Volume 19 Chapter 166 The Most Profitable Things Are Small Inventions
There are three crystal coins for each overcurrent protector, and each one can be used at least thirty times. This is almost like free money. Although the protector is not the bulk of the cost of the magic crystal cannon, you can definitely save a lot of money by reducing the cost of the protector.
"What are the remaining two items?" After the research director finished introducing the power amplifier and overcurrent protector, I couldn't wait to ask about the uses of the remaining two items on the table.
The research director put down the overcurrent protector and picked up a bundle of rope-like things. Then he handed one end to me and said, "Try to release the lighting technique on that end."
I followed my instructions and cast a lighting spell on the rope in my hand, and the end in the research director's hand suddenly lit up with a dazzling light, as if what he was holding was not a rope but a light bulb. I looked at the rope in my hand in surprise, and then took the initiative to extinguish the lighting technique. Sure enough, the light on the opposite side was immediately extinguished.
"Is this a magic wire?"
The research director nodded and said: "How is it? Did you find any difference?"
I picked up the wire and looked at it doubtfully, then bent it a few times with my hand. Finally, I suddenly discovered a difference that surprised me, so I quickly came closer and took a closer look. After observing for a while, I finally realized the difference between this wire and the original magic wire. "This uses a single core?"
Magic wires are actually not used by many people at present. It's not that they have few uses, but that they can't be bought or used. In fact, the magic wire has a very wide range of uses, and can even be used by every player in battle, and for guilds, this kind of thing is an absolutely necessary equipment.
Let’s talk about player applications first. The path of the magic wire on the player is to conduct magic. It can lead the magic released by the player from one point and then release it from the other end of the wire. According to this principle, suppose a mage carries many wires, and then he discovers a monster that is very fast, has a high level, but has low intelligence. What should this mage do under normal circumstances? Of course we took a detour. If the mage wants to attack, the opponent will rush towards him immediately after he completes the first strike. Fast speed means that the mage will not have many opportunities to attack, and there will not even be time for a second attack. High level means that the defense and HP are very high, and the mage cannot kill the opponent before he gets close. As we all know, the mage's defense is quite fragile. Once the mage is approached, it means that the battle is over.
The above situations are the two choices and consequences that a mage has under normal circumstances after encountering this kind of monster. However, if the mage brought a few magic wires, it would be much simpler. He can first bury a wire in a position where he can attack the monster, then bury the second wire next to the first wire so that it is aligned with the end of the first wire, and then he can bury the third and third wires. For four or even the nth wire, just align the end of the wire with the end of the previous wire. After that, all the mage has to do is stand on the other end of the pile of buried wires, and then release attack magic into the first wire, and then the other end of the first wire will release attack magic to attack the monster. When a monster is attacked, it will rush over immediately, but not to the mage, but to where the end of the wire is buried. If the monster finds the wire at this time, it will attack the end of the wire. Of course, it's also possible that he didn't even notice the little end of the wire that was 'exposed', and instead kept spinning in place. During this time, the mage can slowly prepare the second magic and then instill it into the second wire. I believe everyone has guessed the next part. As long as you continue to instill magic one by one, the monster will die sooner or later.
The benefits of using this method are obvious. A mage can use this method to kill a monster that is much more advanced than him, which was basically impossible before. Of course, the above is an extreme application of magic wire. The method of use under normal circumstances is still similar, but it will not be so extreme as to rely on a mage to grind the monster to death. Under normal circumstances, mages will not go out to fight alone. They always have a team, and this wire can win several more attack opportunities for the team. Of course, a wider application should be to allow nurses to add blood to combat professionals when dealing with certain high-speed and high-intelligence monsters, because when encountering high-speed and high-intelligence monsters, the opponent will often give priority to attacking healers with weak defenses. As a profession, if you can drag a few wires and throw them into the field during the battle, then the nurses will not have to enter the battlefield directly. After all, the intelligence of monsters is limited. Usually they will not attack invisible enemies. They can only choose to attack first among enemies within the visible range. If the opponent can think of something outside the field, Enemy, then he is not a monster, but a member of a certain wild NPC force.
In addition to the above application methods, players can also use it in many ways. Just like the birth of each weapon will evolve many corresponding tactics, if the magic wire is used as a weapon, its corresponding tactics will also be ever-changing. However, if we really want to say that the magic wire is important, it should actually be in the guild application field rather than the personal application field, because the ultimate purpose of the magic wire is to transmit magical energy.
As long as a guild reaches a higher level, it will inevitably have its own magic weapons, such as magic crystal cannons and the like. For example, those guilds that have their own cities will not only have magic crystal cannons, but also city protective shields and even self-defense magic arrays driven by magic energy. And if it is a super guild like our Frost Rose Alliance, then magic energy equipment will cover almost all areas of the entire guild, from city defense to external operations, magic energy weapons will be used everywhere.
With so many magic weapons consuming energy, it is obviously not cost-effective to use an independent magic crystal energy extraction device. Firstly, a separate energy converter must be installed for each device. Secondly, the energy extraction rate of small devices must be lower than For large equipment, the energy loss caused during this period will be considerable. If a city like Essinger did not use a central power core to provide centralized energy, Essinger's energy consumption would have increased by at least 30%. Don’t underestimate this 30%. Based on Isinger’s magic crystal consumption, under normal circumstances, it is more than 100 kilograms a day, and 30% is more than 30 kilograms. And if it is in combat status , then the consumption per hour may exceed one thousand kilograms. This extra 30% means that an additional three hundred kilograms of magic crystals are used per hour. Although white magic crystal is not a rare thing, it is just like gasoline in real life. Do you think gasoline is common? Think again, is gasoline expensive? If there was a way to save 30% of fuel for those burning devices, do you think their owners would be willing? Anyway, anyone with a sound mind would definitely be willing.
Precisely because centralized power supply can save energy, how to transmit magic power has become a top priority. The more commonly used transmission method is magic pipe, which is what Essinger uses. But one characteristic of the magic pipe is that it is a solid device, which means that its shape will be fixed after it is produced. If it is straight, then it is straight. If you have to twist it, you can only bend it. Breaking, if you want to bend the pipe without breaking it, you only need to perform complicated processing before leaving the factory. Therefore, all the magic pipes produced by our guild are straight. During use, pipes of different lengths are selected for on-site cutting or splicing according to needs. As for places that need to be turned, another special elbow can be used to connect them. There are many types of elbows, but they are generally multiples of the 45-degree angle, such as 90 degrees, 135 degrees, etc. Of course, there are also branch output interfaces with one in and multiple out. This aspect is a bit like water pipes, using straight pipes with elbows to solve the problem of pipe turns.
However, although there is no problem using this method in the general direction, it will be more troublesome if it encounters a platform that needs to be rotated, such as the base of a cannon. Usually when encountering this kind of device that needs to be rotated, the method used by most guilds is to export the magic power and then use soft magic wires to transfer it. This magic wire can be bent at will or stretched and compressed to a certain extent, so as long as it is not the kind of platform that rotates endlessly, it can be easily handled with the magic wire. But the problem is that the special properties of magic determine that magic wires are not as easy to make as wires. Its technical content is much stronger than magic pipes, so there are very few guilds that can produce it. Currently, there are less than twenty guilds worldwide that can produce magic wires, and without exception, the yield rate is extremely low. Our guild's technology is pretty good, and the yield is only one-tenth. Note that the yield rate is not that nine out of ten are defective, but that one meter out of ten is usable. This is completely different from making one out of ten.
If we can build ten wires and nine wires will break, then for us it will be nothing more than a cost increase. But the key point is that now we have to build ten meters and nine meters will break, and you don’t know exactly where it breaks. This is As a result, the manufactured wires are very long and short, and we have no way to control the length ourselves. If you only need a short wire, it's okay, but if you need a super long wire, it will be miserable. You may not be able to get a wire of the required length even if you pull out hundreds of wires. Of course, you can also use adapters to connect them one by one. However, adapters will cause magic loss, and the interfaces are usually the most prone to failure. Who wants to use a bunch of short wires when you can do it with one wire? The line coming out?
In fact, in addition to the magic wires required for rotating platforms, other equipment also requires magic wires. For example, the magic circuits inside some magic equipment require the mechanical structure to be as compact as possible during design, so the magic transmission lines often cannot be straight. At this time, if bendable wires are used, it will bring a lot of convenience to the overall design of the equipment. Moreover, the size of the equipment can also be reduced a lot.
In fact, in addition to the above, magic wires are also extremely important for some moving magic devices. For example, our guild's mobile angels and battleships. All the large warships in our guild use centralized power cores, which makes our warships have far longer endurance than ordinary warships. Moreover, due to the centralized use of power cores, our warships save a lot of space. More importantly, A larger power core means stronger instant output, so our battleships are far superior to other guilds' battleships in terms of the power and range of the magic cannon, as well as the acceleration capabilities of the battleship. This is not only due to the technical problems of the cannon and propeller, but also the contribution of the ship's power core.
But while a centralized power core has many benefits, it also has troubles. For example, the safety of pipelines. The power pipeline is a fixed line. Not to mention being interrupted, even if it is bent, deformed or even broken due to vibration, the transmission of magic power will be blocked. This characteristic means that the magic pipeline is very fragile and cannot withstand too serious damage. Although the warships in our guild will add a special protective layer to the power pipeline, this thing is relatively fragile after all, and it is easy to cause problems no matter how protected it is.
If we could replace magic pipes with magic pipes, things would be different. The bendability of the magic pipeline determines that as long as it is not broken, general deformation and bending are not a problem for it at all, let alone worrying about being cracked and shattered by a powerful explosion. Compared with magic pipelines, the survivability of magic pipelines is undoubtedly much stronger.
Battleships are actually quite good. After all, they can make do with magic pipes, but mobile angels are miserable. The fragility of the magic pipeline determines that it is definitely not suitable for use by unstable equipment like the Mobile Angel that often needs to withstand dozens of g overloads. Therefore, we use ultra-high-priced magic pipelines and more expensive ones inside the Mobile Angel. Expensive small directional magic transmission device. No matter which of these two devices it is, they all have one thing in common, and that is the word "expensive".
It is precisely because the magic wire has such a wide range of uses, the benefits are so obvious, but the output and price are so troublesome, that I attach so much importance to the wire in my hand. You must know that the reason why the magic wire was difficult to make in the past was that it did not actually use linear conductors inside, but winding wires like springs. There is actually no way to use this method for wiring, because the previous magic wires themselves were made of materials similar to magic pipes, so their elasticity is relatively poor. In order to ensure that the lines will not break during the bending process, It can only be made into a circle structure like a spring, which not only increases the diameter of the wire but also increases the material consumption. The most important thing is that this bending wiring method greatly increases the difficulty of production, so that the pulled out wire There are always line breaks, which is why production is so low.
However, the wire in my hand is not only very light and soft, but also has a small diameter. The most important thing is that its interface is single-core. You must know that the original wire is a spiral wire. There must be a steel cable as the main beam inside, and there must be an anti-magic metal protective layer to isolate magic power. This set already has three layers of cores, plus anti-magic. The entire magic wire is made of four layers of corrosive and shock-absorbing outer layers. Do you think it is heavy? But the one in my hand is actually a single core. Except for a central wire made of unknown material, there is only a layer of anti-corrosion and shock-absorbing protective layer. The magic-blocking layer and the main cable are gone.
"What's the cost? What's the yield?" I asked excitedly, grabbing the wire.
The research director said deliberately slowly: "The cost of this is actually..."
"How much exactly?"
"One crystal coin per meter."
"What? Isn't that a bargain?" It's not that I'm not calm, it's mainly because the contrast is too big. Any idea how much the original magic wire cost? One thousand crystal coins per meter, which is still the average price. Those shorter than one meter and more than half a meter are worth 500 crystal coins per meter, and those shorter than half a meter and more than ten centimeters are worth 100 crystal coins per meter. However, the price of magic wires that are more than 1.5 meters and less than 2 meters is 10,000 crystal coins per meter. If it is longer, the price is even more difficult to calculate, because our guild has pulled out the longest one so far. A magic wire is only 2.24 meters long. I don’t know how long other guilds can pull it out, but I have never heard of one reaching 2.5 meters. The reason why I have this foundation is that I was so surprised when I heard one crystal coin per meter. After all, the price difference is too big compared to the psychological price.
As if the shock to me was not enough, the research director nodded immediately after seeing my surprised expression and said: "Yes, it is so cheap, because we use single-core wire, and the raw materials are cheaper than before. , and the amount used is much less. The raw material that originally used to pull one meter of wire can now be used to pull at least three meters. Also, because the wire is much lighter and stronger, the main cable is cancelled, which saves a lot. Money. The technology we got from the Book of Energy also helped us solve the problem of magic dissipation, so now this wire can basically be regarded as zero magic resistance and consumes basically no magic power. Based on this characteristic, we The magic layer is also omitted, leaving only one wire plus an anti-corrosion layer. Oh, by the way, this anti-corrosion layer is also simplified, because this kind of wire itself is very soft and does not need to be shockproof, so the new anti-corrosion layer The layer is just for corrosion protection, so it’s not as thick as before.”
"Then the price can't be this cheap?"
"Of course it can be so cheap, because the new magic wire production method has been greatly simplified, and the technical difficulty has plummeted. The current yield is almost 100%, and there is no material loss at all. Can the price not be cheap?"
"100% yield?"
"Yes, such a simple circuit is unlikely to have problems even if it is produced in a small handicraft workshop, let alone the high-end equipment of our guild?"
"How flexible is this thing? Is it easy to break?"
"As long as you don't use it as a traction rope, there is basically no problem of breakage. Even if you use it as a skipping rope, it will be fine."
"Haha, we are getting rich. Now we can monopolize the production of magic wires all over the world. Oh, no, this thing should be a strategic resource. Just sell some to the Iron Crusaders. Hostile or unreliable allies can Not for sale. Let Rose and the others discuss who to sell and who not to sell. Can you first tell me what the last thing is?" I said, taking out the last remaining round metal ball on the table and asked : "What is this for?"