This landing battle on Crustai seemed to have turned the war back ten years, to 22BBY, when the Clone Wars had just begun.
C-9979 transports flew through the skies, MTT armored transport vehicles rolled across the ground, and row after row of B-1 battle droids advanced step by step with cold, mechanical strides.
For the Duchy of Dawn, this was an exceptionally low-cost war—one could even call it a stock-clearing operation.
Of course, calling it stock-clearing was not entirely accurate, because the Duchy of Dawn had never phased out the B-1 battle droids. On the contrary, it had always maintained them in enormous numbers. These battle droids were simply too classic: cheap, incredibly numerous, and capable of handling nearly any task with a simple program update.
The Duchy of Dawn currently possessed more than thirty billion B-1 battle droids, and that number was still growing. Their diligent presence could be seen across every industry. To maintain their low cost, the Duchy of Dawn had continually upgraded their programming rather than altering their original design.
Most of the Duchy of Dawn's industrial capacity was now devoted to warship construction. With Rendili StarDrive's relocation, a large amount of capacity had also been allocated to that effort. As such, productive and affordable units like the B-1 battle droids had naturally become an important part of the Duchy of Dawn's industrial system.
Moreover, on many battlefields, B-1 battle droids were not as unreliable as people imagined. After all, they possessed enough intelligence to handle simple battlefield situations, feared neither death nor fatigue, and existed in overwhelming numbers.
Aside from truly elite warriors like the Galactic Republic's Clone Troopers, ordinary soldiers generally could not withstand the advance of B-1 battle droids.
That was naturally the case in the landing battle now taking place on Crustai.