Although the temperature has dropped sharply recently, it is still early winter after all. As the cloudy and snowy days lasted for the first few days passed, the sun came out again and the temperature temporarily warmed up.
At noon, the temperature rose back above freezing. Although it was still chilly, ordinary ants and insects were able to go out and move around for a while. However, as soon as the sun sets in the afternoon, the temperature begins to drop, and it is necessary to return to the nest quickly.
The protagonist took the opportunity to send a messenger to contact [Bridgehead] every day and learned that the Destroyer had not launched an attack. After rushing to transport a batch of food and giant arrows for the ballista to the [Bridgehead], the protagonist took advantage of this peaceful time to step up the experiment on his "tank" plan.
The "tank" plan is to add a ballista to the beetle. First, a platform needs to be added to the back of the beetle to facilitate the placement of the ballista and warriors on the platform.
The protagonist originally wanted to use a wooden platform. After all, wood was the most versatile material before metal and plastic became popular. But after experimenting for a long time, [Linshui City] did not have a large number of qualified carpenters like [Dongyang City]. The efficiency of processing wood was too low, and it was impossible to make large and complex pieces. It was difficult to process it into a shape suitable for fixing on the double-pronged rhinoceros beetle. The shape of the back.
Ceramic platforms are relatively easy to manufacture and low cost, and can perfectly solve these problems.
In the experiment, the protagonist asked the ants to place a small beetle in a cooler place outside the nest near the nest. After the beetle becomes dormant and unable to struggle due to the low temperature, the carapace is immediately covered with moist clay and glued until it becomes a flat top and concave shape.
That is, the upper plane is a circular plane, and the lower plane perfectly fits the protruding curved carapace of the beetle.
After the clay platform is completely dry, it is fired in the expanded pottery kiln. Although the finished pottery platform has shrunk, with the help of fillers and the use of ropes passed through the reserved holes and tied to the beetle's abdomen, the platform can still be almost perfectly secure. on the beetle's back.
Following this method, a ceramic platform was also made for the bifurcated rhinoceros beetle, so that there would be a small platform on its back on which the ballista could be placed.
With the size of the bifurcated rhinoceros beetle, the diameter of the circular platform on the back is only about 3 centimeters. The existing ballistae obviously cannot be placed on it, and the 51 ballista operators cannot squeeze in.
Therefore, the protagonist also needs to reduce the size of the ballista and streamline the number of ballista operators.
The size of today's ballistae is indeed large, nearly half a centimeter high, and the arms of the ballistae are also six or seven centimeters long. Therefore, even the main entrance and exit that can pass large beetles cannot directly allow the ballista to be moved in. It can only be dismantled and then transported.
Torque-type ballistae can actually be miniaturized, unlike giant crossbows with bow arms. Once the size is reduced, the power will continue to decrease.
The power source of the torsion-type ballistae is a torsion-type spring group. The springs of the crossbows of the Angel King Legion are made of locust tendon with excellent elasticity. The size of the spring group is not large, and there is no need to reduce the size. That is, Does not affect power.
The reason why the crossbow was built so big in the first place was because to string the crossbow, it required the strength of thirty soldier ants, who relied on pulling six ropes tied to the bow string.
If the ballista is made too small, so many stringed soldier ants cannot stand, so it can only be made larger. But making it bigger brings new problems. Even with the help of a simple ratchet device, twenty soldier ants are needed to assist in aiming.
Therefore, in theory, the ballista designed by the protagonist can be made smaller, and accordingly the number of ant hands required to control the ballista can be reduced. But what followed was the problem that the ants who wound up the ballista couldn't get rid of.
After careful design and continuous experimentation, the protagonist finally chose a solution that did not require ants to wind the string.
The main character's design is:
Tie a pulling rope back from the center of the ballista bowstring. The traction rope extends backward from the top of the ballista arm, passes through a fixed shaft at the end of the ballista arm, then turns and extends forward from the lower section of the ballista arm, and then ends in front of a ceramic ring that can limit the position and prevent the rope from falling off. A wooden hook is attached to the end of the leash.
A little further forward, there is also a traction rope with a wooden ring at the top that can be hooked with the wooden hook.
This second section of the traction rope is also fixed at the lower end of the ballista wall, but extends forward, past the platform to the double-forked rhinoceros chest that carries the platform, and is then tied to the horns of the double-forked rhinoceros chest.
In this way, as long as the two sections of the traction rope are hooked together, the driver can control the double-pronged rhinoceros beetle to lower its head to wind the crossbow. And if the two sections of the traction rope are separated, no matter how the bifurcated rhino moves its head, it will not affect the crossbow.
This kind of shooting does not require ants to wind the bow at all. With the power of the two-pronged rhino beetle, winding the crossbow is a piece of cake. It only requires lowering the head, which can greatly speed up the shooting speed.
The protagonist is very proud of his shooting genius.
The fly in the ointment is that after the reduction of the ballista, some parts can only be made of ceramic or wooden parts, which have a limited lifespan and are easily damaged when fired at high frequencies in fierce battles.
The protagonist hopes to use cast copper parts instead, but [Linshui City] does not have a special copper-smelting blast furnace like [Dongyang City], and there is no reserve of copper ore, so we can only wait until the next spring to replace it.
After the protagonist's modification, the height and length of the current ballista are no more than three centimeters, and it can be placed on the platform.
The three brackets of the ballista are fixed in the three holes reserved on the ceramic platform, and then fixed with ant glue and filler. The ballista is successfully installed on the platform.
After reducing the size, the number of soldier ants controlling the horizontal and vertical aiming of the ballista were reduced to four each. The thirty soldier ants responsible for winding and firing were reduced to only two. One is responsible for connecting or releasing the two sections of traction rope as needed, and the other is responsible for assisting the commander in firing the trigger.
In this way, plus the commander, only 11 ants are needed on the upper back of the bifurcated rhinoceros beetle to control the ballista. Including the two drivers, there are only 13 ants on the back.
About a week later, the protagonist transformed the only two-pronged rhinoceros beetle in the first legion into a beetle "tank".
After experiments, it was found that the traveling speed of this "tank" was equivalent to that of an unloaded beetle, and the power of its ballistae was also on par with the fixed ballistae used for fortress defense. The only drawback is that there is almost no accuracy when shooting on the move, and you have to stop the beetle to get a precise shot.
However, the advantages of such a "tank" that can provide fire support in the field are enough to cover up the shortcomings.
The protagonist equipped this "tank" with 38 accompanying infantry protection. Together with the members on the back of the beetle, it was exactly the formation of a small team.
After next spring, the protagonist plans to breed as many large beetles as possible, such as bifurcated rhino beetles and stag beetles, and then build at least ten "tanks" in April!
