Will the out-of-control servitor meet the cosmic cat?

Even the pigs in the farm know that they have a long memory after being electrocuted several times by the fence. As an intelligent creature with a smart brain, it is impossible to be stupider than a pig.

Although the 8000 million-ton warship itself is not a big number for the Great Rupert Kingdom or their joint fleet, the commander can completely accept that it was killed by some weird thing for the first time, or It's okay to sacrifice for important tactical goals such as breaking through the wormhole defense line and opening up a safe zone for the main fleet.

However, this does not mean that they are so rich that they can casually scatter tens of millions of fleets as cannon fodder every time they pass through the cave. It's a habit, maybe I really did it.

But 8000 million is still a bit too much.

If warships of tens of millions of tons have to be lost every time they pass through a wormhole, then if there are a few more holes on the road, it is equivalent to destroying warships of hundreds of millions of tons before meeting the opponent's fleet-this is so rich that it is difficult for them. accepted.

By the way, according to the feedback from the intelligence agencies, for some unknown reason, these two civilizations have eliminated all ordinary ciphers, and even the most common civilian communications are encrypted with post-quantum ciphers, making them The special-purpose quantum computer built at a huge cost did not have the effect of reducing the dimensionality of ordinary passwords as before. It can only honestly enter the opponent's home court and start a normal information attack and defense with them, in order to try to get it. to useful information.

Obviously, it is possible to get some general information by doing this, but it is powerless to that kind of confidential or even top-secret information. The information is still very little, and the information offensive and defensive battles are also losing steadily, and monitoring and analysis are extremely difficult.

However, with the unremitting efforts of intelligence experts, they have also analyzed some useful information from it, the most important of which is the name of the ruler of this country "Red" and their specific territory——

24 star systems.

Obviously, that's not much, just about the same as the Akachi/Riga Swarm, so they don't have to worry about bumping into another star empire as huge as theirs.

However, 24 star systems are by no means a very rare existence. Except for their Great Rupert Kingdom, among other civilizations encountered, the civilization with the most galaxies is the Akachi Swarm, 27 galaxies.

In other words, according to empirical estimates, the number of galaxies is about the same. Considering their chaotic thoughts and the disadvantages of ordinary civilizations compared to Gestalt civilizations, the strength of this cat alliance civilization should be weaker than that of the Akachi swarm.

Using this algorithm to estimate, the Akachi swarm has 40 billion tons of pure electromagnetic gun battleships, and its combat power can probably be equivalent to their 1 full-staffed main force + a unit (30 billion tons), then this cat alliance civilization The fighting power of the team can probably be equivalent to a full squad of them?

To be honest, Lupers really doesn't know, after all, their data is too little.

However, through the dismantling and analysis of the wreckage of the human fortress, they now understand that the mysterious weapon used by these people is a giant laser called "free electron laser". The cavity material of the nuclear explosion, and its imaginary enemies are also laser weapons with extremely long range but poor damage, so their armor generally uses specialized anti-laser materials with extremely high thickness but extremely light weight.

This is why these warships generally look slender and weak—the characteristics of the free electron laser determine that the longer the hull, the better, and the low-density anti-laser material makes these warships generally puffy, plus the inhuman giant The cooling plate makes its size look very bluffing, but the actual quality is directly cut in half compared to their previous estimated data.

According to the calculations from the rear, the weight is light, the proportion of armor is small, and it is also specialized in resistance to lasers. The effect of plasma cannons that mainly focus on kinetic energy damage is relatively mediocre. Therefore, if their plasma cannons can hit solidly on the The key positions of these battleships are completely taken away by a chance.

Decent crispy chicken.

Of course, the experts also warned that due to its super long range, they can strike their warships at a distance of more than 2 kilometers, even if the natural lack of lethality of laser weapons makes it necessary to obtain Get closer to their range, unlike electromagnetic guns that can penetrate their armored structure and core at a long distance, so the hard kill ability is more hip.

However, this weapon is extremely, extremely, extremely threatening to their surface equipment!

When writing this report, the experts used three prefix phrases that mean "extremely" before the word "big", so that the officers on the front line can realize the seriousness of the problem.

Since they are so serious, even the Lupers army, who has always disliked these intellectuals who can only write articles, chose to take it seriously this time-of course, from a more practical point of view, the rear has said so, It is equivalent to throwing the blame on them. If they really underestimated the enemy and suffered heavy losses, no one can bear the leader's accountability.

Even if it's just for the position under their buttocks, they have to take it seriously.

"Sure enough, these insidious cat allies." Looking at the data returned by the armored reconnaissance satellite, the commander of the Ninth Fleet gave a 'ah', "I only play these dirty things, no wonder the fleet is so rubbish. We dare not fight head-on.”

Of course, after talking about it, they still have to honestly find a ship to dismantle these large-yield nuclear air mines blocking the door-the focus of the nuclear air mine defense system is actually battleships rather than nuclear air mines. While blocking the wormhole with nuclear air mines, the main fleet will also be on standby at a distance, so that a small group of bomb disposal fleets sent by the enemy can be justly gang-fighted.

The fleet is the key point, and the nuclear air mine is actually just an insurance to prevent the opponent from jumping over the large fleet in a hurry, forcing the opponent to pass the ship a little bit to dismantle the bomb-if there are fewer ships, one will be beaten by hundreds of ships, The survival time is very short, and at most two or three nuclear air mines equipped with super-heavy armor can be taken away at a time. It will take several rounds to dismantle them all.

However, if there are too many ships, Red will directly detonate this batch of fleets with one click, and because of the heavy armor, other nuclear air mines relatively far away around the wormhole can still maintain their effectiveness, and continue to deter subsequent fleets until the opponent is a little bit Pass the ship and destroy all the nuclear air mines, or step on and explode all the nuclear air mines within the range by life.

The last time they tried the latter, they got 8000 million tons of warships.

A group of cheap nuclear air mines can force them, Lupers, who have always been smug and willing to do it, can only block the door aggrieved, dismantling bombs a little bit, and have to bear being attacked by the opponent's main force. The pain of fleet gang fights.

It hurts, it hurts too much.

In addition, when they first saw the large number of warships deployed by the opponent behind the wormhole, they thought that they could finally face-to-face confrontation with the opponent, which really made them excited—although the opponent has a short-range warp speed, they are still in the face of being hit. Under such circumstances, the distance can be quickly opened, but the leader's instructions have been issued before entering the solar system, telling them why the leader thinks it is possible to attack the other party in this situation.

Very simple, he transferred one of the only two warp drive engines in the First Fleet.

Although the tonnage of the cat alliance's fleet is much smaller than theirs, it is at least one billion tons, such a high quality, and it seems that the performance of this warp speed engine seems to be worse than theirs, so it can be I learned that, without considering the energy recharge that takes more than ten hours at every turn, the upper limit of the warp speed that this warp speed engine drives all the fleets will definitely not be too long—maybe it is only about [-] kilometers.

And due to the better performance of the Lupers warp speed engine, even when driving this fleet that is twice as heavy as the Cat League fleet, the upper limit of its distance can still reach a little over [-] kilometers, which is not much difference. , are completely within their acceptable range.

The only variable is the warp-disrupting force field whose data is unknown, and this is also the most important reason why they thought they should not attack rashly—however, since the opponent did not choose to fight on the planet called Earth From their point of view, this thing either didn't exist in the first place, it was just fabricated to deceive them strategically, or it had some weakness, and it couldn't do what they imagined. The way the disruptor force field interrupted their warp pursuit.

In fact, this weakness does exist - the disrupting force field is an indiscriminate interference that does not distinguish between the enemy and the enemy. Once activated, even one's own warships cannot warp within the range, and this thing cannot be turned on and off from the mechanism. , It will take a certain amount of time from the preparation of the disrupted force field to the diffusion and then to the strengthening, otherwise there will be situations where the force field is not strong enough to be forcibly broken through by the opponent.

The same goes for closing.

Although this time is much shorter than the warp engine preparation time of the same technology, there is no need to worry about the opponent rushing over with the engine temporarily, but if the opponent guesses the time point when Hong intends to turn off/on the force field, give the engine a few minutes in advance The heat is good, and then rushing over when the fleet lands and the force field is not fully activated, things will get worse.

Therefore, unlimited kites are impossible. The opponent can make mistakes dozens of times, or even hundreds of times, but as long as she hits the treasure once and rushes directly into their fleet, then she can only be close to the opponent. There are two options: fighting and giving up the fleet mixed with the enemy—either way, it will make the disaster worse for the not-so-rich cat alliance fleet.

Even according to the current information, the enemy's only two warp speed engines should be in the First Fleet which is very far away from here, but just looking at the opponent's fearless drive, it is hard for Hong to believe them. Really unprepared for this.

This risk cannot be taken.

However, this does not mean that Hong's warp speed is limited - anyway, their disruptive force field is a natural enemy for warp speed engines, and they still have a range advantage , the other party will only have more headaches than them.

After all, they have one more thing that disgusts the Lupers.

"It's these ferry ships again!" Looking at the ferry ships interspersed in the opponent's fleet, who were obviously planning to run with the fleet after the battle, the fleet commander slapped the table, looking very angry, "Don't dare A coward who will fight us upright!"

To be honest, he is really disgusted now - even though the engine performance of the enemy's battleship is not as good as theirs, and the power of the main gun is also very weak, but they can't stand them having these damn ferry ships!

Even if their engine technology is better, they can launch the Truth class equipped with extremely high-quality metal heavy armor with a higher acceleration than the enemy's puffy laser ship, and at the same time, they will not sacrifice too much specific impulse, but they cannot stand up to the opponent's The ferry ship is really too big——Such a large structure and nozzle, even in the case of poor technology, achieved super high specific impulse + high acceleration at the same time, which brought a great Extraordinary strategic maneuverability.

After being severely beaten on this planet called G2-139d, looking at the back of the cat alliance fleet patted their butts away, not only him, but the entire fleet felt a feeling of being disgusted.

Do you want to talk about the damage? It’s not very high. Except for a few unlucky warships, the armor of other ships basically didn’t suffer too much damage. The long-range range is usually only to attack the light armor/non-armored equipment on the surface, destroying the enemy's heat dissipation ability.

If calculated based on the armor of a laser ship of the same level, the "actual range" is only about [-] kilometers, which is not as far as it appears on paper.

This is different from plasma cannons and electromagnetic cannons. Because the damage of electromagnetic cannons hardly attenuates with distance, the range calculation is based on the flight time. After all, the longer the flight, the greater the opponent's maneuvering range. After reaching a certain level, it can be considered as a "Nearly impossible to hit", this number is considered the limit range.

The problem with the plasma cannon is that the lethality is always good until it spreads to a certain level, but once it flies too far and spreads to a certain level, the lethality will drop suddenly because the energy density falls below the opponent's protection value , and falls quickly to a negligible degree over a short distance.

Therefore, within a range of [-] kilometers, the plasma cannon hits one at a time, piercing armor like eating and drinking, but a little beyond the range of [-] to [-] kilometers, the plasma cannon becomes a large pile of rubber shot, and even the surface armor is damaged. I don't understand.

This is different from the laser's killing curve. Although its hard-killing distance of penetrating armor is only more than 1 kilometers, it is not too far away from electromagnetic guns and plasma cannons. However, due to its damage mechanism, the diffusion is slow and the For the sake of stability, it still maintains sufficient lethality against light armor and unarmored units after exceeding this "actual range", and it is still more than enough to paste a surface layer and a heat sink.

Therefore, after being severely beaten by the Cat League, although the core area of ​​the battleship was almost intact, no one was really beaten to scrap except those carried away by the nuclear air mine.

However, the surface equipment is really horrible. It looks like it has been bitten by a dog. There are potholes everywhere, and the heat sink is also in a mess. Call the logistics officer to see the kind that can cause cardiac arrest on the spot.

Although the main body is not damaged, it will not be directly hit beyond repair like plasma cannons and electromagnetic guns. Obviously, it is impossible for them to rush all the way without repairing-the surface equipment is also very important for plasma gunships. Importantly, whether it is sighting, maneuvering or heat dissipation, they all need the assistance of these fragile equipment deployed on the surface.

But if it is repaired, even if the logistics fleet brings spare parts, the supply fleet in the rear is already heading towards the solar system, it will take time and cost-every time a hole passes through, it will take half a day to repair the ship on the spot. It was really uncomfortable.

For this tactic, they can only use one word to describe it.

Nausea.

Volume 259 Industry and Power: Chapter [-] Before the Dawn

Although due to time considerations, they did not "restore their warships to their original state", but only asked to restore their functions to almost the same level. Therefore, the handling of the logistics troops was relatively rough, and there was a rush of work all over their bodies. the taste of.

But even so, it took the Lupers more than a month to complete the repair work on the fleet-this undoubtedly annoyed them very much. After all, their fleet is so powerful and their firepower is so fierce, it should be Just flatten those crispy-skinned chickens on the opposite side that can only scrape Sha Sha.

But now?

So far, their powerful battleships have not been able to fire even a single shot at the opponent's warships. Instead, the deck was cleaned by a group of flies nearly [-] kilometers away. It exploded to the sky, and I had to squat at the entrance of the cave to repair the boat for a month.

And what about the opponent's fleet?

Except for a few unlucky ones who were slightly injured by their electromagnetic gunships, the other warships were basically intact, and even the armor was still shiny!

This war was really aggrieved-although no one said it clearly, everyone believed that this should be the consensus of all Lupers fleet members.

Of course, except for the few Lupers who were so flattered to see the Great Rupert Kingdom - for them, seeing the opponent's tactics so disgusting, they were so happy that they even had an extra bowl for dinner.

Yes, eat - the military is the only place in the Great Rupers where even the lowest civilians can eat normal food, not factory-made 7-flavor nutrient cream.

Even for ordinary soldiers at the lowest level, the types of meals they can eat are very boring and monotonous. There are only a dozen varieties that they can eat in a year, and the quality of vegetables and meat is very poor. Compared with professional soldiers, there is a lot of difference, and there is a world of difference from the rich variety and high quality of officers.

But compared to nutrition paste, this is already a rare delicacy. On the planet, if you want to eat this kind of normal food, you have to be a small head of a factory at the very least.

This is also an important reason why the Great Rupert Army is very enviable-if you can be selected into the army, even if it is a relatively low-status marine corps leader with a relatively high death rate, first of all, the standard of living will immediately rise to a big level. , and the room for improvement is so much better than a factory where you have worked hard for a lifetime and your position is almost unchanged.

In addition, the Great Rupert Kingdom has always been in an advantageous position in foreign wars. As long as you are lucky and smart, you can get a lot of military exploits just by following the leader. For the boss or something, the standard of food, clothing, housing and transportation is enough to draw a gap that is almost impossible to catch up with his previous class.

There are only three ways to get ahead in the Great Rupert Country, becoming an official, researching, and joining the army-the first two paths are beyond the reach of ordinary people who cannot receive education. Only joining the army is for the entire society, even if A selection-type course that anyone who can't read a single word can participate in.

Even if the entire selection mechanism is not fair, let alone the impact of various "people", the mere fact that the civilian class has not received education is as competitive as those middle-class people who have received elementary education or even professional education. Pulled out the class.

But as unfair as it was, it was the only chance for Lupers' lower class to get ahead.

Therefore, under such characteristics, the army's loyalty to the Great Rupert Kingdom is very high, the difficult but unique selection process, relatively superior living conditions, and a much higher status than the bottom make these people join the army After that, there will almost certainly be a feeling that they have "broken away from the previous class", thinking that they have been completely different from those bottom mud legs.

Even before that, they worked in the same factory, lived in the same building, and were even born in the same orphanage with the same blood parents as those "mud-legged children".

But after being promoted to the army and accepting the "intellectual education" specially prepared by the army for these uneducated civilians, they will not hesitate to say goodbye to their past selves and embrace this opportunity to make a difference. , the Great Rupert Kingdom that gave them a brand new life.

After all, in their view, the self who has received enlightenment education is completely two classes from those below except for their own name, and those mud legs used to sign "I agree" to documents that they can't understand at all. up.

They don't want to be confused with those mud legs.

This is the confidence that the Great Rupert Kingdom has been able to last for 3000 years—as long as the people's hearts of these armies are firmly in their own hands, so that they cannot empathize with the bottom, and it can even be said to actively draw a line with the bottom Then through the strict monitoring of the Thought Police and supplemented by the temptation of interests, middle and low-level officials and professional technical personnel are controlled by means of different means but the same central idea.

At the time of introduction, the upper class, as those with vested interests, will spontaneously maintain the totalitarian system, and then divide all the systems related to violence in the middle and lower classes through class education and sharing a small amount of benefits, and tie them to different corners of their own chariots, so that They can't unite with each other, and even sneer at each other.

The army looks down on weak technicians and officials who can only point fingers at the rear. Officials look down on technicians who have no eyesight and can only be bookworms and mud-legged troops who can be compared with themselves as long as they fight every day.

And the technicians also look down on the brash army with only muscles in their brains and the stupid officials who have no knowledge and only talk nonsense based on their status.

Then, while the three are grateful to the great leader who gave them their status and power, they also look down on the ignorant people at the bottom, thinking that they are already a higher level than these mud legs. —In this way, the internal checks and balances of the Great Rupert Kingdom are completed.

A totalitarian country that is divided internally, but is united to obey the ruler's orders and spontaneously maintain the existing system.

It's very unstable - but actually, it's very stable.

As long as the positive feedback of this system is not interrupted, the Great Rupert Kingdom can ensure that each class looks down on each other while making them feel superior to others, and continuously create new cakes for vested interests. If the interests are distributed, then the system will be very stable.

Those who want to destroy it have no ability, and those who have the ability to destroy it benefit from the unintentional destruction of the system, and even actively maintain and fight against those "black apples" who want to destroy the system.

Such a system is almost invulnerable in times of prosperity—or rather, it is, for the vast majority of countries, very stable in times of prosperity.

The only problem is that one day, this thriving momentum is interrupted, the positive feedback that has lasted for thousands of years is terminated, and the country loses the ability to make new cakes.

Can this system be stabilized?

...

"Lupers' fleet is finally sailing."

Seeing the collected intelligence data, Hong's expression is not only not sad, but even mixed with a lot of excitement - you know, before this battle, she really didn't expect that this mere block could actually Hold each other for so long.

Although she did make the opponent a bit miserable, after all, this is different from the normal laser battle, because the opponent has no ability to fight back, so the heat dissipation ability of the single-push human level has not dropped during the whole process, and can be maintained at a high level all the time. rate of fire attack.

In the laser ship battle, if this level of injury is to occur, it will only appear in the "hand-to-hand combat stage" when the two sides are overloaded and begin to abandon heat after entering the optimal combat distance of more than [-] kilometers. .

But this time, they just washed the deck at a long distance for half a day, without losing a little mass for heat dissipation, and only spent some almost free electricity to fire guns, and one-third of the propellant was used for maneuvering Road, successfully blocked the opponent for a month and a half.

Is it worth it?

It couldn't be more cost-effective.

After all, after overcoming the key problem of miniaturizing the gaseous core nuclear thermal engine some time ago, the Cat League is now making every effort to manufacture this small missile specially designed to fight against the Lupers fleet, in order to prepare for all of these Lupers, who puts all his energy on the heavy armored ship and guns, but doesn't pay much attention to air defense, brings a little surprise.

Hiss, why does it feel so familiar?

Of course, it is said that it is a miniaturized missile, but it is not actually a "small missile" as many people imagined. Its mass is still about [-] tons, which is not much lighter than the solid-core nuclear thermal missile used before.

This miniaturization refers to the previous interstellar missiles.

Since the cost of the gaseous core has always been too high and cannot be miniaturized, it can only be assembled on larger interstellar missiles, as an "expensive but superior performance" decisive force, used to make the final decision at the most critical time

You know, a standard interstellar missile has a mass of up to 5000 tons!

Considering the low-density anti-laser material that is more than ten meters thick in front of the warhead to resist strong laser interception, its size is very amazing, a circle larger than the Saturn V, and anyone standing in front of it People in this world will throw their impressions of "missiles" into pieces.

And even the smaller ordinary fleet ship-to-ship missiles have a mass of about 10 tons, which is equivalent to the mass of [-] intercontinental ballistic missiles bundled together.

Space is so vast and boundless. In order to be able to resist laser strikes and have high acceleration and good DV, any missile used to attack ships must not be small. Two hundred tons is almost the result of stepping on the lower limit. .

However, since the gaseous core has not been able to solve the problem of miniaturization, and the cost has not been reduced, the ship-to-ship missiles that are the main force on the battlefield can only be pushed by such old-fashioned things as solid cores. The theoretical specific impulse of the core can also be raised, but that is only possible because of the remarkable progress in material science, so that the core can work at a higher temperature without melting.

It's a pity that their material science is not that strong yet.

Therefore, when the specific impulse can only reach 9km/s?, the highest DV of the solid-core missile is more than 20 km/s?—in the famous rocket equation, that is, DV=specific impulse Among *ln (wet weight/dry weight), due to the logarithm in the formula, it is obvious that the benefit of increasing DV by increasing wet weight (propellant) will become smaller and smaller, At the same time, it will also sharply increase the engineering difficulty, which is why working medium recoil spacecraft usually rely on high specific impulse to increase DV instead of adding propellant.

During the War of Extinction, missiles with this performance could still be used, and they could have a good combat effect. But now that the performance of warships has been rapidly improved, the performance of solid-core missiles that has been unable to improve has finally led to the The disappearance of missiles as a weapon in space warfare.

Although the interstellar missiles have sufficient specific impulse by relying on the gaseous core, they lost the cover of the ship-to-ship missiles, and the small number of them were difficult to support, and they had to retreat to the second line in the end.

But now, the situation has changed.

With the unremitting efforts of the scientists of the Cat Alliance, they finally overcome the key technical problems of the miniaturization and cheapness of the gaseous core, and successfully put this superior engine with a specific impulse more than three times that of the solid core into use.

Don’t forget, in the rocket equation, the specific impulse is linearly positively correlated with DV—even if you don’t make any modifications to the original missile, just changing the engine will immediately increase the DV to three times the original one.

What's more, it is impossible for Hong not to make any modifications to the original missile-after the success of the miniaturized engine was a foregone conclusion, in less than a week, Hong and her research team had combined all the work done on the missile over the years All the technical reserves have been applied, which has improved the performance of this missile to a large level. Coupled with the engine that has completed the test, it has quickly become another big killer at the hands of Maomeng.