Ch.457″Not all light aircraft carriers are the same.”

As soon as I opened the gallery again, I found the usual pile of reports about Kraken fetishists and sexual deviants.

Plus people who got caught trying to slander other clans and were getting beaten to a pulp.

My priority was to handle these reports filled with all sorts of troublemakers…

‘Why don’t these bastards ever disappear even after getting beaten and dealt with? They’re like infinitely respawning mobs.’

After calmly handling them by issuing 2-3 day bans, I was finally able to open the wiki tab and find the post I was looking for.

And sure enough, quite a few users seemed to have chosen the Rafflesia-class, judging by how active the comments section was on the wiki post I found.

Of course, regardless of that, what mattered most was the Rafflesia-class’s performance.

Pushing aside the mental image of hundreds of comments suddenly ballooning into thousands, I quickly focused on checking the content first.

—

Title: Rafflesia-class Assault Aircraft Carrier Review

Author: Wiki Officer mk-58

Content: [Rafflesia-class concept art.jpg]

There’s not much to explain here

To be honest, the in-game performance matches the lore description pretty well

Since a ranker is currently operating a Kraken-class, I’ll use that as a basis for comparison

Compared to the Kraken, it has a higher floor but a lower ceiling

Overall performance isn’t bad

Given Xenovia’s characteristic of pursuing versatility except for tanking, you can throw this at pretty much any situation and it’ll handle things on its own

But the problem is with the teleport function, which is the alpha and omega like the Kraken’s

When you use it, all functions except for aircraft launching and CIWS gun systems become inoperable

Barriers are disabled, and movement becomes impossible

Even radar detection functions stop working

The problem is that “attitude control” is also included in these disabled functions

So if you get hit by artillery or collide with another ship, you’ll just drift and watch your ship get tossed around on its own

That’s why NPCs never use the teleport function in large-scale fleet battles unless there’s something that can protect the Rafflesia from getting hit

Obviously, since the armor is paper-thin, even rockets or missiles from fighter-bombers will deal painful damage, so if enemy fleets get even slightly close, you’re screwed regardless of teleportation

And the speed feels much slower in many ways

I mean, it’s not frustratingly slow like Earth Federation or Space Monster super-large ships

But it completely lacks that subtle agility you’d expect from the Xenovia Empire

Everything else is just decently good

The function loss from teleporting only lasts 10-15 minutes at most, which isn’t that long considering the nature of fleet battles

Oh, and although it’s not mentioned in the lore, this has fewer assault pods than the Kraken

The aircraft carriers seem numerous with flight decks everywhere, but even with intense leveling, it’s about the same as the Kraken (around 5,500 units)

—

Edit

I was wondering why there were suddenly so many comments, but I see the Rafflesia has been released

As summarized above, unlike the Kraken, you need to think very carefully when using teleport

Comments

-[Kyaaaa I’m now a teleport owner too!]

-˪[Congrats]

-[Oh I see]

-[Can’t just click through everything, huh?]

—

After realizing that “it’s similar to the Kraken and has a critical weakness like the Kraken,” I nodded with satisfaction at the performance level, which was much better than expected.

What was particularly excellent was that the “lore performance” and “actual performance” matched very well.

So I immediately filled the Rafflesia with carriers using my minerals.

“Tiamat.”

“Yes! Commander!”

“Include the Rafflesia-class with the Kraken and other large carriers, and go work on proficiency in the surrounding area.”

“Yes, I’ll do that right away!”

I told Tiamat, who was watching from the command center screen beside me, to start leveling up the Rafflesia.

Perhaps it was because she could now “definitely” feel the thrill of simultaneously controlling thousands of aircraft.

Or maybe it was simply because she had more ships under her command.

Either way, Tiamat showed an extremely happy expression as she cheerfully went off to sound air raid alarms for the pirates who naturally “respawned” in the area.

—

While Tiamat was happily playing with her new toy, the Rafflesia.

I was collecting my daily quest rewards and spending my time in a thoroughly ordinary manner as usual.

“By the way, Commander, I was wondering about something.”

“Hmm?”

“Are you not planning to hire a mercenary corps for the Spiralis base?”

“…Now that you mention it, Spiralis can hire mercenaries too, right.”

Jessica pointed out something I had forgotten due to being so busy lately.

Thinking she was right, I immediately opened the Spiralis base management window to hire a mercenary corps.

—

<Spiralis Research Base Mercenary Corps Hiring Menu>

<Fleet composition when hiring mercenary corps is as follows:>

<Base level x100 points>

<Current base level: 5>

<The mercenary corps’ fleet will be adjusted to ‘500 points’.>

<Commander: ???>

<A random commander will be assigned when you hire the mercenary corps.>

<Note that the mercenary corps commander may or may not be a superhuman.>

—

As I read this information, feeling like I was rolling a not-quite-guaranteed gacha, I pressed the hire button…

“Commander, we’ve detected a large-scale warp reaction ahead.”

“Oh, they’re already coming… um… hmm.”

The moment I saw who had arrived after pressing the hire button, I found it extremely difficult to maintain my composure.

And for good reason, as the composition of the 500-point fleet that arrived after the large-scale warp was…

—

<Mecharshetentakel Experimental Assault Infiltration Strike Force>

<Fleet Composition>

<1 Battleship, 560 Infiltration Strike Ships>

<Commander: Nero>

—

‘Do the developers have some kind of grudge against me?’

It was structured in an even more extreme way than Bendalof’s “Lemmings Strike Force,” where he went around as a 130cm tall girl senior.

“Wow, apart from one battleship, everything else is patrol ships… no, strike ships.”

“Hehehehehehe.”

Since even these “infiltration strike ships” were quite bizarre objects, I found myself shaking my head involuntarily.

“And they’re not even regular strike ships, but infiltration strike ships.”

“Is there some kind of difference?”

When Jessica gave me a look that seemed to ask “what kind of ship is that?” in response to my comment, I called over Bendalof, who had just entered the command center, had him sit down beside me, and said:

“Bendalof, how do your strike ships engage in combat?”

“My ships? Well, we get as close as possible to enemy ships, then unleash all our weapons and quantum torpedoes to inflict maximum damage.”

“So essentially a hit-and-run approach.”

“Exactly… but why do you ask?”

“Actually, the new mercenary corps that just arrived has ships that are similar to yours in many ways, yet different.”

After Bendalof finished his explanation, I said this and then turned my head back to Jessica.

I decided to briefly explain what the “infiltration strike ships” brought by the commander character “Nero” were designed to do.

“Unlike Bendalof’s strike ships, infiltration strike ships literally ‘ram into’ enemy vessels and spread infiltration-type nanomachines or monster cells to take control of them.”

“That sounds like those patrol-sized ships are essentially no different from assault pods.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

After hearing that they were “truly” no different from assault pods.

Jessica took a moment to contemplate before saying:

“If we continue like this, the fleet concepts will get mixed up and become meaningless either way.”

“Eh?”

She calmly made a statement that caused Bendalof, who was sitting in front of us, to waver.