Feel the Weight of the Armband
They're sending it a lot faster than I expected.
Aside from skipping the declaration of war and opening with a surprise first strike, everything else about the other side's conduct had been oddly agreeable. Looking over the apology mail that had just arrived — complete with the 10,000 minerals tucked inside as compensation for that opening shot — I found myself hoping we'd end up on the same team someday, then went ahead and claimed the victory rewards from the battle.
And just like that, our resource situation had suddenly become a whole lot more comfortable.
"Jessica, what's our current total resource count?"
"Yes, sir. Factoring in the compensation that just came in… minerals sit at about 87,000, and rare resources around 6,000."
Hearing that, I immediately opened the base construction upgrade window and started picking what to build next.
Oh, only three left now.
Looking over the dwindling facility list, I felt a genuine swell of emotion. After a moment's thought, I figured it might be time to start with the Forward Base.
The price tag was obscenely high, sure — but once you built one, you could guarantee a resource zone's safety against raids from other factions. And unlike the old method of scattering unmanned drones for surveillance, this was a way to firmly expand my own territory.
Of course, Jessica had her doubts about that choice, and she wasn't shy about voicing them.
"Commander, after this battle we've got a lot of ships that need repairs or new construction… wouldn't dumping too many resources at once be a bad idea?"
"Hmm… you think so?"
"Yes. And it's not just our fleet that needs work — we should at least cover repair costs for Leonard's fleet as well."
"Hmmm."
"At minimum, I think you should leave a reserve of about 50,000, Commander."
"Fifty thousand, huh…"
At Jessica's words, I took a moment to think it through.
If I remember right, we're pulling in roughly three to five thousand minerals a day now.
And through the base's own Resource Synthesis Production Facility, we were getting an extra thousand minerals every week on top of that. But the fact that Jessica was still telling me this meant the fleet recovery and repair costs were going to run a lot higher than I'd accounted for.
With that settled in my mind, I nodded and agreed.
"Alright. Shame, but we'll just keep the Forward Base on hold for now."
"A wise decision, Commander."
Still, base upgrades always needed to be kept on track if you wanted any hope of rolling a late-game snowball later. So in place of the Forward Base, I decided to build the Mercenary Dispatch Office listed right below it.
"Then let's put up the Mercenary Dispatch Office instead."
"Ah, that much should be fine."
It wouldn't put any real strain on the repair reserve. The moment I got Jessica's answer, I selected Mercenary Dispatch Office from the available construction list and greenlit the build.
> Mercenary Dispatch Office — Construction in Progress...
> Time Remaining Until Completion: 14 Days 3 Hours 56 Minutes
The Mercenary Dispatch Office was actually one of the smaller buildings and modules you could add to the base — and yet its construction time somehow ran longer than the much larger research labs or the Weapon Development Center.
It was genuinely baffling, but that particular mystery was one of Astral Lagrange's Seven Wonders(?) that even the setting guide never explained. I shook my head at my own pointless speculation, reflected that today had been a long day, and resolved to keep grinding tomorrow, and the day after that, with maximum effort.
And so it went — clashing with nearby factions over this and that, watching a random small clan pick a fight only to get dragged back to the base and thoroughly demolished by Leonard, and surviving the time some lunatic of a player loaded about ten of his supers onto a tank-type armored cruiser and rammed it into the base like an assault pod. While Ignis, Belial, Leonard, and Griyanaar — who had turned herself into the core of a tentacle monster — held the line, Marianne finally finished her business and returned just in time to pull us through.
One spectacular month later, I found myself thinking that for all how busy and chaotic those days had been, time really did fly — and opened the gallery like always to see what the day's hot topic was.
The moment I opened it—
—a post with absurd engagement numbers caught my eye, so I tapped it to see what it was about.
For a second I just sat there, completely blank on what any of that was supposed to mean. But only for a second.
*Ding—♪*
A notification chimed on cue. Leaving the gallery window open, I switched straight to the alert panel to check whatever had just come in.
Are you all thoroughly enjoying the new Faction update?
We write to you regarding a separate matter. We have recently identified that certain commanders' conduct within the community gallery has been exceeding acceptable bounds.
Given that the number of commanders far outstrips our operations staff, we have found ourselves unable to manage the situation alone.
Following internal discussion, we have decided to grant a measure of gallery moderation authority to a selection of commanders.
As for which commanders will receive these privileges — this will not be decided through personal connections on our end. We will establish separate criteria and process selections accordingly.
Those criteria will be awarded to commanders who place in the top 1–10 ranks of an upcoming event.
We look forward to your enthusiastic participation.
After reading the "mail" the gallery had been talking about, I turned my eyes back to the board itself. Sure enough, the outrage that had been bottled up in a single post was now setting the entire gallery on fire.
To be fair, the people driving that particular wave of outrage were still a minority compared to the total player base.
