A Contest of Productive Capacity
Each of these planets has well-developed mining facilities, providing ample resources for the shipbuilding bases of the Interstellar Transaction Market, and also providing materials for the life forms living on the Gaseous Planet in the second orbit to produce production materials.
Originally, the Tenth Planet and Eleventh Planet were also well-equipped resource mining planets. However, after the initial defeat, the Interstellar Transaction Market withdrew its defensive forces from these two planets and destroyed all the infrastructure that could not be taken away.
This happened when humanity arrived on the Planet Thirteen for resupply. Therefore, humanity had neither the time nor the intention to stop it.
From another perspective, this event also tells humanity that the enemy has not yet been defeated, or rather, is unwilling to accept defeat. The destruction of two planetary resource development sites suggests that the Interstellar Transaction Market does not intend to hand over these two planets intact to humanity, indicating that they are still accumulating strength at other planetary bases and continuing their fight against humanity.
In the previous war, the Interstellar Transaction Market suffered heavy losses. Of the 33 million warships it deployed, including the 9 million pirate-style ships, only about 11.33 million remained when it withdrew after the battle, a loss of nearly two-thirds.
On the human side, the three fleets totaled 17 million ships. Now, the First Fleet has only 1.6 million ships left, the Second Fleet has 3.08 million ships, and the Third Fleet has 3.5 million ships, for a total of 8.18 million ships.
Many of the warships are still battle-damaged versions.
Just like the flagship of the First Fleet, the Flagship Lyra, and the flagship of the Second Fleet, the Han Hai, their armor was completely charred and pitted everywhere, with obvious traces of nano-repair.
Only the flagship of the Third Fleet, the Deep Sea, was somewhat better off, but even that couldn't be put into combat again in a short time.
Therefore, after the conclusion of these battles in different locations, although the number of human warships is now on par with that of the Interstellar Transaction Market, it will be difficult to launch another expedition in less than several years.
Of course, it is still possible to assemble a complete fleet from these warships, and humans are already doing so when resupplying.
Because the Third Fleet's flagship, the Deep Sea, suffered the least damage, it became the flagship of this hastily assembled—or rather, reorganized —Deep Sea. Therefore, the Deep Sea was given priority in the dock repair schedule.
The fleet, which consisted of approximately 4.2 million ships, was reorganized from intact warships. The remaining warships all required armor repair.
Yes, that's right, it's armor repair.
During the battle, although these warships repaired the large holes that were blasted open or disassembled by the enemy's Nanobots using nano-repair, the areas repaired by the Nanomite Repair Robot were not No. 2 Alloy Material. Therefore, the armor repair here involves replacing these damaged areas with No. 2 Alloy Material in the Space Dock.
The Lyra also faces similar maintenance requirements.
During the maintenance and upkeep of these warships, the newly reorganized Third Fleet will take on the escort duties, protecting humanity's Planet Thirteen base and ensuring that humanity can produce, maintain, and repair warships there.
Although the Interstellar Transaction Market was also severely weakened, intelligence suggests that this was only their visible strength. They likely still have considerable forces at their various bases.
However, humans speculate that the reason they did not launch a full-scale attack was because they feared that humans would have other fleets to raid their base.
At least when the Third Fleet raided their First Planet Base, they discovered that the Interstellar Transaction Market had a large fleet on the Gaseous Planet in the Second Planet's orbit.
Because it was discovered that its third, fourth, and Fifth Base were located on the moon of that Gaseous Planet, humans speculated that the fleet was likely a fleet protecting the core area of Interstellar Transaction Market.
Spaceships carrying Neutrino Detection have attempted to approach the area several times, but have been detected and destroyed by patrols of smaller ships. As a result, humanity still knows very little about the number of warships in that region.
However, they also obtained definite intelligence: that area was the core area of Interstellar Transaction Market, and most of their individual life forms lived in those three bases or on several moons of that Gaseous Planet.
Judging from the number of their manned warships, the number of Sentient Life forms there must be at least in the hundreds of billions. Because, according to human understanding, without that scale, they absolutely could not have produced so many manned warships.
Therefore, humanity's next operational plan will focus on this star system. Of course, this will begin after the maintenance and repair of the warships are completed, and some supplies are replenished.
The current phase is a lull in the war.
Based on the warship's repair progress, this process will take at least five to ten years. During this time, humanity will not simply remain on the defensive; it will also launch waves of Probe Spaceship to explore various planets within the star system, gathering more data on the enemy.
In addition, after the South Sea warship was repaired, the Deep Sea also led some warships of the Third Fleet to harass the enemy's Sixth Planet base.
The Sixth Planet base of the Interstellar Transaction Market is a base capable of manufacturing Sea-Class Warship. It is located in the orbit of the Ninth Planet, and at this point in time, it happens to be the closest base to the human population, making it the perfect target for human harassment and attacks.
Similarly, when humanity launched small-scale harassment attacks, the Interstellar Transaction Market adopted the same strategy, mobilizing a fleet of millions of warships to harass and attack humanity's Planet Thirteen.
The Main Battleship of both sides calmed down, and no large-scale war like the one before occurred again for some time. However, battles involving harassment between the squadrons continued at all times.
The two sides' Probe Spaceship engaged in countless battles within this Star System. However, due to the fact that the human Probe Spaceship were controlled by Intelligent Program while the opposing probes were piloted by Sentient Life, the human side was completely at a disadvantage in the Probe Spaceship battles.
It can be said that during the period when both sides were maintaining their Main Battleship and producing New Warship, there were ships fighting everywhere in this Star System with a bright Yellow Dwarf Star Main Sequence Star.
These clashes between small groups of warships and Probe Spaceship are a microcosm of the war between two civilizations.
If a Level 2 Civilization to arrive here at this time due to the Interstellar Transaction Market broadcast, it would likely be overwhelmed by these peripheral battles.
Now that the first Strong Force clash between the two sides has ended, the next step is to see who has the stronger ability to repair and maintain warships, and who has the greater production capacity to produce more warships in the shortest amount of time.
After failing to eliminate each other in their initial encounter, the next contest became a battle of productivity.
Of course, the number of planets controlled is also important, because the more planets controlled, the wider the scope of resource extraction. Simply put, it means a larger resource input, which can meet the needs of more Space Dock operating simultaneously.
Humans are at a disadvantage in this regard, after all, so far, humans only have control over one fully developed planet.
To alleviate this gap, humanity also implemented some strategic measures during this period. For example, it deployed Engineering Ship to explore and mine the resources of the Twelfth Planet.
Such actions naturally attracted harassment from the Interstellar Transaction Market, leading to more frequent small-scale detachment battles. These battles were essentially between the reconnaissance troops and special forces of both sides.
During this period, regardless of whether the planet had been developed or not, every now and then, dozens or even hundreds of warships could be seen flying past in the nearby star system. These warship squadrons were either from the Interstellar Transaction Market or were human, and the two sides would fight without saying a word when they met.