This was a disregard for one’s own life.
An act that had no place in the Imperium stunned Reth and the other miners.
None of them had ever imagined that a Federation Captain would hand over his own survival equipment, the very armor bearing his mark of honor, to an ordinary miner.
just to ensure this miner’s safety.
They used their own protective equipment to protect their miner.
The Federation…
the Imperium…
“I, Captain, I can’t…”
Drool had run out of patience.
“Put it on.
Stop crying.
That’s an order.”
“You are my miner.
You are my soldier.”
Reth bit his lip.
His body was shaking.
He was fighting the tears back hard, like he could force them to reverse.
This was the Captain’s order.
I am his miner.
I am his soldier.
He matters to him!
He felt an unprecedented sense of importance.
Whether it was being carried back to camp or being handed armor that carried someone’s honor, every part of it said the same thing.
His gaze went steady and hard, like a decision had been made somewhere behind his eyes.
The scene shook the other miners.
It also caught the other players off guard.
Though what the players felt wasn’t quite the same thing.
It was more like a sudden realization.
“Wait.
Obviously.
Just give your armor to the miners.”
Drool’s move snapped several of the nearby players out of their heads.
The other Captains started following his lead immediately.
These miners were walking around in nothing but work clothes.
They were also replaceable for players in game terms, but a miner lost was gone permanently.
The death counter still had ten slots, but without miners to assist, the chances of clearing the level would significantly decrease.
Players could afford to die.
The miners couldn’t.
The team leaders giving the miners their best gear while they themselves wore the worst was an absurd scene that left the miners completely bewildered.
“Bruceus, what are you doing?” Vrekk walked over and gave him a pat on the shoulder.
“Just because Drool does something doesn’t mean you have to.
You can swap out the clone soldiers’ armor instead.”
Vrekk’s reminder hit everyone like cold water.
“Right!
How did we forget the classic strip-your-companions move?”
“Is that really okay though?”
A few players with something resembling a conscience hesitated.
“What do you mean is it okay.
The clones can’t mine anyway.”
“True.”
Drool, who had just finished putting on the standard armor, felt the corner of his mouth twitch.
Right.
He could have taken the clone soldiers’ armor.
So why was he wearing this handmade set?
Drool stared down at his fabricated armor with a new sense of grievance.
The clone soldiers had become the joke of the group.
Clone soldiers were pure combat units.
Following orders was their entire existence.
The main issue was that clone soldiers genuinely could not mine.
Players were afraid of triggering a cave-in.
A squad of clones with powered picks had no concept of load-bearing walls.
They would swing straight at structural supports without a second thought.
Put them in a fight and they were exceptional.
Strategic assault, tactical strikes, operating tanks, piloting ships, every category of military hardware had been loaded into their memory.
Their minds had been built around exactly that.
Ask them to mine and the answer was simple.
No such instruction exists.
Cannot comply.
The fact that they could at least haul rubble was something players had learned to be quietly grateful for.
Whoever in the logistics division had decided not to strip out basic carrying functions deserved some recognition.
This was also why, despite having two clone soldiers each, players were still doing the mining themselves to keep the pace up.
A few first-round players gathered together were smoking together.
“I genuinely don’t know what I would have done without you lot.” Drool meant it.
These people had driven him up the wall plenty of times, but right now he was just grateful.
“Don’t mention it.
We’re all in this together.”
“Actually, to pay you back a little, let me share something I figured out.”
“What did you figure out?”
Drool thought back to what had just happened.
“Combat.”
“Combat?
What kind of combat?”
*Squeak squeak squeak!!*
A rock-borer appeared at the mouth of one of the tunnels.
This was already a common occurrence.
The clone soldiers nearby picked up on the movement immediately and started closing in to kill it.
Then Drool’s voice came from behind them.
“Hold on.
Everyone stop.”
As a Captain, Drool had limited command authority over soldiers outside his direct unit.
As long as the order didn’t conflict with instructions from a superior officer, he could temporarily direct other soldiers.
The clone soldiers looked to the players for input.
The other players saw the rock-borer and judged it low threat, so they let Drool’s order stand.
“Let the rock-borer through.”
A massive white cylindrical creature, sixty to seventy centimeters across and four to five meters long, pulled itself out of the tunnel mouth.
“Engineer, give me the shield…”
Drool reconsidered.
The engineering shield was a full-body unit.
Too large.
“Forget it.
I’ll go in clean.
Watch this.”
He picked up the powered pick and walked straight toward it.
He kept his eyes on the creature and narrowed his focus.
When the rock-borer lunged, Drool’s feet moved.
A sharp cut to one side at an angle that most people couldn’t hold without losing balance, and the borer’s charge went past him.
Vrekk stared.
Holy crap?
Immediately afterward, Drooling pressed the activation device on his psionic power pickaxe, then lunged forward.
With a clattering sound from the impact of the power pickaxe, he smashed it down on the side of the rock worm.
This single blow flipped the rock worm over.
Military standard exoskeleton, even on standby, provided two hundred kilograms of supplementary force.
Combined with the theoretical output of a clone soldier’s frame, flipping a rock-borer was straightforward.
Light red blood stained the ground.
The rock-borer was still fighting.
Drool raised the pick and brought it down into the creature’s head.
The rock-borer made a sound, not loud, but sharp enough to set your teeth on edge.
He raised it again.
Once.
Again.
Again.
Bang.
The head caved in completely.
Drool stood on the carcass and looked up at the psionic light drifting through the shelter above him, grinning.
He had guessed right.
This game had more than one way to be played.
“Damn, that’s cool?” Bruceus’s eyes widened.
Blow after blow landing flush.
Well, not fists exactly.
A pick going through a skull.
The whole thing sent something rushing through your chest.
Vrekk knocked on Drool’s armor and looked up at him from below.
“Who even are you right now?”
“Get out of Drool’s body.”
“I am Drool.
How about it, cool or not?”
“You actually pulled that off.”
“What just happened?”
Drool’s tone went serious.
“Who said we had to use guns?
Every FPS has a knife fights too.”
“I just figured it out recently.”
“Everyone has witnessed the realism of this game, right?
Why can’t we use melee weapons?”
All the players nodded.
“In the early exploration sections it wasn’t a problem, but the further in you go, the more the firearms became counterproductive.
Bullet ricochet, blocked angles, real risk of hitting a miner by accident.”
“And we’re players.
We can just go at them directly.
This isn’t a real fight.”
“Our armor holds against rock-borers.
And our weapons go through their carapace without much effort.”
“I also noticed that when you get your focus right, we enter a special state.”
“Do any of the games you’ve played have slow-motion combat?”
“Is it like that?
Like when we’re shooting?”
During high-intensity ranged combat they had all noticed something similar happening, a shift in perception.
It was different from melee, but it came from the same place.
Drool nodded.
“Tunnels aren’t suitable for firearms, but they are suitable for melee combat.
If we drop the firearms entirely, our efficiency goes up and the risk goes down.”
“And bullet loss will be reduced; the only loss is energy, which is cheaper than bullets.”
“Fighting the rock worms directly with pickaxes?
That’s interesting!”
Everything Drool and the other players were doing was visible to Aldric from inside the ship.
The players were also posting their observations and suggestions to the official Stellaris forum back on Earth.
“These players, without any data synchronization on my end, have independently activated the melee combat amplifier from the multiplayer combat module through their own behavior.”
Their instincts were worth paying attention to.
This game was never meant to be only an FPS.
With tens of millions of tonnes of continental rock pressing down on them, the confined space had already turned ranged weapons into a liability as often as an asset.
The players had found the answer themselves, and it filled in exactly that gap.