Star Ocean: Starting from the Abandoned Mining Space Station.

Chapter 338: Raid from the opposite direction
Chen Ming's sight was focused on the insect nest planet, which was now bumpy and could be seen from space due to the transformation of the shallow insect nest.

At this time, deep rock layers beneath the earth's crust have been exposed in many places on the Zerghive planet.

But this does not mean that the deep nest covers a small area.

On the contrary, the remaining deep Zerg nests are far more numerous than the shallow Zerg nests that have been transformed into energy crystals and become Zerg cruisers.

It’s just that they are all deep underground, constantly providing endless energy to the Zerg in space.

So what's even more outrageous is this.

Chen Ming now has nothing but the huge fleet of 100,000 Zerg cruisers that covers the sky and the sun on the Zerg hive planet.

We can also create three more similar or even larger fleets.

It's just not necessary.

The function of the deep hive itself is to absorb nutrients from the planet and provide them to the shallow hive for cultivating new individuals.

That's why Chen Ming let the Queen of Insects keep the deep nest and expand it frantically.

Let the bugs here convert the entire planet into nutrients for the Zerg.

The energy crystals produced by these hives will be sent directly to the Zerg warships that set sail through the influence of psychic energy.

This is not what Chen Ming did by calling on his spiritual power, but the Queen of Insects' more powerful ability to coordinate the use of spiritual power after evolving by devouring the fairy tree species.

The Queen can now dispatch a small amount of Chen Ming's psychic effects like a ship spirit to provide the Zerg with extremely powerful logistical support.

The mere existence of these energy crystals is enough to allow these ships to split into an identical Zerg fleet.

And as long as the deep insect nests parasitizing the planet still exist and the planet still exists, then these logistical supports can be said to be unlimited.

The Zerg are able to create one terrifying Zerg fleet after another by completely devouring a planet and destroying all life on it.

This is the Zerg.

This is the Zerg.

So how did the Zerg become extinct? Was it because they had no means of warfare such as battleships?
Oh no.

If you think about it carefully, it seems that it is reasonable for the Zerg to be on the verge of extinction.

The current Queen of Insects has undergone several transformations by Chen Ming's psychic power, and has evolved several times by eating a large number of biological and psychic creatures. The last time she even swallowed a fairy tree species, she evolved into her current existence.

The strength is definitely not on the same level, or even on the same plane, as that of the previous Zerg.

In particular, the Zerg in the past could only consume a portion of the minerals as nutrition.

But now the Zerg can directly swallow all inorganic matter such as soil and rocks as nutrition, and the efficiency is extremely exaggerated.

The Zerg can now convert almost everything into nutrients, which is the most terrifying thing.

But Chen Ming suddenly remembered the previous generation of the Queen of Insects.

It had mastered the ability to convert mechanical warships into biological warships earlier.

Although it may not be as strong as the queen insect it gave birth to, it is out of everyone's sight and no one knows where it is and what it is doing.

And although it does not have Chen Ming's psychic power to optimize itself, if the number of Zerg units increases, it may be possible to achieve such an effect through mutation and evolution alone.

If the first generation queen that escaped really did these things, the situation would seem to become a little complicated.

Never mind. Now is not the time to think about this kind of thing.

Chen Ming restrained his scattered thoughts.

At least with the current level of Zerg cruisers, we can even continue to increase them at a terrifying rate if needed in the future.

Chen Ming felt relieved enough.

But not enough.

With such a huge Zerg fleet, Chen Ming is qualified to confront the Mechanical Race head-on, but this does not mean that he necessarily has the same combat power as the Mechanical Race.

Chen Ming had previously obtained the defense map of the Mechanical Clan through the Equipment Queen, and knew that the Mechanical Clan had at least two battleships and tens of thousands of cruisers, and countless other ships.

But he also believed that the number of the mechanical fleet was definitely more than that.

There are always some fleets used as reserve forces and mobile fleets.

Moreover, in the Mechanical Star Region, which is about to fight with the Empire, the number of Mechanicals serving as reserve forces and mobile fleets is likely to exceed the number of defensive fleets.

So when he is uncertain, he has to use some other data as a reference.

Chen Ming remembered the combat capabilities of some imperial star fields.

For example, the standard combat force of the edge star field is a battleship plus about three thousand cruisers, tens of thousands of destroyers and more guards.

This was the situation in the Galo star field before, but due to internal corruption, the battleships were abandoned and a large number of cruisers were left unmaintained. In addition, many cruisers were scattered in different places throughout the star field, so the defense force seemed very weak.

It's much better now.

Baiquan's branch took over the original army, and two battleships, an offensive-class and a legion-class, were always on standby here.

A large number of cruisers were incorporated into the army after maintenance or reconstruction, and their combat effectiveness basically exceeded the standard of the edge star field.

But it is still not as good as the prosperous star field. The combat effectiveness of the fleet in the prosperous star field can be simply and roughly increased tenfold based on the standards of the marginal star field.

ten times.

There is such a huge gap between the periphery and prosperity.

This is determined by the level of development of the star field itself. The more prosperous the place, the more advanced the ship research will be, the more ship factories there will be, and the better the quality of the ships manufactured will be. This is inevitable.

It is precisely because of this problem that the border combat effectiveness is lower than that within the country due to economic and environmental conditions that the empire has a star field joint war zone system.

This system, which forces prosperous star regions to provide ship support to marginal star regions, is beneficial to marginal star regions.

Of course this is not important now.

The important thing is that Chen Ming can infer the number of ships of the Mechanical Clan based on these numbers.

Based on the approximate number of combat ships in different star fields, the size of the mechanical star fields, and the development level of the mechanical race that he knew,
Chen Ming first took the middle value of the combat power of the marginal star field and the prosperous star field for his speculated mechanical race star field war force.

That is, six battleships and 20,000 cruisers are the main force, and the number of the remaining destroyers will be about ten times higher, and the number of frigates should be two to five times that of destroyers.

Then, on this basis, multiply the number of battleships and cruisers, the main ships in the war, by 1.5 to 2.

This should be the real number.

About ten battleships, about thirty-five thousand cruisers, as well as two hundred thousand destroyers and about forty to one million escorts.

This is the most likely number of fleets that the mechanical race in a star field will have when it is about to face war.

Of course, because Chen Ming was unsure about the number of reinforcements from the foreign mechanical star field, he simply added four battleships.

The others should be pretty much the same.

Compared with an entire empire, the estimated combat power of the Mechanical Star Domain is nothing, but war is not just about comparing size.

Especially foreign wars initiated by the empire.

The scale of the Mechanical Star Domain is large enough for the Empire to take it seriously.

Winning can be said to be a must, but the losses in the process of winning must also be considered.

Strategic depth, external support, and top weapons are all things that war commanders have to consider, and they are all very troublesome.

Even the empire finds it troublesome, so of course Chen Ming cannot solve it easily.

However, for Chen Ming, small and medium-sized spacecraft are nothing.

What does it matter if there are many small and medium-sized spacecraft? They are nothing but food in front of the cruiser.

As for the mechanical cruisers.

Among the same level of spaceships, Chen Ming really couldn't find a few that could compete with the Zerg cruisers, and the mechanical spaceships certainly couldn't.

Not to mention that the number of cruisers is several times different. As long as Chen Ming wants, this gap can be expanded to dozens of times.

Therefore, the only trouble worth Chen Ming's consideration is the mechanical clan's battleship and the main weapons possessed by the battleship.

Capital ships are always a huge hassle.

Because there is a huge gap in strength between cruisers and battleships.

Even if there is only one battleship, even if the enemy can win by relying solely on the number of cruisers, the losses will be extremely heavy.

Not to mention that the mechanical race is not fools, it is impossible for them to let the main battleship go alone.

And if the Mechanical Clan's main battleships were not dispersed, it would be impossible to destroy them with just the cruisers.

Of course Chen Ming would not be so wasteful.

With such a large number of cruisers, he has many options for different combat methods. There is no need to engage in a head-on battle with the mechanical race.

He already had a rough idea of ​​a specific plan in his mind.

A plan modified from the original plan made after the machine.

However, before the specific execution, he had to use so many Zerg cruisers to help the pioneering fleet withdraw.

Avoid having the mechanical clan discover the location of the temporary base while Chen Ming is fighting with them, and then prevent the mechanical clan from becoming desperate and choosing to self-destruct.

Chen Ming felt that if the Mechanical Clan was really given a chance, they would definitely not mind teleporting all their cruisers and main forces to Chen Ming's development base to fight him.

So it must first protect itself.

With the help of a huge fleet and countless worker insects who work hard and only obey orders, the migration and packaging of supplies does not take much time.

The work that would have taken several days to prepare was completed in just a few hours.

Everything from the two colonies was packed up and loaded onto the spacecraft.

Next, in order to avoid the impact of the war, these Zerg and Yuhui spaceships will make three consecutive jumps.

From the original position of the fourth extreme distance jump, it directly reaches the position that should have been reached by the seventh extreme distance jump.

There are still seven jumps to the destination when Chen Ming originally chose the route.

Halfway through the process.

It would take the Empire three full days to reach the place where the phase beasts were wreaking havoc, a distance just three limit jumps away.

You can imagine how difficult it is to quickly reach a place that requires seven extreme distance jumps.

Moreover, Qianmian's jump can be said to be traceable. After all, there is only one way to get out from the direction of the Empire without going through the territory of the Mechanical Clan and Yuhui.

There won't be too much deviation when making a jump.

But after a few jumps, there is no reference route for future jumps.

Safe enough.

Looking at the countless Zerg ships, Chen Ming suddenly thought that at least in terms of the number of the fleet, he was really not at a disadvantage at all.

The combat power of a Zerg planet is basically equivalent to that of a galaxy.

This can only be said that the Zerg is too exaggerated after being strengthened by Chen Ming.
After all, whether it is the mechanical race or something else, it is impossible for a star region to only consider military strength.

It is necessary to take many aspects into consideration, limit the fleet to a certain appropriate number, and only increase production when necessary.

Even if a large number of fleets were allocated to help with migration.

There are still enough Zerg cruisers to cause trouble for the Mechanicals.

Now, it’s time to test the command skills you have learned these days.

A star map of the nearby star field appeared out of thin air in Chen Ming's eyes.

These are the precise star maps that his fleet developed and mapped bit by bit.

The locations of all the small strongholds were marked on it, as were all the mechanical fleets that attacked his strongholds.

In order to completely wipe out Chen Ming's influence, the Mechanical Clan carried out a carpet bombing when attacking Chen Ming's small stronghold, and also sent some Mechanical Clan units to inspect the ruins, striving to destroy all mechanized structures.

But what they didn't know was that even if Chen Ming's mental power was completely exhausted, he could still connect again to anything that had been connected through his psychic power.

From industrial facilities to iron atoms.

Unless the mechanical race can completely annihilate all the molecules and atoms when destroying the small stronghold.

Otherwise, Chen Ming's eyes will always exist in the place covered by his spiritual power.

But the Mechanic race didn't know this.

It's normal for them to be contaminated with some iron atoms when destroying small strongholds.

This resulted in the positions of almost all the mechanical warships involved in the attack being clearly marked on the star map, and every active fleet appeared before Chen Ming's eyes.

Most of the mechanical fleet returned to the cruiser that led them here after what they believed to be complete destruction of Chen Ming's small stronghold.

Allow Chen Ming to mark out the locations of those cruiser fleets.

The actions of these cruisers were followed by a large number of small and medium-sized ships. Not only those spaceships that carried out the destruction of Chen Ming's small stronghold, but also many other ships that had not yet taken action appeared in Chen Ming's eyes.

There were even some cruisers carrying war supplies to provide supplies to some small ships when they consumed a large amount of supplies in order to destroy Chen Ming's strongholds.

During the process of providing supplies, direct contact occurred between the spacecraft.

As long as Chen Ming wanted, he could even use the iron atoms on these spaceships to send the afterglow cores over, create data lines and forcibly take over those cruisers.

But he didn't.

Because forcibly taking over the mechanical race will turn the mechanical individuals into abnormal sub-individuals and disconnect them from the mechanical race's network.

This will cause the controlled mechanical race to be discovered immediately by the mechanical race, and will also make them discover that Chen Ming now has the means to control the spacecraft directly using iron atoms.

When Chen Ming first came into contact with the mechanical race in the mechanical star field, he personally put on power armor and ran to the mechanical cruiser to take control.

In the eyes of the Mechanical Clan, this must be the limit of Chen Ming’s abilities.

Otherwise, Chen Ming would have already taken control of the entire Yuhui, the entire mechanical clan, and even all the mechanical structures of the entire empire.

So if Chen Ming's ability were exposed, many things he could have done before would no longer be possible.

For example, what he could do later when the Mechanical Clan's spaceships that still carried iron atoms controlled by his psychic power might be able to come into contact with the Mechanical Clan's mothership.

Although we haven't encountered them yet, there are definitely battleships in the Mechanical Clan's star field, and the Mechanical Clan has definitely prepared battleships to be deployed at any time.

It may be used on the empire, or it may be used on Chen Ming.

What Chen Ming lacks most now is the battleship.

The battleship is the most critical existence in the upper limit of the fleet's combat effectiveness.

If he controls the cruiser for a little bit of profit now and causes the mechanical race to be on guard, he will never have such a good opportunity in the future.

And since the mechanical race may have restrictions that he must control some things personally.

Then the fact that one of the mechanical race was controlled meant one thing to the mechanical race: Chen Ming must be present in that place.

This is a misleading scheme that can only be used once.

Chen Ming cannot simply destroy the environment in which this plan can be implemented.

So there is nothing to say, none of these mechanical creatures can be controlled.

All mechanical races must die.

Under the meticulous command of the Zerg Queen and Chen Ming, one hundred thousand Zerg cruisers with their own sub-individual Zerg consciousness locked onto every spaceship that attacked Chen Ming's small stronghold.

Or they might have locked onto the cruiser fleet that was leading the mechanical race's small and medium-sized spacecraft to select a jump location and search for Chen Ming's temporary base.

Chen Ming arranged at least double the combat force for every targeted location.

The combat effectiveness of the Zerg biological cruiser is quite sufficient in itself.

Its main weapons are plasma acid cannons and bio-energy weapons that imitate the tachyon spear.

The former is a product that has the form of an energy restraint bomb, but is combined with chemical live ammunition weapons.

Relying on the plasma produced by the Aurora Wind Spirit gene in the Zerg gene and the Zerg's own highly corrosive acid as a means of damage.

The combined damage of the two can have a good effect on both shield armor and hull.

Needless to say, the latter is called the Bio-polymer High-Energy Particle Torrent Launcher.

The biological version of the tachyon spear is powered by evolved fluorescent energy crystals, and its effect is even more terrifying than that of an ordinary tachyon spear.

Not only because of the optimization of the energy source, but also because it is a biomass energy weapon.

As long as it is a living being, it can be amplified by the Queen's psychic power.

Although the Queen's psychic power increase is comprehensive, after this evolution, the Queen has been able to allow some of her organs to obtain more powerful additional increases, and the increase is still in the function of the organs themselves.

As a biological weapon, its combat performance is of course enhanced.

The combat performance of the Tachyon Spear, including charging time, particle flow and duration, is much stronger than that of ordinary models.

This is still the additional increase brought by psychic power.

As long as Chen Ming or the Queen of Insects continues to develop more advanced biomass tachyon spears in the future, these spears will be even more powerful.

Other weapons include missile weapons such as biological missiles and carrier-based aircraft-type weapons such as biological fighters.

However, Chen Ming felt that these weapons would not have any chance to show their worth in this battle.

As for the Zerg spacecraft itself.

Although there is no shield, the Queen of Worms cannot replicate the shield system even if it evolves.

In this case, the Queen of Insects did not cling to the shield.

Choose to fully strengthen the already very powerful Zerg Carapace.

Today, the Zerg's carapace, that is, the armor of the Zerg spacecraft, is different from the past.

The seed coat structure of the fairy tree species eaten by the queen was also used on the black carapace.

The bark of the fairy tree species is extremely strong, and even Chen Ming's mental power cannot penetrate it.

This is not only a protection for mental strength, but also solidity in the physical sense.

Even the queen of insects had to chew it herself to digest it.

This structure is applied to the carapace, which is enough to make the carapace armor of the Zerg cruiser stronger than that of normal cruiser armor.

Such powerful Zerg cruisers gathered in orbit around the hive planet.

Each one is confirming the target.

Each one is preparing to activate the biomass jump engine that the queen has completely transformed during the process of evolution and cocooning.

There is no need to worry about the unstable hive mind network that may occur when the Zerg warships move away from the Queen after the jump.

After the Queen absorbed the fairy tree seeds and completed her evolution, the Zerg's hive mind network no longer relied on pheromones, fungi and a small amount of psychic energy to maintain itself as before.

Instead, it is maintained through a thorough psychic thinking network.

And the old methods have not been abandoned. In places where psychic energy fluctuations cannot reach, pheromones and fungi can still be used to build swarm networks.

There is no need to worry about losing connection when entering the psychic isolation area, just like the mechanical race.

It is the construction of this psychic-based hive mind network that gives the Zerg some additional abilities.

As for what the specific ability is, Chen Ming feels that he should see it soon.

Under the amplification of these conditions, after the flash of transition waves that were so vast that they were enough to disrupt the space outside the insect nest planet and create a distortion visible to the naked eye.

Chen Ming sensed through the Queen that tens of thousands of Zerg cruisers that had set out had arrived one by one.

Magnificent electric balls and particle torrents that turned into pure white beams using special energy crystallization functions completely covered the mechanical fleet.

The black shell, plasma acid ball and pure white light beam bring an extreme visual impact.

The physical impact is no less severe.

In no scene can the mechanical fleet last more than three seconds.

All the Zerg fleets arrived at the moment of the jump and destroyed the enemy with just one encounter.

The cruisers crushed the destroyers and escorts, leaving the mechanical fleet with no chance of resistance.

The same goes for the mechanical cruisers, or even faster.

Because the number of fleets on Chen Ming's side was too large, he arranged a little more among the mechanical clan's cruiser fleets.

Therefore, the speed at which the Mechanical cruisers and other small and medium-sized ships following them were destroyed under the mindless firepower coverage of the Zerg cruisers was even faster than the speed at which the Zerg in other places needed to accurately destroy a few small boats.

(End of this chapter)