The fourth is to improve transportation efficiency.
Ants still rely on the primitive method of walking with goods in their jaws to transport long distances between different nests.
This method of transportation is very inefficient. An ant can obviously bear objects hundreds of times its body weight, and it is no problem to carry goods dozens of times its body weight when traveling over long distances.
However, relying on large jaws for transportation, because the size of the large jaws limits the volume of the objects being transported, and the strength of the large jaws is also limited, the weight of the goods carried by the ants is often less than ten times the weight of the transporter, which is a waste of physical strength and strength of the transporter. What a huge waste of time.
If multiple ants carry large objects together, although the transportation efficiency can be improved, the moving speed of the transportation team will be greatly reduced. Just like several people carrying an object, the speed will definitely be much slower than that of one person walking.
Moreover, the ant lanes used for transportation are not straight and often have many obstacles. Large objects often have to climb over some huge obstacles.
Moreover, once the ants in the transport team are in danger, their main weapon, the jaws, is occupied, and they must first drop the cargo before fighting. This can easily cause unnecessary casualties, and may also cause the goods to be damaged or blown away by strong winds.
The protagonist did not have a deep understanding of transportation issues before. After all, the territory of the Divine Envoy King's Legion has been limited to the corner of [Dongyang City] for a long time, and the requirements for transportation efficiency and time limits are not high.
It wasn't until the beginning of this year that the Divine Envoy King's Legion unified both sides of the river at an extremely fast speed, greatly increasing the territory, and the limitations of transportation began to become apparent.
Even if the flying knights can undertake some emergency transportation tasks, their transportation capacity is ultimately limited. Just like there is obviously very fast air transportation, most land freight in modern human society must still rely on railways, which have greater transportation capacity and are more economical.
The protagonist is also looking for efficient and large-load transportation methods suitable for ants.
The transportation revolution of ancient mankind depended on the invention of the wheel. The appearance of the wheel brought about changes in transportation tools and greatly improved transportation efficiency.
And the principle of the wheel is not complicated, even children know it.
However, the protagonist decided early on that wheels and vehicles were not suitable for the ant world.
The use of wheeled vehicles requires relatively smooth road conditions, but what humans see as flat ground is full of ups and downs for ants. A hurdle that humans can cross in one step is like a cliff to ants.
If you insist on building a smooth road, such as a straight road from [Linshui City] through [Qingqiu City] to [Dongyang City], for ants who lack tools, the amount of work and difficulty will be no less than that built by humans. A Sichuan-Tibet Highway.
The wheel couldn't be used, so the protagonist decided to use the beetle. The weight that beetles can bear, both in absolute and relative terms, is even greater than that of ants.
In theory, a beetle could be converted into a "heavy-duty truck" by simply installing a sealed storage box on its back.
It's a pity that the ideal is very full, and the reality is very skinny. The number of beetles in the Divine Envoy King's legion is not even enough to form a second beetle legion, let alone allocate them for civilian use.
In addition to allowing the newly formed livestock team to increase the number of beetles as soon as possible, the protagonist now plans to eliminate all the small beetles in the first legion. These eliminated beetles will be able to join the transportation team to alleviate the dilemma of tight transportation capacity.
However, more of the transportation work still needs to be undertaken by the ants themselves. The protagonist wants the scientific research team to develop a carrier that the ants can easily put on and take off, and can accommodate cargo, as the main transportation method in the future.
The fifth is porcelain making, charcoal making and iron making technology.
As mentioned before, the reason why the scientific research team is unable to make iron is that the furnace temperature of the copper-making blast furnace is not enough. To increase the furnace temperature under the existing conditions, the most feasible way is to use bellows and charcoal.
The structure of the bellows is too complicated, requires a high level of carpentry memory, and requires a large enough leather. In contrast, the protagonist is more inclined to get the charcoal out first.
Charcoal is the dark brown or black porous solid fuel remaining after incomplete combustion of wood or wood raw materials, or pyrolysis in the absence of air.
The process is not complicated. In the Shang Dynasty, there were archaeological discoveries of using charcoal to smelt bronze vessels. The simplest method of burning charcoal is kiln burning, that is, building a kiln with soil, filling it with wood, and burning it from the kiln door or fire door, so that the wood is carbonized in the kiln, and the volatiles escape and the remaining charcoal is left.
Building a charcoal kiln is similar to building a blast furnace. The raw materials required for the charcoal kiln are also easy to find. The ants' current technical level can completely burn charcoal.
With the presence of charcoal, the temperature in the copper-smelting blast furnace can be raised to more than one thousand degrees Celsius, basically meeting the conditions for iron-making.
It’s just that the furnace temperature is not high enough to cast iron parts, so ancient people often used forging to process iron. The strength and body shape of ants are not suitable for this processing method. How to process semi-finished iron in the future is still a problem and remains to be seen. Research.
In addition, furnace temperatures of more than a thousand degrees can also be used to fire porcelain, unlike the current use of combustion chamber flames that only use hundreds of degrees of heat to fire pottery.
Porcelain has an enamel layer, which has better waterproof and mechanical properties. It is also more beautiful and resistant to bacteria. It is more suitable as a living vessel than pottery.
In addition, the hardness of porcelain pieces is very high. In modern human society, there are ceramic knives. The hardness and sharpness of small-sized porcelain pieces suitable for ants can even exceed those of copper jaw knives and iron jaw knives. They are the future individual soldiers of the Divine Envoy King's Army. One of the development directions of equipment.
Sixth, improve shipbuilding technology.
Shipbuilding and water transportation are new technologies developed by the Divine Envoy King's Army this year. Because they are not mature enough and are being continuously improved, they have not been included in the previous list of scientific and technological achievements.
The current water transport vehicles of the Divine Envoy King's Legion are mainly made by connecting multiple walnuts together, which has many shortcomings.
For example, it lacks power and relies on sails and bees for traction, but the former can only be used when the wind direction is suitable, while the latter is not efficient and takes up precious bee resources.
The protagonist wants to improve the sails. The sails in the Age of Discovery can already take advantage of winds from all directions, and the speed has gradually increased to more than ten knots, which shows that the original sails still have great potential for upgrading. But the protagonist doesn’t know much about those complicated sails and can only explore slowly.
In addition, the bees currently pulling the walnut boats provide a lot of power, especially when the wind is not favorable, and they are completely dependent on the bees for pulling. The protagonist also has plans to replace the traction insects with other insects, such as water spiders.
Water spiders can move freely on the water, unlike bees that can only fly in the air. The traction efficiency on the water is obviously higher than that in the air, and there is no need to worry about the traction beast drowning.
