After the Commander II-class Dreadnought arrived on the battlefield, the balance of fleet strength between the two sides shifted once again.
The Galactic Republic had two Commander II-class Dreadnoughts, eighty-one Hunter Class Battlecruisers, and a terrifying fighter complement of more than 18,000 craft!
Meanwhile, the Fourth Civilization had one Ankollon-class Titan warship, 104 remaining Dreadnought-class heavy cruisers, 20 remaining Kohl-class Battlecruisers, nine Durov-class Battlecruisers, twelve Martha-class missile heavy cruisers, five Sova-class Carriers, and three Luukri-Hok-class battleships.
At a glance, the Fourth Civilization fleet seemed to hold an overwhelming advantage, but that was not actually the case.
That was because all eighty-one of the Galactic Republic's Hunter Class Battlecruisers were carrier warships, carrying a terrifying fighter force of more than 18,000 craft!
By comparison, after the series of offensives, defenses, and bombardments over Eriadu, the Fourth Civilization's fighter formations had been reduced to just over 4,000 craft, half of them Vulture droid fighters.
In fact, if Tang Xiao had not secretly implemented the Rebirth Plan within the Fourth Civilization, giving many fighter pilots the chance to be reborn through consciousness transfer, the Fourth Civilization would have run out of fighter pilots long ago!
Since the war began, the Fourth Civilization had suffered more than 30,000 fighter pilot casualties. That was only because it had deployed large numbers of Vulture droid fighters to fill out the front lines. Fighter losses were secondary; pilot losses were what truly proved fatal.
The Fourth Civilization now had more than thirty pilot academies, yet they could supply no more than 6,000 pilots a year. That was nowhere near enough to keep up with the war's consumption.
Pilot academies and naval academies in particular depended on accumulation and heritage. They were not something that could simply be built by throwing money at them.
And heritage was precisely