Starting from the Planetary Governor - Chapter 586

Chapter 584, Military Upgrade

Gu Hang’s Grace Points have now surpassed 30 million.

The monthly Grace Point income is still a small fraction, after all, it’s only been a year since he last used up all his Grace Points. His monthly fixed income has surged to 400,000, but even after a year’s work, it’s only been 4 million. The gains

from other battles are relatively small in comparison. The biggest gain came from the Battle of Bowang, the annihilation of Alfonzo’s fleet.

That battle netted over 20 million Grace Points.

If these 30 million Grace Points were used for a lottery…

but Gu Hang restrained himself.

It’s true that extracting key technologies can significantly enhance the Alliance’s war potential.

Furthermore, according to Gu Hang’s estimate, the Alliance should have two years of stability.

This doesn’t mean the war has subsided. There are still sporadic battles going on in areas like Huanyue, the Wuqi-Wenqi front, the Carlet-Caicedo front, and even across the entire Proud Claw star field.

The war will never cease.

But overall, the Alliance has been able to enjoy a period of relative peace in the Proud Claw star field.

This means the Alliance has time to absorb the technology it has extracted.

However, Gu Hang still needs to repair the damage sustained during the war.

It is foreseeable that there will be many major battles in the future.

A large number of troops will need to be replenished.

Weaponry production capacity must also be increased as much as possible.

Both of these areas require a huge investment of grace points.

Of course, they will definitely not be all spent. Thirty million grace points are enough to replenish three billion trained troops; there is no need for so many.

In wars outside the homeland, manpower is often not the key. Due to the limitations of deployment capabilities, it is impossible to truly deploy hundreds of millions of troops on the battlefield, and the risks are enormous. A ship carrying a large number of troops and equipment, if something goes wrong during transit, will result in a huge loss.

Moreover, it is not easy to obtain so many ships.

When it comes to replenishing personnel, Gu Hang prioritizes sailors.

Those captured large ships are big “sucker” ships.

To fully staff the Emperor-class battleships, including crew, marines, and servants, they should hold 800,000 men; the Retribution-class battleships should hold 500,000; and the battle barges should hold at least 400,000. The Serpent-class cruisers will require fewer, perhaps 250,000.

Furthermore, the Alliance has a significant number of ships expected to be nearing completion. These vessels also require a large number of qualified crews.

This demand for seafarers will necessitate the transfer of experienced personnel from other vessels to fill core positions.

The Alliance Navy is a great place to join the military, and this applies

not only to the Alliance but to the entire Empire.

Navy officers enjoy a favorable working environment and a stable shipboard life, unlike the hard-pressed Army, where they face the unpredictable and often harsh conditions.

Even the lower-level servants in the Navy have an advantage over their Army counterparts: they are less likely to be used as cannon fodder, and their mortality rate is significantly lower.

The downside is that if the ship explodes, there’s nowhere to escape; if one person dies, the entire ship is gone.

But even when the time came to die, the navy’s lower-level servants and higher-ranking officers were treated equally—if a starship exploded, everyone would die.

And their death was relatively painless. It

was superior in every way to the army.

Furthermore, unlike the Imperial Navy, the Alliance Navy had a distinct advantage: ample room for advancement.

Normally, Imperial Navy members relied heavily on seniority. Ship positions were fixed, and shipbuilding was a lengthy process. The fleet had long lacked new ships, naturally leaving little room for advancement.

The Alliance’s uniqueness lay in its several major shipbuilding centers, all operating at full capacity. Not only was the Alliance’s shipbuilding industry highly developed, but the entire Alliance society pooled its resources to prioritize its continued growth.

This, in turn, consumed enormous resources. Shipbuilding’s labor costs were high, and resource consumption was even higher.

For one thing, most regions lacked sufficient shipbuilding technology, and even if they did, most simply couldn’t operate at full capacity: the cost simply wouldn’t allow.

The Alliance possesses sufficient technological capabilities and dominance to integrate the power of multiple existing star regions. The economic foundation of the Alliance’s various industrial chains is also strong enough. Furthermore, the Alliance has recently enjoyed strong support from the entire Eastern Universe and even the surrounding universes, allowing it to obtain sufficient raw material trade.

Furthermore, the Black Box has handled some of the most challenging aspects of shipbuilding, including the enormous energy consumption of the energy crystals produced by the Wrathful Owl Star. Furthermore, the gradually expanding stellar energy plants continuously collect stellar energy and compress it into energy crystals… This has enabled the Alliance’s shipbuilding industry to operate at full capacity.

Consequently, with the continuous supply of new ships and the capture of enemy vessels, the Alliance fleet has continued to expand, providing ample positions for sailors and ample room for advancement.

Sailors have the opportunity to rise to leadership positions and become officers; junior officers can advance; and officers have the opportunity to captain new ships.

Officers transferred from existing ships are generally eligible for promotions to new vessels, and vacant positions can also be filled by promotions.

This wave of promotion opportunities has caused great excitement within the naval system.

As for the shortfalls among lower-level officers and sailors, they still needed to be filled.

Early on, when the Alliance’s navy reached a certain size, the [Soldier Card] interface quietly unlocked a branch for sailor training. Soldiers were required to reach T5 level, and then, at a cost of 1 grace point per 10 men, qualified sailors could be trained.

A shortage of less than three million sailors meant a cost of 300,000 grace points.

For Gu Hang’s current 30 million, this was a small expense.

But Gu Hang didn’t actually intend to solve every problem with grace points.

Nor did he need to.

The education system he had vigorously developed across the Alliance should be effective.

The Naval Academy on Feiyi Star trained mid- and upper-level officers, and under his alliance system, military academies were everywhere, not just in the Tianma Star Region but throughout the Alliance. The education system was a significant expenditure for the Alliance.

Gu Hang had always understood that the talent problem could be partially, even critically, solved by the various capabilities of the system, but never completely. When his rule expanded to encompass two or more star regions, with populations in the hundreds of billions, perhaps even trillions, he would see the end result. A huge army, a huge number of engineers, a huge number of skilled workers and management talents…

None of these could be solved solely with Grace Points.

No matter how many Grace Points he earned during the war, they wouldn’t be enough to cover such a vast territory and such a large population.

Fortunately, Gu Hang had already considered these issues. He had always prioritized the Alliance’s education system. On the one hand, Grace Points were exchanged for numerous academy buildings, located on various worlds within the Alliance’s territory. On the other hand, even when the Alliance’s budget was tight, it always invested in education wherever possible.

The education system, combined with Gu Hang’s use of the [Hero] interface to inspire talent and the [Soldier Card] interface to train key personnel, is a crucial factor in the Alliance’s robust growth. It not only ensures the Alliance’s continued prosperity in economic development, manufacturing, and overall management, but also provides a significant reserve of key personnel for the military. The navy

is just one area.

A large number of qualified sailors are more than enough to fill the millions of sailors shortfall.

Gu Hang only needs to spend grace points on a portion of this. He has allocated only about 60,000 grace points, which will suffice for training 600,000 sailors. The remaining resources, through

the training of veterans, will be equally effective. The Marine Corps, on the other hand, requires greater investment.

While the Alliance has often boarded other ships in past naval battles, the possibility of being boarded by others should be considered in advance should a future battle with Ironclad be fought.

This frugality stems from another significant expenditure of grace points: strengthening frontline combat units.

Of the two million-plus sailors shortfall, nearly half is reserved for the Marine Corps.

Gu Hang intended to raise the level of this force to a very high level.

Besides a large number of sophisticated equipment suitable for onboard combat, the elite personnel must also be highly skilled.

Gu Hang anticipated raising these units to a general T3 combat capability.

The same approach would be applied to the existing Marines within the fleet.

Their primary mission was to conduct anti-boarding operations; when necessary, they could also serve as a boarding force or provide ground support as airborne troops.

The total planned size of the Alliance’s Marines, including new and existing ships, was approximately three million personnel.

This represented the cost of three million Boon Points.

But this was only part of the cost.

Two other significant expenditures were on the Army and the Space Marines.

Regarding the Army, the Alliance’s official Army numbered approximately one and a half billion. Within the Alliance system, these were equivalent to the Imperial Astra Militarum, capable of combat operations, unlike the Entente forces stationed on the planets themselves.

For a long time, Gu Hang had stopped providing Boon Point training to every Alliance Army soldier; the expense was unsustainable. The percentage of soldiers trained with Grace Points is currently only about 30%.

This figure is actually quite exaggerated. The cost of training nearly 500 million soldiers is equivalent to over 5 million Grace Points.

In terms of the ratio, it’s actually not a bad ratio.

The Alliance’s military academies don’t just train naval officers; the army

also contributes a larger proportion. Furthermore, the Alliance’s military training system has long been established, largely similar to the Empire’s: elite troops are selected from the planetary defense forces.

Their quality is already very high. While not all of them can reach T5, the difference isn’t so great that it’s irreparable, and a significant number of them do.

Adding to this 30% Grace Point training ratio, the overall percentage of soldiers above T5 exceeds 60%. The quality of the entire Alliance Army is still comparable to that of an average Astra Militarum Corps,

or even higher.

After all, many Astra Militarum Corps only have around 30% of their troops meeting this standard.

This Alliance Army’s level is even comparable to that of some renowned Astra Militarum Corps.

Not to mention, the sheer size of 1.5 billion is even more formidable.

Right now, over a billion soldiers are fighting across the Proud Claw Sector.

They strive to quell conflict across various regions, ensuring control of the hundreds of worlds within the Proud Claw Sector, and providing resources to support the war effort. The Alliance’s provisional government, with the support of the army, manages these hundreds of worlds using wartime strategies.

Once the conflict on these worlds is largely quelled and new planetary defense forces are established, they will depart the planets.

The demand for soldiers is expected to continue unabated. Considering the prolonged standoff with the Iron Armor War, the need may even increase.

Gu Hang plans to expand the Alliance Army by another 500 million soldiers.

New recruits will be recruited from the defense forces of the Menghe and Dragon Eagle Sector. Gu Hang has allocated 2 million grace points to train 200 million of these soldiers, ensuring the quality of the new troops.

At the same time, given the limited number of troops available, Gu Hang will need to increase the proportion of elite units. He plans to upgrade the one or two Skeleton Divisions deployed by each group army to T4 status, forming the core of each army.

The Alliance currently has 2,000 armies, totaling 2,600 Skeleton Divisions, totaling 130 million men. Training all of them to T4, minus those already at that level through training and combat, Gu Hang would have to train another 100 million of them to T4.

This would cost 10 million grace points,

but it would be worth it.

Skeleton Divisions trained to this level would crush a similarly sized Imperial Legion or a Chapter Auxiliary Corps.

The core units of some renowned Astra Militarum militias are around this level.

Furthermore, Gu Hang has directly expanded the Alliance’s Glory Guards from their current strength of 10,000 to 50,000 men.

They will all be composed of at least T2-level soldiers, with a significant number of T1-level soldiers.

With this size and average strength, the Glory Guards are estimated to be able to annihilate two fully staffed ordinary Chapters in direct combat.

Space Marines are expensive and limited in number, so Gu Hang has no other choice but to resort to this approach.

This will cost another 1.5 million grace points.

So far, Gu Hang has spent a total of 16.5 million grace points on the personnel of the navy and the army.

Half of the wealth accumulated from the previous war was gone.

Gu Hang estimated that the demand for the army in the subsequent wars would not be small, but this wave of troops should be enough to cope with it.

The overall strength of the alliance army will be significantly improved after this.

Even the most ordinary army group can fight and even gain the upper hand when encountering the enemy’s elite troops.

Then, Gu Hang turned his attention to the space marines.

He wanted to raise both the Phoenix and the Blood Shark.

(End of this chapter)