was rolling some completely random topic for the day. Curious what the community looked like, I opened it and clicked the first post that appeared.
Guess the situation's that bad — starting a few days ago, users have been forming temporary clans and alliances all over the place.
Figured I'd organize it for myself and, while I was at it, put up a simple rundown for the rest of you.
Just keep in mind this only covers what's been confirmed on the board.
How many there actually are out there? Idk~
What the hell is this.
Out of nowhere, users were forming alliances left and right, and someone had already put up a reasonably thorough summary of the whole mess.
Did I sleep for like an extra week or something?
Stuff that hadn't been visible as of yesterday was suddenly everywhere today. Regardless, I wasn't about to fall behind this damn trend, so I started skimming through the gallery posts at speed.
After about an hour of digging, I could draw a simple conclusion.
Ahh. So newbies and veterans alike are pre-forming teams because they've decided going solo is too hard to survive.
The thought settled in, and I found myself shaking my head.
Not that user alliances were wrong in themselves. The veteran coalitions, the Pirate Coalition born from filtering out trolls until only the villains who could actually stick together remained — as long as everyone involved agreed, banding up clearly made survival easier.
Granted, there was one minor catch: when users clustered together, the pirates raiding them clustered right back up to match. But for anyone who'd survived this far, smashing a packed pirate swarm through defeat-in-detail was the kind of thing they could handle in their sleep.
What actually worried me was something else entirely…
Guy proposed an alliance, so we relocated our base with someone else — and the second we arrived, he hit the base with his own fleet lmao
Then the bastard told us that if we wanted to live, we should become his slaves.
Funny part is we each had two cruisers, and this clown was flexing with nothing but destroyers.
So I got pissed, sortied everything from the base whether it got hit or not — and the little shit panicked and ran off with his base immediately?
Anyone who knows where this fucker is, drop a tip.
Offering 2000 minerals.
As the freshly posted "bounty" (…?) made clear enough — unlike the old clan system, where alliances were enforced by game mechanics, these were built purely on individual trust and reputation. Verbal contracts, basically. Which meant there was zero structural protection against exactly this kind of backstab.
Especially for someone like me, who'd been surviving solo from the start, jumping into one of these alliances without knowing better could turn out to be an extremely dangerous choice.
The clan system isn't even out yet and they're already power-tripping among themselves — disgusting, right?
And what are they doing with it? Trying to lock down resource zones with that bullshit — also disgusting, right?
Agree? Yeah. Agree.