In Family Joy's eyes, the player-formed units are actually pretty weird, and commanding them has a very… special feel.

These people can't做到"orders go, orders obeyed",and "military discipline" might as well not exist. Until the critical moment they're all slack as hell; you tell him to stand guard and he'll wander off to sleep, and even if the Jade Emperor shows up he still can't keep them in line.

If they were professional Soldiers, their squad leader would've already yanked them up by the underwear till it reached their neck and "promoted" them on the spot.

They don't train in peacetime either; all their combat experience is ground out in real fights, and even their gear is hugely personalized.

Their form and style is closer to free Mercenaries.

But their average education level is very high, and combined with the game's unique skill system, they can practically pick up and master most advanced equipment and tactics at high speed.

Their will to fight is every bit as firm as a first-rate army. Even if their organization is completely scattered, they can still "scatter into stars across the sky."

On top of that, the extreme cybernetic overhauls give them ridiculous personal physique and strength, so the players have massively overfulfilled every tactical objective he assigned.

If taking Hokuma within six hours counts as a pass, then the way they improvised to handle the suicide hostages and deal with the aftermath shows an extremely high level of initiative.

But quietly dismounting on the road, regrouping, then sprinting 37 kilometers through the forest in four hours, ambushing the armor company that was still moving to reinforce Da Haguai, finishing the battle in under half an hour, capturing two enemy tanks and eight IFVs, taking one captain and one lieutenant alive plus 73 Soldiers—now that is straight-up superhuman behavior.

Just from the numbers, the only thing that can compare is Yang Chengwu leading the Red 4th and 6th Regiments on a 240-kilometer forced march in one day to seize Luding Bridge.

But those were old-school Chinese supermen with no cybernetics, and they actually existed in reality, so in the end it's still not comparable.

And the most important point—and also why Family Joy really doesn't want to rely on players to fight all the time—

is how uncontrollable players are.

You can't do the "force the cow to drink by shoving its head into the water" routine with players. If they really don't want to do something and Lin Miao still pressures them into it, it's entirely possible that the next day these thousands of people will all buy standing tickets back to Night City, leaving Lin Miao staring dumbly at an empty front line.

Even the most rotten Guo Faction Soldiers wouldn't pull that kind of stunt.

But players absolutely would.

Am I right, Arrow Studio?

This kind of unit really makes you love them and hate them at the same time.

——————

"We got played! Like a bunch of monkeys turned into idiots with a banana on a fishing hook!"

By the time Hardlin, who had been setting up defenses at Da Haguai and was ready at any moment to respond to a Horizon army attack, learned his armored battalion had been ambushed and wrecked, dawn was already breaking.

They'd stayed up all night without sleep, glued to their good buddy's livestream, waiting to see when the other side would launch their offensive.

They even laughed at the guy for being stupid—who the hell does a war livestream and leaks their own military intel like that?

Result: a bunch of people listened to their good buddy brag in the APC for hours, and that bastard never once got out of the vehicle. Tons of people in the chat even thought Super Earth was just on the road.

They were from out of town and didn't know the roads, but Hardlin knew damn well how long it takes to drive from Hokuma to Da Haguai.

If you're actually driving without stopping, you get there in three to four hours.

Only when the report from the armored unit came in did they finally realize they'd been played. The good buddy's stream was a smokescreen these bastards put out, its whole purpose to grab everyone's attention, make them think Horizon Corporation's strategic target really was Da Haguai, then hit them with a flanking ambush.

The key was, the door of the vehicle stayed shut the whole time. Even if a patrol aircraft observed from afar, they couldn't see whether there was anyone inside.

The staff officers were on the verge of tears.

"They're an unimaginably fresh batch of newborn idiots! How can they be this cheap? Are they even human?"

And once they started analyzing the battle, they were even more baffled.

"With a distance that far, when did they get off the vehicles? Our patrols along the route never spotted them, and even if they'd been marching nonstop from Hokuma, how the hell did they cover those dozens of kilometers on foot?"

And not just cover it; they casually wiped out the armor company on the way.

Are you people made of iron or what?

Can't wrap our heads around it. Seriously can't.

The staff really couldn't figure out how these people managed to maintain such tactical mobility in the mountains without air support or vehicles.

This is straight-up unscientific!

If it were the army of Cuba, marching on foot without vehicles, five kilometers an hour would already be decent. Any faster and they wouldn't be able to maintain formation, it'd just turn into one blob in front and another blob behind.

"This is not the time to be arguing about that."

Hardlin, who'd nearly flipped the table, had bloodshot eyes. He stared fixedly at the screen where his "good buddy" had been yapping all night. If he could reach through the screen, Hardlin would absolutely strangle the bastard who'd caused him such heavy losses.

"We need to figure out their next objective right now! Send all the patrols out, scatter them, and find me their exact position!"

"It shouldn't be that fast…"

One staff officer spoke up hesitantly.

"They fought a brutal six-hour night battle to crush the 105th Battalion, then ran another thirty-plus kilometers, and now they've captured our armor company. Unless they're literally made of steel, they have to stop and rest."

Just the earlier behavior—no casualty counting, no looting of spoils—was already beyond their imagination. They really couldn't believe things could get even more absurd.