The Siege of Tunguska
Of course, for all the swagger Raksha—or rather, Rotten Water—was putting on display, it wasn't as though nobody had been thinking. Everyone was deep in deliberation, turning the problem over and over in their heads.
As solutions to those worries, they put forward a few ideas of their own. They mobilized the faction expeditionary forces stationed at every clan member's base, and even hired mercenaries en masse—the same mercs they'd been half-ignoring until now—in a desperate effort to pad out their shortfall of small ships. On top of all that effort…
As the price for taking a Level 7 stronghold, the Magellan Clan had already agreed to receive a fixed allotment of resources and Gold every week—and now they were sending additional reinforcements on top of that. Things were still tight, but with this much, they figured individual skill could cover the rest.
…Or so the thought quietly took root among them.
Of course, no matter how many reinforcements they had, the situation remained extremely dangerous by any realistic measure. At the same time, cautious voices began to surface, fretting over what would happen if Magellan Clan betrayed them.
With the risk of Magellan Clan's betrayal "reasonably" accounted for, another force took hold of their thinking: pride. Rank 3 had solo-sieged a stronghold and won—so there was no way Rank 2 and his people couldn't do the same. That pride, that so-called face, quietly seized control of their judgment.
And once pride had swallowed their thinking whole, they stopped paying attention to anything beyond the stronghold siege itself… a failure that would, in time, come back to them as a truly fatal consequence.
They wouldn't notice a thing—not until the grand D-Day arrived, and the results came crashing down on their heads.
Raksha and the Rotten Water Clan had never really planned to assault a Level 7 stronghold. They'd simply gotten swept up in everyone else's hype. And then came 350 Magellan Clan players, arriving to "support" them. All told, 432 players reached the battlefield—a theater shaped, just like Icarus's siege before them, by the roughly three thousand stealth ships that had come to spectate—and launched their assault to conquer their target: the Level 7 stronghold, Tunguska Fortress City.
What they put on display was a siege method so far removed from this game's intended playstyle that it defied description—a pure carry built on the players' own raw physical skill.
Watching the live feed, other players' fingers flew across their keyboards, pouring out gasps of awe at the spectacle unfolding before them.
[GIF: A battleship's beam barrage screaming straight at him—he hard-stops mid-flight to dodge, then yaws the hull sideways to slip the follow-up fire]
[GIF: Three heavy torpedoes from a destroyer, planted dead-center into the bridge and detonating]
Bro is out here filming a one-man action movie, is he insane?
Like, weaving that destroyer so perfectly the enemies waste their entire volley. Or taking three torpedoes and landing every single one on the bridge with zero waste, leaving the ship dead in the water. And clearing out the enemy small ships first so the late-arriving strike craft can just clean house—absolute legend.
[JPG: Icarus's fleet grinding forward in a static push]
[JPG: Raksha's strike group tearing across the battlefield, pure physicals, pure slaughter]
One of them is soloing with 50,000 ships or running mutant tactics with specialty hulls, so that colors things—but strategy-wise, Rank 3 Icarus plays it by the book. Meanwhile Raksha just stomps everything with raw physical skill, exactly like the rumors said.
[JPG: A destroyer squadron weaving through the formation]
In this game or any other, once you hit veteran status, you start thinking your physicals will carry you through literally any situation. Yeah. But realistically, physical skill can't cover everything. Even if your reaction time is a superhuman 0.001 seconds, you can't pull that off in a massive fleet battle or on some sluggish capital ship.
Plenty of guys who half-convinced themselves they were skilled go charging in on pure physicals in places like that and just explode. But Raksha and Rotten Water aren't showing any of that right now. They're only using physicals where high-mobility raid tactics actually work—and they're not ramming capital ships in and spraying full salvos in every direction.
While the community gushed like that, Raksha, the Rotten Water Clan, and the Magellan Clan players who'd come as support completely annihilated Tunguska Fortress City's garrison fleet. Then they locked jaws with the combat fleets that sortied next, posting an outstanding kill-death ratio as they ground through the fighting. The result, roughly two days after the battle began…
[JPG: The final battleship belonging to Tunguska Fortress City going down]
Title says it all