White Eagle-class Warship

Tang Shizhe's face fell.

No wonder the raw materials needed to build faster-than-light engines were becoming increasingly scarce in the Star River Federation. At their level as an intermediate civilization, they simply could not directly mine a planet's core. Their only ways of obtaining xin ore were to mine it from debris created by planetary explosions or deliberately blow up a planet.

For the Federation of the past, detonating planets for mining might not have been a problem. But now, they were in the midst of a war with the Zerg. The moment they blew up any planet, the Zerg would immediately learn of it, and Zerg fleets would soon descend on the site of the explosion.

This was precisely what the current Federation did not want to see. The Federation now had no ability to confront the Zerg head-on.

The Zerg, meanwhile, lacked the technology to blow up planets. As a biological civilization, the Star Pattern Empire lacked high-powered destructive weapons. Even if their biological warships concentrated their plasma cannon fire, they could not destroy a planet; they would only keep raising its surface temperature.

But Andromeda Development Company was different. Right now, within Andromeda's planetary mining chamber lay a planet whose core had naturally cooled.

As long as they were willing, they could soon mine enough xin ore from that cooled planetary core to build an entire fleet.

But then came the problem!

Andromeda had already entered its deployed state and could not make long-distance voyages at all. Within this planetary system, only four planets remained that could still be mined. Once those four planets had been exhausted, Andromeda would face the predicament of having nothing left to work with.

Furthermore, Andromeda Development Company's equipment and capabilities on Andromeda were still insufficient to let them dismantle Andromeda and