Recent Developments at Port French Fries and the Southern Front

Wasteland Online official website. ["War of Heaven" Frontline Progress: Crucial strongholds on the northern front have been breached one after another. Ten Peaks Mountain is now firmly under coalition control, and the gateway to Haiya Province has swung wide open! The southern theater remains locked around the Southern Sea. Players in the area are encouraged to redouble their efforts; final reward payouts will be directly tied to frontline progress!] Shortly after the announcement went live on the official forum, the message boards erupted with activity. Elaina: "Good grief, the trash dev is actually rushing us to get a move on! (Funny)" Elven King Fugui: "Other games nerf equipment to drag out player progress because they're terrified players will clear the content too fast. Complaining that players are clearing content too slowly? This game is truly one of a kind. (Funny)" Mole: "Fang Chang, can you guys handle it or not? (Funny)" Tail: "Dolly: Fang Chang, can you do it or not?! (Blushing)" Sisi: "Calm down, Tail. You're on the southern front too." Tail: "Eek! I forgot! (°ロ°)!" Makabazi: "Way too weak! (Funny)" Feng Qing: "Nothing we can do. The W-2's airspeed is too low. There's no way we can punch through the close-in weapon systems of the Federation's destroyers. The limitations of old-school propeller planes are just too glaring. T.T" Gui Gui: "+10086! The southern front desperately needs supersonic fighters!" Mosquito: "Ahem, using those for kamikaze runs is way too expensive. Just make do with propeller planes for now, or I can whip up one without landing gear for you guys." Feng Qing: "!!!" Gui Gui: "Damn it! Guild Leader, are you even human?!" Elaina: "This game is just too realistic. (Funny)" ... Reading the complaints in the comment section beneath the official post, Fang Chang couldn't help a twitch of his eyebrow, though he ultimately held back from chiming in. Ah Guang was genuinely being a bit unfair here. Could the slow progress on the southern front really be blamed on the players? Take those destroyers fielded by the Northern Federation and the Southern Archipelago—dragging any single one of them into the real world would allow it to wipe the floor with a whole fleet of "concept ships." Meanwhile, looking at the Baiyue Company, all they had on hand was a bunch of repeatedly modified propeller planes. Credit where credit was due: those birds were indeed fantastic for ground attacks, boasting long loiter times, rock-bottom costs, and sheer numbers. Yet when pitted against point-defense systems bristling with firepower and precision-guided weapons, they quickly found themselves stretched far too thin. Especially in naval warfare dominated by beyond-visual-range engagements, enemy forces often locked onto them not long after they took off from the airstrip. Of course, the Alliance had its own distinct advantages. Its ground combat capabilities and individual gear, for instance, far outstripped the Northern Federation's. If they could punch through the Federation fleet's naval exclusion zone and launch direct amphibious landings on the Federation's islands, the campaign would proceed infinitely smoother than it was now. However, the crux of the matter lay in the fact that the enemy was plainly aware of this. Consequently, their warning sonar and radar remained on standby around the clock, while patrol boats armed with depth charges conducted uninterrupted sweeps through uninhabited waters. Setting foot ashore was out of the question; merely drawing within a hundred kilometers ran the risk of facing beyond-visual-range strikes. Naturally, this went both ways. Just as the Northern Federation stayed vigilant against Alliance aircraft and paratroopers, the Southern Archipelago Alliance kept equal guard against the Church of the Torch's frogmen, maintaining their own early-warning grids and beyond-visual-range strike capabilities on twenty-four-hour alert. Earlier, several waves of mutants equipped with professional underwater combat gear had attempted to swim to Anle Island for an ambush. Yet before they could even reach Coral City, over half had been wiped out by a smattering of depth charges, while the rest scattered in flight only to end up in the bellies of sea beasts. The alien species prowling the vast ocean were far more terrifying and diverse than those roaming the land. Without the cover of the "Boat Song," an isolated mutant couldn't survive in deep waters for even an hour. Wary of the submarines harbored at Anle Island, the Federation fleet likewise dared not cross the perimeter into the heart of the Southern Archipelago Alliance. As a consequence, both sides were locked in an uncanny stalemate. It was like two burly men armed with guns, each crouching behind their own cover fifty meters apart. Occasionally, one would fire a shot or two across the gap before instantly ducking back behind concealment. Neither could afford the price of a single mistake, so neither dared to step out and mount a charge. Still— That didn't mean they would remain locked like this forever. With the Alliance's backing, the Southern Archipelago Alliance was developing an "underwater submersible carrier" to prepare for a landing on North Island. Meanwhile, the Northern Federation was evidently readying its own trump card with the support of the Church of the Torch. Both sides knew full well that this war would not drag on indefinitely. In particular, the coalition's steady northern advance in recent days made it an urgent strategic imperative for the Church of the Torch to break open room to maneuver in the south. Everyone was preparing for the impending showdown. Against such a backdrop, players actually had very little room to make significant moves. Even Fang Chang himself found little else to do beyond dedicating extra effort to infrastructure projects across the Southern Sea and the Baiyue Strait, using economic and commercial leverage to win over the islands allied with them. After a quick dinner, Fang Chang went downstairs for an evening jog before putting on his helmet and logging back in. At ten o'clock sharp in game time, a regular meeting was scheduled to take place in the governor's office at Port French Fries City Hall. As the CEO and chairman of Baiyue Company, he was to exchange views on regional affairs and the next phase of development with the governor sent from Dawn City, who would also relay the Administrator's directives. Calling him a governor was a slight misnomer; this governor differed fundamentally from those of the Empire. The latter represented the Emperor's personal interests and authority, acting as the living embodiment of the Emperor himself in the region. The former, however, represented the Alliance and the Alliance's Constitution. In terms of rights and obligations, the position in the Alliance was much closer to that of a castellan or city lord. That is, exercising oversight on behalf of the central government over local affairs, handling routine territorial defense, and making rulings from the Alliance's perspective on matters concerning the Alliance's overarching interests. As for concrete local governance and the execution of public authority, those responsibilities fell to City Hall or more specialized administrative bodies. Only under extremely exceptional circumstances—such as when the local populace possessed zero capacity or foundation for self-governance, or when the Alliance needed a place to house such survivors—would the castellan or governor take direct charge of local administrative matters. Take Singularity City, for instance. If the Alliance didn't station someone there to keep order, the local survivors would treat the Alliance Constitution as toilet paper within minutes and concoct some corrupt, fraudulent puppet regime like a sham "Red River Alliance." In a place like Port French Fries, on the other hand, the players were capable of thriving on their own, and the Administrator was more than happy to leave matters in the hands of the players and the locals. Thus, only a governor's office had been set up inside City Hall. When there wasn't much going on, the governor usually spent his days sipping tea, reading the newspaper, compiling regional summaries to telegraph to the Administrator, and issuing directives to local bodies based on the Administrator's feedback... Assuming the Administrator had any feedback to offer, that is. For the past several months at least, the Administrator's replies had consisted solely of "Acknowledged." Evidently, even that meticulous Administrator could find nothing to fault in their performance. This time, however, was different. Word had it that the Administrator had issued rare, explicit instructions, piquing Fang Chang's curiosity about the upcoming meeting. With some time left before the meeting, he was in no hurry to report to City Hall. Instead, he took a leisurely stroll through the settlement they had built with their own hands. Perhaps by the time he arrived, he wouldn't even need the governor from Dawn City to speak to guess what the Administrator's orders were. In the game, it was now early August, right in the middle of the rainy season in the Baiyue Strait, where sun and rain alternated unpredictably. One second the sun blazed overhead, and the next a torrential downpour swept across the sky. Yet the rain was far from unpleasant. Once it cleared, Port French Fries resembled freshly polished glass, radiating a refreshing, invigorating crispness from inside out. After months of development, Port French Fries had already begun to take shape. With the completion of the harbor, massive quantities of cement, steel, bricks, and construction equipment were left surplus. The municipal government promptly issued an initiative to improve residential housing, actively offering subsidies to encourage locals to replace their handmade wooden shacks with three-story concrete villas. On one hand, this naturally improved the town's appearance; on the other, it fortified homes against tsunamis and earthquakes, as the original wooden structures were merely make-do shelters. More than anything, it was an investment designed to stimulate the local economy for the long haul. Only when survivors owned proper homes could they rent out spare floors or set up small shops along the street-level storefronts. For a sprawling, sparsely populated place like Port French Fries, land was easily the cheapest commodity. The survivors' homes weren't the only things undergoing a transformation; the roads running past their front doors were changing drastically as well. The dirt tracks that once turned into impassable quagmires whenever it rained were now entirely paved over with clean, orderly concrete. Speaking of this concrete, it had quite a story behind it. For widely known reasons, road maintenance costs in the Baiyue Strait were exorbitantly high. Strictly speaking, transplanting Dawn City's development blueprint here had been impractical. Not long ago, however, a research team from the Alliance Biological Research Institute—drawing on biological samples collected locally and studies of the Qingquan City broodmother—successfully synthesized a biomass material dubbed "active cement." This material possessed a remarkable self-repairing property, drawing energy and nutrients from surface biomass to physically preserve the structural material serving as its base. To make a vivid if imperfect analogy, the microorganisms clinging to the material were like miniature hermit crabs, and the pores within the active cement were the shells vital to their survival. To protect their shells, they proactively fended off biological agents that attempted to destabilize the concrete structure, using their own bodies as a bonding agent to preserve the concrete's integrity. The pioneer behind this project was none other than Chen Yutong, head of the Port French Fries branch of the Alliance Biological Research Institute. Without exaggeration, this breathtaking breakthrough effectively stripped away Port French Fries's devastating debuff of "+900% Industrial and Infrastructure Costs." Because this self-repairing active cement was classified as living matter, it was not only immune to erosion from the region's rampant flora and fauna, but it also benefited from the "Flourishing Foliage" regional buff, significantly driving down road maintenance costs. The only minor drawback was that producing and applying this active material required an extra processing step compared to conventional cement. Yet weighed against the benefits it delivered, that modest increase in cost was practically negligible. It went to show that solutions always outnumbered problems. As technology marched forward, what had once been deemed impossible gradually became feasible. Even with the industrial restriction lifted, Fang Chang had no intention of altering their development strategy of prioritizing primary industries, supporting them with tertiary industries, and placing secondary industry last. After all, an accelerated growth buff was simply too sweet for crops to pass up! A crop that yielded only one harvest per season in Dawn City could yield three here without any worries of soil depletion, boasting productivity even more absurd than that of Sunset Province. Their current scale and shipping capacity were the only bottlenecks. Once Port French Fries hit its stride, this place could very well grow into a breadbasket far eclipsing Sunset Province! As for the secondary industry, leaving it to Golden Gallon Port was the obvious play. Lately, large waves of migrants had been pouring into the outskirts of Golden Gallon Port along the River of Eternal Flow, with the swelling pool of young, able-bodied laborers threatening to exceed the capacity of local infrastructure. There was nowhere better suited for industrial manufacturing. Having finally strolled to the entrance of City Hall, Fang Chang narrowed his eyes to take in the masonry landmark before suddenly calling out to an NPC emerging from the building, offering a friendly smile. "Friend, where are you from?" The man appeared to be a recent migrant and didn't recognize his face. Taken aback by the unexpected question, he paused before answering. "Silver Moon Bay... Why do you ask?" Fang Chang beamed and continued, "How do you find life here in Port French Fries? Are you satisfied with the place?" At that question, an expression of profound emotion surfaced on the man's face, and he praised earnestly, "It's a wonderful place. I don't know what else to say... but I'm certain that if heaven exists, it must look like this." There were no kings here, no nobles, and no priests demanding tithes. As long as one was willing to work hard, one could build a comfortable life—that was what pleased him most. Of course, what kept him lingering was also the tavern down on the coastal avenue. He had spent at least a third of last month's earnings there. Listening to sailors and mercenaries swap wild tales was leagues more entertaining than praying to statues of the gods! Watching this fellow who had completely tossed the Spirit of the Sand Sea and the Silver Moon Goddess to the back of his mind, Fang Chang burst into hearty laughter. "I think so too—this place is practically paradise... As long as you like it, that means our trip here wasn't in vain." With that, he left the man staring after him in bewilderment and made his way toward the entrance of City Hall. ... By the time Fang Chang arrived in the conference room, the governor was just arriving as well, courteously having his secretary brew a cup of tea for his guest. Without wasting time on pleasantries, the governor sent from Dawn City quickly got down to business, speaking in an earnest tone. "...Port French Fries has been growing rapidly of late, and labor shortages are cropping up across every industry. City Hall has submitted a request to us hoping to take in more migrants from outside the Alliance. However, we can't simply open the floodgates to just anyone, as that would overwhelm our refugee resettlement system. I wanted to see if you had any good ideas on this front." Fang Chang asked, "What is the Administrator's take?" The governor answered solemnly, "The Administrator instructed me to seek your opinion." Fang Chang pondered for a moment before speaking. "That's simple enough. We can use Port French Fries's municipal budget or commission third-party enterprises to establish accredited training institutions and schools in Golden Gallon Port. Then, we encourage employers who need workers to recruit certified graduates from those schools. All we need to do is issue visas to those who have secured employment contracts. That way, the moment they step off the boat, they already have jobs lined up. With both employment and lodging settled, they can hardly be classified as vagrant refugees." The governor's eyes lit up, and he gave a firm thumbs-up. "That's an excellent idea!" Fang Chang wore a helpless smile. Wasn't that just standard procedure back home? Still, considering that visas probably didn't exist during the Era of Prosperity, and given the civilizational rupture that occurred in the wasteland era, it was understandable that such fine traditions had been lost to time. After all, Ideal City was such a culinary wasteland that it didn't even have steamed dishes; compared to his hometown of Shanghai, such a state of affairs was downright unthinkable. In fact, the "electronic pass" their Administrator had recently rolled out through the Mucilage Community functioned very much like a passport and visa. Thanks to the electronic pass, survivor factions that had once kept their gates firmly shut were now cracking them open, granting survivors living in Mucilage Community member states the right to migrate freely within a defined scope, rather than being stripped of options as in the past. Frankly speaking, that was the most abnormal part of it all. An Administrator originating from the Human Alliance era had produced something that didn't even exist in that era, and wielded it with such effortless mastery. At times, Fang Chang couldn't help but wonder whether this fellow was actually an NPC roleplayed by a real person. As Fang Chang's thoughts drifted, the governor sitting across from him cleared his throat and resumed. "There is one more matter, primarily concerning Baiyue Company." Snapping back to attention, Fang Chang nodded cleanly. "Go ahead." The governor said gravely, "The Administrator wishes for you to suspend military skirmishes with the Empire and focus your energies more on the Southern Sea." Though he had anticipated this, Fang Chang couldn't help letting a faint trace of helplessness show on his face. "We're already doing that. Between the undersea power grid, freshwater pipelines, ocean current power stations, and the rebooting of Coral City, these infrastructure projects are quietly drawing the survivors of the Southern Sea to our side... But as you know, the impact of such work takes time to manifest. The benefits of order don't appear overnight." Hearing this defense, the governor immediately realized Fang Chang had misconstrued his intent and quickly clarified. "You misunderstand. The Administrator isn't questioning your work. Quite the contrary, he believes you've done exceptionally well. Whether in uniting the survivors of the Southern Sea or handling the expeditionary forces, you have genuinely considered their problems from the perspective of the governed." "You flatter us. We're only doing our duty." Taking a sip from his teacup, Fang Chang responded modestly, though the corners of his mouth couldn't help curving upward. That guy's approval was undeniably gratifying. The governor nodded. "As long as you understand. In any case, the Administrator isn't pressing you to achieve an immediate breakthrough on the front lines. What he truly means is that he hopes you can appropriately soften your stance toward the Empire." The corner of Fang Chang's mouth twitched with amusement. "Have we really been that harsh on the Empire?" The embargo was entirely a unilateral move by the Empire. They had never restricted the flow of personnel or goods through Golden Gallon Port, and had even tacitly allowed shadow ports like Banana Head Bay to operate. As for the warlords cropping up along the border, that had even less to do with them. Due to the ceasefire negotiations, he had even paused communication with the rebels within the Empire's borders. Facing Fang Chang's grievance, the governor gave a helpless shrug. "I am not familiar with your affairs across the sea; I am merely conveying the Administrator's intent. Furthermore, the Alliance is about to sign a formal armistice with the Empire. Duke Garava has already conceded on several key terms, and the Administrator hopes Golden Gallon Port can release Governor Nihak as a gesture of good faith on our part." Fang Chang blinked. "Just that?" "Is there an issue?" the governor asked. "No... If anything, that's far too easy." Fang Chang chuckled wryly, bringing up his VM right in front of him to draft a message before tapping send. Within minutes, City Hall in Golden Gallon Port would receive a telegram from Port French Fries, and the secretary he had promoted would handle the rest in short order. By this time tomorrow at the latest, Governor Nihak would walk out of prison and step onto the streets of a Golden Gallon Port transformed beyond recognition... Hopefully, the former governor wouldn't be too shocked by what had become of the land he once ruled. If the Empire treated this as a gesture of goodwill, releasing the ten thousand-plus prisoners of war held in the detention camps wouldn't be out of the question either. Having dispatched the message, Fang Chang looked across the table at the governor and said composedly, "Done." This was likely the fastest quest turnaround he had ever pulled off. A look of surprise flashed across the governor's face, evidently taken aback by his promptness. Fang Chang looked at him and prompted, "Is there anything else?" In his view, both migrant management and gestures of good faith for a ceasefire were trivial matters. If that was all, there would have been no need to convey it through the governor; adding a single line to the quest log would have sufficed. He suspected there was something far more important. Sure enough, reality matched his expectations—the governor still had more to say. Clearing his throat once more, the governor continued. "Additionally, regarding your earlier proposal for Baiyue Company to go public, the Administrator has consulted with experts from Camp 101, and he considers your request reasonable. "The residents of the Alliance should share in the fruits of developing the Baiyue Strait, which will kindle their enthusiasm for pioneering the wasteland. For your company, going public means easier access to capital and faster business expansion, allowing you to grow the pie. "Before that happens, however, you must cooperate with regulators appointed by the Alliance Bank to audit and evaluate your operations, funds, and assets, ensuring that investors' legitimate rights are protected and equity transactions take place on an open, fair, and just footing. "If all goes smoothly, your listing will serve as a successful model. The Administrator intends to subsequently establish a dedicated stock exchange in Dawn City to provide listing services for other well-managed companies in need of financing." Fang Chang was momentarily stunned, but when he processed the words, a surge of delighted surprise lit up his face, and he agreed without a second thought. "Please rest assured, tell the Administrator we will fully cooperate with the Alliance Bank's financial audit!" The governor smiled and nodded. "Compared to the first two matters, this is merely a small detail hardly worth mentioning. Just keep it in mind." Hearing that, Fang Chang wore a radiant grin, but kept his thoughts to himself. A small detail? If this counted as a small detail, then nothing in this world could be called big!