Chapter 370: Information
What is the Swarm’s apparent style?
The Swarm’s infiltration technology is towering, eerily silent, and leaves no trace. Thus, most external civilizations perceive the Swarm as relying on brute force and sheer numbers.
This perception is not entirely inaccurate. With the Swarm Network functioning as a cheat code, the Swarm has not placed much emphasis on conventional network technologies. In a battle between two civilizations dominated by mechanical technology, information warfare, cyberattacks, and electronic interference usually begin long before entering artillery range.
However, Swarm warfare skips these steps entirely. In the end, it always comes down to relying on their unparalleled regenerative and production capabilities to grind their enemies to exhaustion. While this approach leverages the strengths of biotechnology to the fullest, it undeniably has its shortcomings.
For example, Luo Wen was now at a loss, staring at the two self-destructed supply ships and the strange functional vessel before him.
After fighting for so long, all they had gained was a heap of scrap metal. In the past, this would not have seemed problematic because there had been no treasures worth coveting. Take the Rikens, for instance—their research units had been infiltrated so thoroughly that their technological tree was essentially open to the Swarm. Even the head of their science department, Cleo, was a member of the Swarm, so there was no need to reverse-engineer anything from captured warships.
But now, with the Daqi Empire and potentially many other future adversaries, the Swarm lacked the time to prepare such thorough groundwork. Hence, gathering intelligence and technology from captured ships during the early stages of conflict had become an essential means of understanding enemies and refining their capabilities.
In this situation, watching treasures repeatedly being reduced to scrap metal was maddening. The two supply ships were still acceptable losses, containing, at most, some unique ecological recycling technologies. Luo Wen himself was an expert in this field. But the peculiar functional vessel—clearly valuable—was lost before they could even discern its purpose.
This loss brought Luo Wen a fleeting yet real pang of regret, despite him being a “digital being” without a physical need for breathing. The sensation, nonetheless, felt authentic.