I Became a Commander in a Crappy SF Game.

Ch.77Strike First for Victory, But the End Won’t Be Pretty (4)

by fnovelpia

After suddenly losing most of his fleet and barely managing to save only his precious rare ships, Pierre was:

“I’ve been baited! That 3rd-ranked bastard built a mercenary dispatch center first instead of building a fleet from the beginning!”

“Is that so?”

“Yes! I should have realized something was wrong when his fleet seemed too small!”

He was venting his frustration toward Icarus, who had supposedly deceived him(?), while laboring under some strange misunderstanding.

Of course, if Icarus himself were to hear this, he would have responded with disbelief, wondering where Pierre was getting these delusional ideas from.

Unfortunately, since Icarus wasn’t present at the scene…

Pierre continued filming his delusion movie, repeatedly expressing anger toward Icarus, but…

“By the way, Commander, although some ships have returned through emergency warp… even counting all returning vessels, we only have 10% of our original fleet left.”

“…We were slaughtered that badly?”

While they had been vastly outnumbered from the start…

While they were being attacked from both sides as Icarus’s fleet, which had been under attack, launched a counteroffensive…

Pierre’s fleet had suffered truly extreme damage as a result of his desperate gamble to save at least the “rare ships” if nothing else.

“This is actually the most optimistic assessment… many ships are in such bad condition that it would be better to dismantle them for resources.”

“What’s the approximate ratio we’re looking at?”

“At least 30% of our remaining ships… should be considered for dismantling.”

“Haaa… damn it.”

When Pierre closed his eyes, he could still see visions of his ships exploding all around him.

He kept massaging his temples while contemplating how to resolve this situation.

But such contemplation didn’t last long.

“By the way, Commander, at this rate, won’t that commander Icarus’s fleet come to attack us?”

“…Ah, that’s right!”

Just as his adjutant Maya pointed out.

If they remained idle, that crazy 3rd-ranked player might deliberately bring his fleet to crush them at any moment.

“Email, email… no, status window!”

Pierre immediately opened his status window and checked the special notification window showing the war status with Icarus.

—————————————-

<Pierre-Icarus Invasion War>

<Y/N>

—————————————-

“Urrrgh… YES.”

As soon as he declared surrender:

“Maya, sorry, but could you watch me write this email?”

“Yes, Commander. I’ll help with whatever I can.”

Whether Icarus accepted his surrender or not, Pierre sent an additional apology via email along with a preemptive 10,000 minerals.

Of course, this meant that including the surrender compensation, a catastrophic 60,000 minerals would be lost in one go.

“Still, it’s better than having all our base facilities destroyed and having to rebuild from scratch, right?”

“You’re absolutely right, Commander.”

Pierre, trusting his increasingly strong survival instinct, chose to cleanly offer up resources instead of maintaining pointless pride.

At the same time, he harbored thoughts of leaving the Earth Federation soon to join the monster faction.

No matter how much he loved romance, he had to survive first, didn’t he?

Besides, he realized that later on, he could simply legally “requisition” those super-large ships anyway.

==========

“Commander, the transport ship carrying surrender compensation from Commander Pierre will arrive at our base soon.”

“Hmm, he’s quite an agreeable fellow.”

‘He’s sending it much faster than I expected.’

Seeing the opponent’s actions that pleased me in many ways—except for the surprise first strike without even a declaration of war—

I looked at the apology email that had just arrived with its 10,000 minerals and decided to accept the battle victory reward, hoping to meet him as a teammate someday.

And with this, we suddenly had plenty of resources to spare.

“Jessica, what’s our current total resource count?”

“Yes, including all the incoming rewards… we have 87,000 minerals and about 6,000 rare resources.”

Hearing Jessica’s report, I immediately opened the base construction upgrade window to choose what to build next.

—————————————-

<Additional Docking Facility> (2,500)

<Forward Base> (30,000)

<Mercenary Dispatch Center> (17,500)

—————————————-

‘Oh, only three options left now.’

After feeling a surge of emotion at seeing how few facilities remained to be built, I contemplated whether I should build the forward base first.

Although ridiculously expensive, building just one would protect a resource zone from other factions’ surprise attacks.

Unlike the current method of spreading unmanned drones for surveillance, it would allow me to expand my definitive “territory.”

Of course, Jessica raised some objections to my choice with slight skepticism:

“Commander, considering we need to repair and build new ships after this battle… isn’t it a bad idea to spend too many resources at once?”

“Hmm… is that so?”

“Yes, and we should help cover repair costs for Leonard’s fleet too, not just our own.”

“Hmmmm.”

“I think we should keep at least 50,000 in reserve, Commander.”

“50,000…”

At Jessica’s words, I took some time to think.

‘According to my memory, we now earn about 3,000-5,000 minerals daily.’

And through the base’s <Resource Synthesis Production Facility>, we get an additional 1,000 minerals every week.

But the fact that Jessica spoke to me like this means…

The fleet repair and maintenance costs would be much higher than I had anticipated.

After organizing my thoughts, I nodded and agreed with Jessica.

“Alright, then unfortunately we’ll have to put the forward base on hold for now.”

“That’s a wise decision, Commander.”

However, since base upgrades always need to be done diligently to affect the late-game snowball effect, I decided to build the mercenary dispatch center instead of the forward base.

“Then let’s build the mercenary dispatch center instead.”

“That should be affordable enough.”

Since it wouldn’t put too much strain on our repair reserve funds, I selected the ‘Mercenary Dispatch Center’ from the construction list as soon as Jessica responded, and decided to proceed with construction.

—————————————-

<<<Time remaining until completion: 14 days 3 hours 56 minutes>>>

—————————————-

What’s strange is that while the mercenary dispatch center is relatively small compared to other buildings or modules added to this base, somehow the construction time is longer than much larger facilities like various research labs or the <Weapons Development Center>.

It was truly incomprehensible, but since this was one of the seven wonders(?) of Astral Lagrange not explained even in the setting guide…

I shook my head thinking I was having useless thoughts, and reflecting that today had been quite challenging, I resolved to put in my beeeest effort to live well tomorrow and the day after.

==========

And so, after clashing with nearby factions here and there…

After a small clan picked a fight out of nowhere, only to be brought to our base and utterly destroyed by Leonard…

After some crazy user crashed into our base with a tanker-type armored cruiser loaded with about 10 superhumans in assault pods…

While we were barely holding on with the power of Ignis, Berial, Leonard, and Griyanar who created a tentacle monster using herself as the core…

We were finally saved thanks to Marian who returned after finishing her work…

After experiencing many spectacular moments like these, a month has now passed.

Despite how busy and spectacular these days have been, I thought about how quickly time flies, and decided to open the gallery as usual to check today’s hot topics.

And the moment I opened the gallery:

—————————————-

-[Hey, did you see the new announcement?](35,645)

—————————————-

A post with tremendous engagement caught my eye, so I immediately clicked on it to see what it was about…

—————————————-

Title: Hey, did you see the new announcement?

Author: Anonymous

Content: [Check the announcement message notification]

It’s an announcement but I didn’t get a notification so I checked

Apparently there’s an event to select gallery moderators, is this for real?

—————————————-

For a moment, I was dumbfounded, wondering what this was all about.

But that didn’t last long.

-Ding♬

With the natural notification sound, I left the gallery window open and immediately checked the notification window to see what new alert had arrived.

0 Comments