Considering that the weapons wielded by ants with their forelimbs are not as powerful as the ants' tongs, the protagonist wants to put the army aside first and prioritize arming the smaller number of flying knights.
As an air force, after many efforts, all the fifty male ants born in the second batch now have mounts.
It's just that these flying knights who have been rigorously trained now have almost no means of aerial attack, wasting their excellent maneuverability in vain.
If in a battle with parasitic ants, when the front line is empty, such a force suddenly parachutes near the enemy's nest after they have poured out, it will play a decisive role.
However, the Flying Knight Legion currently does not have this ability, not only because its number is too small, but also the Flying Knight Legion is composed of male ants with very weak individual combat effectiveness.
When ants fight, they basically rely on their mandibles as weapons to cut off the enemy's neck or limbs or tear the enemy into pieces to cause damage.
The male ants' large jaws are underdeveloped and their bite force is weak. Their individual combat effectiveness is far inferior to that of a soldier ant, barely on par with smaller worker ants.
If a weapon suitable for male ants can be made, their combat effectiveness will be greatly enhanced. As an air force, the most suitable attack method is of course long-range attack.
Referring to human history, long-range attack weapons used by early humans included javelins, slingshots, bows and arrows, and slings.
The protagonist comprehensively considered the advantages and disadvantages of these weapons and whether they were suitable for use by ants after being scaled down.
A javelin is a weapon with a spearhead attached to one end of a long pole that can be thrown to kill enemies or hunt.
Javelin throwing is a relatively complex body movement: you need to hold the gun on the shoulder. After a pre-run, connect the throwing step to gain momentum, and use the explosive final force to act on the longitudinal axis of the javelin to throw the javelin over the shoulder.
This set of movements is difficult for ants used to crawling. This can only be done when you adjust to a position where your back is on all fours and your upper body is upright.
The flying knight rides on the fly mount in this posture, so in terms of body movements, using the javelin is not a problem. It just requires long-term training to adapt to the way of exerting force.
Ants have another problem when using javelins, which is also a problem encountered by other weapons: the javelin that fits the size of ants is too light, and it is easily disturbed by the flow of air when thrown, and it is so light that it has almost no lethality.
To overcome this problem, we can only increase the weight of the javelin at the expense of the range to enhance the penetration and lethality, so that even the carapace of ants cannot be penetrated.
But all things considered, the javelin is still a weapon of choice.
Slingshots and bows are long-range weapons that rely on the deformation of their own bow arms to gain lethality. Bows and arrows are developed from the slingshot.
The structures of slingshots and bows are similar, both consisting of elastic bow arms and flexible bow strings. The difference is that slingshots fire projectiles, while bows fire arrows with sharp edges.
Slingshots and bows also have the problem of being easily disturbed by airflow and lacking in lethality. This can also be solved by increasing the number of projectiles and arrows and increasing the power storage capacity of the bow arms.
The biggest drawback of these two weapons is that the production process is very complicated.
Although bows and arrows appeared as early as 30,000 years ago in the Upper Paleolithic Age, the earliest bow was a piece of flexible, bent wood or bamboo, and the arrow was a tree stick or bamboo pole sharpened at one end. However, this simple bow has very weak lethality and is not worth imitating.
Later mature bows, such as composite recurve bows, were extremely lethal. However, this kind of bow is complicated to make, requires consumables, and is time-consuming.
There is a special article in "Kao Gong Ji" called "Bows are made by people", which gives a detailed summary of bow-making technology. In the next two thousand years, the composite bow manufacturing technology in China or Asia did not change fundamentally compared with Kaogongji.
According to "Kaogong Ji", the "six materials", collectively known as stem, horn, tendon, glue, silk and lacquer, are the most important in bow making.
Among them, the dry wood should be made of eucalyptus at the top, followed by eucalyptus, eucalyptus, etc., and bamboo at the bottom; ox horn should be used for horns; beef tendon should be used for tendons, and the tendons should be small and long, and large ones should be round and moist; glue should be used There are six types of glue: deer glue, horse glue, ox glue, rat glue, fish glue, and rhinoceros glue; silk refers to silk thread; lacquer refers to natural lacquer.
With so much material, the protagonist is currently unable to collect it all, especially in terms of animal glue. You must know that the protagonist has not seen any mammals since time travel.
Due to the complexity of materials and processes, the protagonist can only give up slingshots and bows, which are very common weapons in human history.
Finally, there's the sling.
Stone is one of the earliest weapons in human history and one of the main offensive weapons in the Stone Age.
The earliest way of throwing stones was with bare hands. Later, slings appeared in some areas, and the distance of throwing stones was much farther and the power became stronger.
The structure and method of use of the sling are very simple: a leather bag is tied between two leather straps of the same length, and a stone is placed in the bag. The pitcher grabs the end of the belt and swings it rapidly above his head. When the speed reaches the maximum on the fourth or fifth lap, he releases one of the belts, and the stone in the bag is thrown in a tangential direction.
After the used slings are processed and polished into cobblestones, the slingshot can easily throw the cobblestones 100-200 meters, and the power is considerable when launching a large-scale salvo.
Both ancient Greece and Rome had large-scale slingers. Although their equipment was relatively simple, they were effective assistants to the main army.
The sling is easy to use and easy to make, and it is also a weapon suitable for ants.
Finally, among these four weapons, after theoretically rejecting slingshots and bows, the protagonist chose javelins and slings.
The protagonist took some worker ants and tried to make a batch of javelins and slings.
A javelin is basically the same as a spear. A specially fired sharp glazed pottery spearhead is fixed on a thin branch with ant glue and ant wire, and it is ready.
The protagonist originally planned to combine the spear and the javelin into one weapon, so that the flying knights could use it as a spear in close combat in the sky and throw it as a javelin from a distance.
But after finishing it, the protagonist tried to swing it, and he found that the design of the javelin and the spear were not the same. The javelin needs a short handle and a forward center of gravity to fully exert its throwing power. The spear must have a longer handle and the center of gravity is located in the middle of the spear body to make it easier to hold.
In the end, the protagonist could only make the spear and javelin separately. The spear's clay spearhead is designed into a long, sharp, hollow shape, while the javelin's spearhead is relatively larger and heavier.
The sling is made of ant silk, with a silk sac woven in the middle to hold the stone.
About three days later, the first batch of experimental weapons was finally ready.
After the weapon was made, the protagonist immediately found some male ants, soldier ants and ants for experiments.
