Ero Renaissance (1)
That's because the rest of the newly added auxiliary buildings are absolute garbage.
There are exactly two new buildings.
One is the Strategic Tactics Research Lab. Build it and it gives your fleet a bunch of minor buffs. But the boost is only about one or two levels' worth — unless you're in a high-level duel between absolute monsters where tiny margins decide everything, it barely matters.
The other is the Superhuman Soldier Training Facility. Don't get excited — SSS-grades don't pop out of this thing. The average output is D-, and if you're lucky you might pull a C-grade Super.
Gacha characters get stronger as you level them. These ones? Straight-up treated as 'regular troops.' No leveling. Period.
Being completely honest, they're just slightly tougher assault infantry — about on par with the special ops units you can pull from each faction's detachment pool.
And while the base itself levels up fast, those new auxiliary buildings take forever. They also devour resources like crazy.
Stage 8 as a whole is just that underwhelming. People who hit Stage 8 will probably start complaining within days: "Are you kidding me? We waited all that time just for a slightly faster base upgrade timer?"
As the wiki tab laid out, a Stage 8 base was the very embodiment of underwhelming design. That said, it wasn't like we had any real alternative. So while we happily siphoned resources and still had the Level 5 stronghold serving as a solid defensive wall, we resolved to just grit our teeth and keep building.
Ero Renaissance. (1)
And right as the base upgrade kicked into full swing—
"Commander. Commander."
"What."
"Thinking about it, once we hit Stage 8 and start expanding the fleet while slamming up buildings left and right… won't we run short on resources?"
"…That's a fair point."
Looking at the Stage 8 upgrade tree, every single auxiliary building was going to guzzle resources at an absurd rate. On top of that, as Jessica pointed out, I also had to factor in the resource drain from constructing additional ships. So I decided to get ahead of the problem and cook up a plan of my own.
Not that I had a whole lot of options available in the current situation.
"Jessica, are there any large-scale resource zones nearby that haven't been mined yet?"
"Hmm… there is one, but fifteen other Commanders are already feeding off it. Will that be okay?"
"Yeah, no. That won't work."
Forward bases existed specifically to monopolize a resource zone. You couldn't just drop one on a site other players were already sharing. Sure, with a Level 5 stronghold I could probably tank five or even ten of them if they came swinging — but those fifteen weren't even from the same clan. At least five or six different clans were mixed in there.
If I waltzed in declaring, "This place belongs to Icarus now!" and planted a forward base, the karmic blowback was easy to predict.
"That bastard's going nuts just 'cause he hit Level 5. Disgusting."
"We already ganked Raksha. How about we gank Icarus next?"
"I'm in."
…Yeah. That was exactly how it would go down, no crystal ball required. I'd watched in real time on the gallery what kind of catastrophe Rotten Water walked into by mindlessly picking fights with everyone around them. I had zero interest in racking up unnecessary bad karma, so I decided to leave that zone alone.
But with no viable spot for a forward base at the moment, I went looking for a different approach.
"Let's see… then as soon as the Stage 8 upgrade finishes, we build docking facilities first and expand the resource mining fleet."
"That's the plan?"
"Pretty much. And if a new resource zone turns up along the way, we drop a forward base on it then."
"Got it."
Repairs on the two battleships were already underway. No new ships needed construction, and the daily quests were already running… Realizing I suddenly had nothing urgent to do, I savored the rare satisfaction of free time — then immediately decided to upload the reverse-bunny strip show photos I'd taken a while back to the gallery.
Of course, Jessica — standing right beside me — expressed her displeasure by flicking my head with her rabbit ears.
"Excuse me, Commander."
"Hm?"
"We wore these for you to see. Not to satisfy the visual appetites of the general public."
Watching her puff her cheeks out like a balloon, I let out a quiet snort of laughter and calmly opened my mouth. Or rather — I didn't just open my mouth. I casually pulled up the various images I hadn't uploaded yet and showed them to her.
"The real stuff is for my eyes only, Jessica."
"…"
"Those were pure bait. Through them, the gallery will once again usher in the age of the Ero Renaissance."
When I laid out my grand vision for the Ero Renaissance — the dawn of the Great Erotic Age — Jessica's reaction was, how to put it…
I genuinely don't know what to say to that.
"I genuinely don't know what to say to that."
"Oh."
She was so thoroughly flustered that her expression, tone, and body language all aligned in perfect, unified confusion. While she wrestled with the dilemma of whether to be glad I was carefully hoarding their "real" erotic photos, or to scold me for abandoning my duties as admin and brazenly flooding the board with softcore content — I settled in to watch the Ero Renaissance bait and the resulting fashion shows sprout up across the gallery like weeds.
And maybe it was because none other than the admin himself had essentially set softcore pics as a guideline, but not only the usual creative types — even ordinary users with artisan-level dedication — started quietly rolling out all kinds of inventive outfits. On top of that, various "perverted" gentlemen kept making appearances of their own.
Yes. This is it. This is exactly it.
Watching the situation I'd wanted unfold before my eyes, I felt a deep, full satisfaction welling up from somewhere inside me.
But if there was one thing I hadn't anticipated about this so-called "Ero Renaissance"—