Chapter 101: A Nobles Fancy Exclusive-use Mobile Coffin (1/2)

“Man, it kinda feels like everything suddenly went into a very stupid direction……”

“There, there. We’re still on a job after all, Hiro-sama. Please do your best for a little while more.”

“Working is tough sometimes……”

I moved Krishna toward the flagship where the earl and Chris were while being gently consoled by Mimi. No matter how you slice it, the troops riding inside that suppression ship or whatever are way outnumbered by the earl’s troops stationed inside the flagship, but they still went for it anyway. And they’re actually doing quite well despite their disadvantage. But even so, there’s still a limit, and they were being gradually taken out.

“Seriously! What is with that ship? Are the designers idiots? Do the people that rode inside that thing have death wishes? If that’s the case, then just slap some anti-ship torpedoes onboard, and it would have been game over. It looks like an overgrown torpedo anyway, so why didn’t they go with that?”

“I heard the total production costs for that type of ship is roughly 25,000,000 Enels. It just wouldn’t be worth the astronomical cost for it to be a one-off kamikaze ship. And it would pose a safety issue if a ship meant for carrying soldiers had anti-ship torpedoes as payload.”

“But don’t ramming a ship and self-destructing immediately and ramming a ship in order to attack with totally outnumbered forces just lead to the same thing? They’re both suicidal acts anyway!”

Since both forces were preoccupied with fighting each other, nothing got in the way of our approach toward the flagship. Anyway, I moved Krishna close to the suppression ship to check it out first.

“Should we just get rid of this thing first?”

“The flagship will leak air if you do that. They probably have ways to deal with it, but it’s better not to carelessly remove that thing for now. It might even cause a sudden explosion if you did it poorly. It’ll greatly damage the flagship if that happens.”

“Yeah. That doesn’t sound good. Just what went through the developer’s heads when they made this thing…?”

Even if the shield emitter is powerful, it would probably still not be able to stand up to a direct hit from a battleship’s main cannon. Since it costs 25,000,000 Enels to produce each ship, the costs would pile up to unreasonable numbers even for a wealthy empire like Graccan. It’s also not a tactic that can be used frequently since it’s impractical.

It might be of use if you wanted to capture a sample of the enemy’s latest battleship model… Nah, probably not. The risk is way huge. In the first place, standard battles between rival starship fleets involve battleships and cruisers getting into a tight formation and blasting away at the enemy from long range. This kind of straightforward assault tactic isn’t usually used.

And I can’t even think of any other situation where a suppression ship with extremely limited use would be a viable option. Or rather, since I haven’t seen this thing in Stella Online at all, that means it’s a unit unique to this particular empire. So it’s a bit similar to my Krishna.

Actually, some players may even try to customize this thing since it does have a number of good things going for it, like the powerful shield emitter, generator, as well as that sharp pointy horn out front. It’s a ship that kinda smells of romance. So if they customize it a bit, slap some weapon systems on it, and make it so that horn charge could be used as a hidden special finishing move, I’m sure lots of em will have a blast with it. There’s a lot of eccentric guys who like that sort of stuff back on Earth after all. I’m almost a hundred percent sure some idiots would turn that horn into a drill.

“It seems the design was approved due to some intense lobbying by factions in the military with help from some of the more influential noble houses. By the way, this ship model was only officially used in battle a total of four times. It looks like this is the fifth one though.”

“And what about the success rate of the charging assault?”

“Including this instance, there’s now a total of three instances when the assault was successfully performed. So, based on that, the success rate is 60%. The other 40% is when the ship got shot down. It’s sometimes described as a noble’s fancy exclusive-use mobile coffin, a surprisingly effective decoy, and the imperial military’s most expensive secret weapon.”