The Teleport Ambush
In short, that was how those precious capital ships got mauled—mobility, armor, the works.
Aside from their beam weapons, which were weak by design thanks to outdated power cores, everything else—missiles, torpedoes, shells—was still perfectly functional. And those perfectly functional munitions were now being used by the Ancient Empire's small ships to put the players through absolute hell.
The real problem was the fallout: nearly every player had just eaten a faceful of teleport assault, which meant even the ones who'd been doing fine—like me—were suddenly thrown into a frantic, blood-soaked free-for-all.
—KWAANG! KWAANG! BOOOM!
—WUUUUUUUUUUM!
—"Twenty-three enemy destroyers approaching from the front!"
—"Five destroyers and thirty-five frigates at eight o'clock!"
—"Enemy fleet reappearing from the rear—a small detachment including light cruisers!"
"Leave the rear to Captain Lepant. Aquarius and Belial, handle the frontal defense as you see fit."
—"Understood."
—"Yes, Commander."
Of course, calling it a free-for-all was a little generous.
"We have the Kraken! We have the Hresvelgr! We have Wurong! What the hell is even the problem here?!"
"Uh… nothing?"
"Exactly."
"…?"
Speaking as the player with the highest teleport proficiency among everyone currently online, I could say with absolute certainty that a teleport of that caliber was hard-capped at once per day.
Which meant…
While the other players' precious dreadnoughts and heavy battleships—those delicate, pampered beauties—were getting beaten half to scrap by a swarm of damned small ships and driven to the brink of total loss…
…those same desperate counterattacks forced the teleport-assaulting enemy fleets to soak up attrition with no further reinforcements coming.
And the result?
The enemy teleport assault force that had been grinding itself down against the super-capital ships at the heart of the front line was wiped out completely.
Of course, while we were busy cleaning up the small ships rampaging through the fleet core, the enemy fleets had likewise been shredding the players' faction detachments and mercenary companies—but that cut both ways.
Not that anyone particularly cared.
From the players' perspective—well, most of them, anyway—a faction detachment or merc company ground down against the enemy's main-force capital ships? You just hired a new one. Mental damage simply wasn't a factor.
And more importantly, in a situation like this, the players held an absolutely massive advantage.
"Tell Krakens Two and Three to launch their strike craft and attack in full force."
"Yes, Commander."
"Kraken One—teleport a missile swarm, strategic missiles included, straight into the enemy flagship!"
—"On it right away, Commander!"
Unlike before, ships capable of teleportation—like my Kraken—had become somewhat available on the market. So it wasn't just three carriers. Tens of carriers' worth of strike craft and missiles came screaming toward the enemy fleet…
No—more precisely, toward the enemy flagship (presumably) that had teleported the fleet in.
And just as my earlier analysis had predicted for a pure fleet-combat design philosophy, anything below dreadnought-class among the Ancient Empire ships carried maybe one or two point-defense CIWS mounts if it was destroyer-class or smaller. Even cruiser-class and above rarely had more than three. Formation AA or not, they were getting unilaterally beaten into paste by the strike craft.
Of course, I'd already mentioned this earlier—but whether it was an Ancient Empire design concept or not, the dreadnought-class vessels packed roughly three times the CIWS of a standard dreadnought.
Which meant our poor little gnat friends, and even our trump-card strategic missiles on a point-blank teleport assault, got intercepted in a truly spectacular fashion.
And for all that overinvestment in air defense, their own firepower and durability did leave a little something to be desired…
Maybe it was because the command AI was personally piloting it.
It left the overall fighting to the other dreadnoughts and battleship-class vessels densely packed nearby, while the flagship itself diligently stuck to air defense and evasive maneuvers.
From the players on the receiving end, it was the kind of performance that made dual-stream swearing basically mandatory.
But then…
—"Commander."
"Hm?"
—BOOM! BOOM! KWAANG!
—"We have successfully destroyed the enemy flagship's propulsion systems. However, we have expended all munitions, so we will withdraw for now."
"Oh."
In a way even more of an all-purpose death stick than the Hresvelgr, the Niranzara had once again quietly snapped the enemy flagship's ankles.
Suddenly reduced to a sitting duck, the enemy flagship flailed around for a moment before getting hammered and blown apart by our enraged main battle line.
So, who took the heavier losses in the end?
Anyway, the moment Stage Two ended like that, we returned to base as a matter of course.
I ordered repairs to begin on our fleets—which had quietly taken a fair amount of attrition—then opened the gallery to check the other players' reactions.
And the moment the gallery loaded, the responses were, predictably…
Yeah, you too?
Nobody had seen a "ship teleport assault" coming, so of course that was where the reaction was most explosive.
And a post with over a million comments had a way of drawing the eye all on its own—so (presumably) everyone else, myself included, clicked it like we were under a spell, just to see what was inside.
The problem was that whoever wrote a post attracting that much attention had apparently set their password to something like "1234."
The moment I hit the thread—