The Ancient Empire Was Full of Romance (5)
Some of them even went so far as to slap open threat posts onto the gallery, violent in every possible way.
Of course, those lunatics who tried to pick a fight with Ka-ss never got far. Exactly fifty-nine seconds after their posts went up—
[aggro-trolls hit with 15-day full bans.jpg]
yep
Chat, mail, gallery, and the trade market are all locked out, so just browse the gallery in peace
Rankers already camped out for proper intel the moment the event opened had torn the trolls to shreds. Truly, a job well done.
And right after those aggro-trolls had their necks hung out to dry, the real event notice we had all been waiting for finally dropped. Me and every other user instantly forgot the noise from a minute ago and locked our full attention onto the event update.
The Ancient Empire Was Full of Romance (5)
> STAGE 1 — Advance Fleet Encounter
Large-scale unmanned fleets composed of small and medium ships will assault your bases!
These fleets scale in level according to the forces each Commander currently owns.
If you are docked at a stronghold, an additional fleet dedicated to besieging that stronghold will reinforce separately from the fleet engaging your ships!
└ The stronghold assault fleet includes Large Ships.
> STAGE 2 — Battle Against the Main Force
Once the advance fleet is driven off by the Commanders, the Grand Cross command AI immediately dispatches a massive escort armada toward your bases!
This battle takes place on a dedicated event map, and each engagement begins once 1,000 Commanders have assembled.
Dreadnoughts, large Aircraft Carriers, and other capital ships of every class will clash with the Commanders' fleets.
The "Main Force" operates under the control of a flagship receiving direct orders from the Grand Cross. If that flagship is destroyed, the Main Force receives heavy debuffs.
> STAGE 3 — Fortress Showdown
Confirming that both the advance fleet and the Main Force have been suppressed by the Commanders—
the Grand Cross command AI immediately activates every internal shipyard to restore fleet strength, and simultaneously opens a direct offensive against the Commanders by firing its primary weapon!
Once a sufficient concentration of Commander fleets has gathered, the main gun — the Grand Cross Cannon — will fire!
The Grand Cross Cannon cannot fire in the immediate vicinity of the fortress.
Find and destroy the command control center — the heart of the fortress!
The fortress's main gun, the Grand Cross Cannon, will occasionally fire during battle to support its own drone fleets.
└ The Grand Cross Cannon displays its projected impact zones several days before firing. Plan accordingly.
└ *WARNING!* The Grand Cross Cannon is among the most powerful weapons in existence. Even the outer walls of a high-level stronghold cannot guarantee complete protection.
Titan-class Mobile Fortresses cannot be captured by Commanders. Your understanding is appreciated.
This event has no fixed duration.
PVP is restricted until the event ends.
That's a lot of text.
The first thought that hit me looking at a notice that practically begged for a "long post warning" tag was exactly that. Of course the thought only lasted a moment. I read the whole thing through from top to bottom again, nodded as I carefully mapped the event flow into my head, and said—
"This is going to be rough."
"It is. I never expected them to make the time limit completely unlimited," Jessica agreed.
Maybe it was because this one was a siege in the truest sense of the word. Reading the notice, I got a strong impression the devs were saying either, "Yeah, this event is going to eat aaaaaall of your time," or, "While you lot burn hours enjoying this, we're going to take a little break ourselves."
Whatever the devs were thinking didn't really matter, though. What mattered was that this was a biiiiig event. I shoved the idle speculation into a corner of my mind. There was still time left before the event started, so—
Open, sesame — Community!
I fired up the gallery and chat right away to see how everyone else was reacting. And as always, as ever, the moment our fellow users got a proper announcement, they were already deep in heated discussion among themselves.
[the part at the end of the notice that hammers "mobile fortress capture: IMPOSSIBLE".jpg]
out of touch af;;
Obviously a user should get to take it and, huh? start blasting the main gun at all the pieces of trash out there! Right?
You make these insanely cool ultra-capital ships and then we DON'T get to keep them? That's not normal, is it? kkkkkk
[screenshot of the event notice with the fortress capture line underlined.jpg]
Look carefully — they specifically said only the mobile fortress is uncapturable
Which means everything else is fair game, right?
lmao straight into plunder meta, you're welcome
There was a whole lot of chatter flying around. Most users were pretty down about not being able to claim a mobile fortress for themselves — but a handful were openly excited, treating the whole thing as a golden chance to pad out their fleet strength.