"Charge! Charge! Charge!" General Grievous roared from the bridge of the Invisible Hand, waving his arms.
The Protoss Purifier fleet launched an unstoppable charge!
Before the Imperial fleet's formation had fully deployed, Purifier drones swarmed in like a silver hive. And this time, they charged alongside the aircraft carriers!
In previous battles, Purifier warships had always stayed far in the rear, merely launching drones to fight. Combined with the Purifier drones' overwhelming firepower, this had led the Imperial Intelligence Department to regard the carriers as ordinary aircraft carriers.
A conventional aircraft carrier required vast hangar facilities and had to accommodate pilots, ground crews, supply stations, maintenance bays, and more. Its bridge also needed a Flight Control System, command chains, guidance systems, and so on. Only with this entire range of support could an aircraft carrier unleash its maximum combat power.
That was why aircraft carriers were so few in number. Their costs were simply beyond comparison with gunships.
And aircraft carriers truly could demonstrate combat capabilities far beyond those of ordinary warships. The simplest example was that bombers launched from a carrier could bypass the strongest sections of an enemy warship's shields and directly attack its engines—something no weapon, including missiles, could match.
Thus, after recognizing the formidable power of aircraft carriers, the Galactic Empire had once vigorously developed them. But as the Kingdom of Dawn's fighter advantage grew ever greater, they eventually returned to the combat doctrine of massive warships and heavy guns combined with dedicated anti-aircraft vessels.
Therefore, by conventional understanding, once an aircraft carrier had been fitted with so many systems centered around fighter operations, it should have had little room left for other weaponry.
But the Galactic Empire's Intelligence Department had no idea—nor could they have known—that the Protoss had long since mastered the use of