Watch Closely What I Can Do (2)
The real problem is that while the player doing the conquering is busy grinding their fleet down against the defense fleet, some other bastard can backstab them ridiculously easily.
When a clan does it, sure — the players who join the siege take losses, but other clan members cover for them, and they can rebuild fast off the clan's stockpiled resources, right?
But over there, you've got to operate alone. Recovery's slow, and there's nobody to watch your back. If there was somebody, you wouldn't be a solo in the first place.
And yeah, it actually happened recently — a few rankers tried sieging a city, got backstabbed by other players and wrecked, and before the backstabber could even lock the city down, some other guy piled on and started chewing at them too… then the city fleet respawned and they all went down together. That kind of garbage.
Because of that circus, a few solo rankers completely lost their minds and bailed for Humanity with its solid welfare system, or Loki, which is pretty chill about other players trolling. Happens a lot, apparently.
And what those gallery posts made clear was that Jessica's concerns were entirely justified.
I nodded at Jessica, who still wore that worried look, and spoke calmly.
"Jessica, your concerns are very… hmm, no. They're perfectly reasonable."
"Right?"
"But just so we're clear — I never said I'd only be using my fleet for this fight."
"…Come again?"
Classic solo player trait: use whatever you can get your hands on.
And among the things I could use was the one every player who ever mentioned me always bundled into the same complaint — the pirate mercenary companies I could hire without limit. Second, Princess Luca's personal hobby fleet, which kept multiplying on its own as long as I fed it resources. And last… after I'd stripped my fleets for one reason or another and nearly gotten myself killed, Marianne had gone ahead and handed me full command authority over several thousand pirate ships.
Add my main force on top of that — including the Kraken and the Hresvelgr — and move them all together?
I ran the numbers in my head. For all my talk about solo-player pride this and that, the actual force on the table was basically a full clan deploying in earnest. It was more than doable.
I laid that out for Jessica, and at the same time made it clear I had no intention of attacking right this second.
"Jessica. What are we building right now?"
"Pardon? Ah… the Aerospace Command."
"Right. And until that's finished… hang on."
> Aerospace Command — Under Construction…
> Time Remaining Until Completion: 20 days, 13 hours, 0 minutes, 19 seconds
"Mm. About twenty days left. I'm not launching the attack until that's done — and not until my first large carrier finishes repairs after that."
"Ahh."
"And while we're waiting, picture us scraping together every extra resource we can, then jacking up the resource stipend to Princess Luca's fleet."
"…!"
"We push leveling and proficiency as high as they'll go, and at the end we take all the resources we've stockpiled, hire a massive mercenary armada, and roll in."
"…That would be something."
At that point I'd have Marianne plus my existing eight supers, the bearded pirate admiral whose name I could never remember and his subordinate captains, mercenary commanders who could punch at S-grade or higher on a good day, heavily modified chimeras and beasts, and a solid assault force packed with every kind of pirate troop. A power that genuinely made the chest swell.
Watch closely what I can do.
Of course, hiring thousands of mercenary companies would burn close to a hundred thousand resources a day just in upkeep.
"Commander, but then you'd really be burning through resources in the hundred-thousand range every day. How do you plan to cover that?"
"Mm."
"Our current maximum stockpile caps are 5.5 million minerals and barely a million rare resources."
"Mm."
"You do remember that hiring the mercenary companies costs resources too, right?"
"Mm."
"Wouldn't our base get completely cleaned out of resources before we even start the stronghold siege?"
"Ah… so that's what you were worried about."
I shrugged at Jessica's fretting and told her that wasn't a problem either.
"No need to stress. I'll just hire them all in one go on the day of the siege… and cancel the contracts the second the siege ends."
"Oh…"
"Even if we push the stockpile to the hard cap and hire thousands of companies, two or three days should hold."
"At that scale, it should be fine."
We were never going to drag a city — a stronghold — siege out over a long campaign anyway. As I'd said before, this whole neighborhood was a den of thieves. If I took my sweet time with the siege, the other jackals nearby would come pouring in, all hey, just one bite for me!, and start nibbling the defense fleet down piece by piece. That was extremely, extremely, extremely likely.
And that would be the good outcome. In the worst case, they wouldn't nibble the defense fleet at all — they'd start chewing on my fleets, deliberately stretching the mercenary contracts out exponentially. From the start, our only real option was a lightning short decisive battle. Nothing else was on the table.
So we settled on that plan. Aerospace Command still had about twenty days of construction left, and the large carrier's repairs would take another four days or so after that. I intended to wring every last drop out of the remaining month and stockpile as many resources as humanly possible.
Bluntly put, the mercenary hiring system only limited swapping companies to once a day. As long as you had the budget, the moment you hired one, a fresh company filled the slot. For a mass hire ahead of a stronghold siege, the only real requirement was resources — lots of them. Pushing the stockpile all the way to the hard cap became my goal.
But for that, our current resource intake was… still pretty badly short.
"Hmm… Jessica. Jessica."
"You only need to say it once, Commander."
"What's our resource situation right now?"
"The intake rates?"
"Not just that — everything. Every place we're spending and every place we're bringing it in. Give me the full picture."
"Mm… one moment."
On my order, Jessica started tapping and checking things on the tablet she was holding, then eventually projected a separate hologram screen in front of me and spoke evenly.
"Alright — first, daily resource intake from the base itself is 6,200 minerals and 470 rare resources."
"Hmm."
"From the mining fleets, we're currently getting about 23,000 minerals and around 8,100 rare resources."
"Forward bases?"
"You've built three total. Two of them are producing 6,000 minerals and 1,300 rare resources. The last one should come fully online in about two days, but…"
"Mm. Fair enough — we'll know once it actually starts mining."
"Yes. The projected numbers are 2,500 minerals and 800 rare resources, though."
"Quests?"
"Ah — daily quests bring in 3,000 minerals and 500 rare resources."
As she spoke, Jessica tapped the figures into the hologram one by one.
> Icarus — Astral Base Resource Status
> Current Daily Intake: Minerals 33,315 | Rare Resources 10,370
"Hmm. Hmmmmm."
"That's roughly where we land."
It felt like only yesterday I'd been bragging that daily intake had cracked twenty thousand. Now we were printing thirty thousand. Probably thanks to Rain's resource-intake buff jacking up the base's generation rate. A deeply satisfying feeling settled in my chest — for a moment, anyway.
Because from that total, we now had to subtract Princess Luca's hobby-fleet stipend, plus the eye-watering upkeep from battleships, carriers, and battlecruisers plastered across the fleet roster.
"…Mm. And after we pull out everything that's consuming resources?"
"If I average the fleet repair costs, then add upkeep, hiring fees, and all the miscellaneous expenses?"