Late at night, the protagonist still didn't go to bed.
Even though he had to observe the battle situation during the day and organize repairs and forage at night, he could only sleep four or five hours a day. He was extremely lack of sleep and extremely longed for sleep.
You know, in the last life, the protagonist was an otaku who slept for 8-10 hours a day. For him at that time, apart from games and novels, there was no better entertainment than sleeping.
At this time, the protagonist found that he seemed to remember something from his previous life, but vaguely, like a cloud, which was clearly there and visible, but he wanted to reach out and grab it but found nothing.
This feeling was so uncomfortable that the protagonist simply shook his head and stopped thinking about it. Anyway, many things would come to mind naturally, just like the protagonist's military literacy and the "inventions" that pop up from time to time.
The protagonist returns to focusing on the task at hand.
Outdoors in [Swamp City], there is a small platform on top of a big rock, which is protected by an air defense net. The protagonist and a group of ants are busy around a pile of spare parts.
The moon shrouded in the fog that gradually gathered at night gave off an obscure light, and the sky and the earth were dim. When the light was just right, it could print the outline of everything.
The protagonist leads a group of ants busy around the parts of the ballista. This crossbow was made by a scientific research team far away in [Dongyang City] based on the design information package provided by the protagonist. The scientific research team had been developing long-range weapons such as crossbows before, but progress had been slow without the guidance of the protagonist.
War is a catalyst for technology. This time, the urgent need to deal with parasitic war beasts made the protagonist perform beyond his level. He quickly used the memory of his previous life to create a design information package and entrusted the bee flying knights to pass it back.
The scientific research team followed the instructions and made the accessories, but these accessories had never been assembled in [Dongyang City], let alone tested. They were only completed and shipped before the fleet set sail.
The protagonist doesn't know whether it can be used, so he can only assemble the ballista first.
Assembling a ballista is very similar to assembling a model for an otaku, and the protagonist feels a little familiar. It's just that this "model" kit is too rough, and many parts can only be reprocessed on site during assembly before they can be assembled properly.
But in half a night, the two ballistae were quickly formed.
This is a torque-type ballista similar to that used by the Romans. It does not have the huge bow arm of the giant crossbow or bed crossbow that is common in the East, and the overall look is very slender.
The crossbow in human history is said to have been invented by Dionysus based on mechanical research. It uses the torque generated by two tensioned bundles of horse hair, leather ropes or animal tendons as power to drive the crossbow arm to drive the bow string to eject projectiles or arrows.
The improved crossbow of the Greeks has a strong bracket, the main beam is placed on the bracket, and two torsion spring groups are installed on both sides of the front end. Each spring group drives a crossbow arm, and the end of the crossbow arm is connected to the bow string. In the middle is a woven mesh bag that holds projectiles.
The ballistae has great power. A well-performing ballistae can throw a stone projectile weighing 1 talent (an ancient Greek weight unit, approximately 26 kilograms) 300 yards (1 yard is approximately equal to 0.9144 meters).
In human history, ballistas have always been a very important long-range heavy firepower before the invention of artillery. However, due to insufficient siege capabilities, they were replaced by larger trebuchets in the Middle Ages, and then came the age of artillery.
In 332 BC, when Alexander the Great of Macedonia besieged the Persian territory of Gaza City, the defenders used ballistae to fight back. A spear fired from a ballistae even penetrated Alexander's bronze shield and pierced his gorgeous chest. A bruised him.
During the Roman siege of Jerusalem in AD 63, the Jewish general Joseph recalled that a companion standing side by side with him on the city wall had his head blown off by a projectile fired from a Roman ballista! A pregnant woman in the city was hit by a stone bullet and the fetus in her belly was thrown 100 feet away! The giant ballistae of the Romans could crush an enemy 400 meters away, and the spears they fired could pin two or three enemies to the ground in a dense formation.
In addition, the accuracy of the ballistae is also amazing. They can even hit the same place repeatedly. There have been records of the spear fired by the ballista splitting the previous spear into two pieces.
The protagonist barely reconstructed the ballistae based on his memory, coupled with the ants' poor finishing ability, of course they couldn't produce the ballistae that was already quite sophisticated and perfect like the ancient Greeks and Romans.
The ballista in front of the protagonist can only be said to have the basic characteristics of a ballista.
The ballista consists of a simple three-legged pyramid bracket and the ballista main beam. The two are connected with ropes and simple mortise and tenon joints, which allows the ballista main beam to flexibly rotate up and down, left and right, but there is no fixed device to allow the ballista main beam to move. Maintains a fixed direction without external force.
The main beam of the crossbow is made of a whole piece of wood with a groove dug in the middle. The power storage device at the front end is a torsion spring, and the power storage material used is sun-dried and tanned locust tendon.
Human crossbows are generally made of animal hair, leather ropes or tendons. Although ant crossbows are scaled down, in order to maintain considerable lethality, the elasticity requirements of the energy storage materials are relatively higher.
The locust tendon selected by the protagonist is the most elastic and suitable raw material that the protagonist can find in this world. If you imagine the amazing jumping ability of a locust, you will naturally know the quality of its tendons.
Of course, in theory, the tendons of a flea may be more elastic, but its small size means that its tendons cannot be used for much purpose.
The ballista uses two locust hind hamstring tendons. The protagonist personally assembles these two tendons in the power storage chamber and rotates and tightens them hard.
The two wooden sticks inserted into the torsion spring are connected by the strongest hemp rope. Now, even the protagonist has to work hard to pull the bow string.
A suitable crossbow is also a must-have for a crossbow. The protagonist knows the structure of many fine crossbows, such as Qin Nu's bronze crossbow. However, the processing technology of the ants is a huge restriction and they cannot make it in time.
Today's crossbows use a very primitive crossbow machine, which is a thick wooden stick inserted into a groove and needs to be pulled out hard to make the bow string eject.
Because these two ballistae are too rough, they require a lot of strength to aim, wind up, or launch. It is also difficult for the protagonist who has not entered the "God descends to earth" state to operate them.
In other words, these two ballistae can only be operated by the protagonist himself.
But at least, the protagonist has a powerful weapon that can attack from a distance. As for the miniaturization and refinement that need to be popularized by the entire army in the future, let’s talk about it later.
