Chapter 308 Combined Energy Shield
After the harvest festival, summer grain began to be stored. With enough food, Richard put his worries aside a little.
The Lothar Basin is large in area. Although the orcs have been developing it for many years, there are still a lot of swamps in the basin.
Overall, the eastern and northern parts of the basin are at higher altitudes, while the western and southern parts are at lower altitudes. Because of the rivers formed by the melting of mountain snow, there is a lake with an area of about 2,000 square kilometers in the southwest of the basin.
Geographically, the lake and the Lothar Basin are in the same large basin. The western part of the lake is a large area of low hills with relatively fertile land, which also has high development value.
Because the Eagle Mountain Range has more precipitation, the river inflow is greater than the increase, and the area of the lake is expanding every year.
The geography surveyors of the Harland Territory carefully measured the depth of the lake and found that the central area was more than 300 meters deep.
After surveying the terrain of the Losa Basin, Richard thought to himself: "The terrain of the Losa Basin is relatively closed. The Hurricane Canyon is more than 100 meters higher than the lakes in the southwest. If you want to build a drainage canal, it is almost impossible to dig it even with magic.
According to the survey results, the flow rate injected into the river is calculated. In the next 30 years, the altitude of Lake Losa will rise by more than ten meters, and the area will increase by about 160 square kilometers. The land near the lake has almost no development value. The focus of the future development of the Losa Basin should be on the northeastern region with a higher altitude.
If a large amount of farmland is reclaimed in the future, the water consumption will increase greatly. Reducing the amount of river water injected can alleviate the rise of the lake water. It seems that a large number of water conservancy projects should be built in the basin."
After controlling the Losa Basin, Richard's footsteps were all around the basin.
After the development of the orcs, this basin has become a qualified supply center. With the support of the basin's products, it can easily support the garrison of Hurricane Fort.
The large lake in the southwest of the basin is also very rich in products, which is very suitable for fishery production and processing.
Although there are many rivers in the territory of Harland, the water volume is not very large, and the fish resources are relatively scarce. There are almost no professional fishermen in the territory.
After controlling the Losa Basin, Richard personally went to this large lake to investigate and decided to draw people to fish in the Losa Basin.
Fresh fish can be sold in Losa Castle, and the rich fish resources here can also be used to build a fish canning factory. Nowadays, the output of glass kilns in Harland has increased greatly, and the price of glass products has become more affordable. Although the price of glass cans is still high, it has changed from a luxury commodity to a civilian commodity.
After controlling the Losa Basin, the administrative divisions of Harland must be adjusted.
The Losa Basin is densely populated, with more than 200,000 people living there. In terms of population density, it is second only to the Fort William area. Richard used the Lotte River as the boundary, and established Lotte County to the south of the Lotte River and Hurricane County to the north of the Lotte River. The two counties were merged to form the Losa Basin County.
In addition, Graveson County and Salt Lake County were separated from the Southern Foothills County of the Eagle Mountains, and the former Viscount Nelson's territory was added to form the Salt Lake County in the northern territory of Salt Lake County.
Richard also took out Harland County and Swamp County in the Fort William area to establish the capital area of Harland County.
After the administrative planning was readjusted, the Southern Foothills County of the Eagle Mountains suffered heavy losses, and four important counties were taken away, leaving only the Two Rivers County, the Eastern Canyon County, and the Southern County, which greatly weakened its influence on the territory.
With its importance reduced, Roger, the leader of the civil officials, naturally did not need to serve as the county governor of the Southern Foothills County of the Eagle Mountains.
After the administrative division was adjusted, Richard's second uncle Powell was transferred back from Grotta River County to take over as the county governor of Harland County.
Today, the Dukedom of Harland has five counties under its jurisdiction, namely the capital Harland County, Losa Basin County, Grotta River County, Salt Lake County, and the Southern Eagle Mountains County.
The territory area is less than 100,000 square kilometers, roughly equivalent to the five provinces of the Kingdom of Grant.
The northwest area of Harland Territory is still a wasteland, and there are almost no people in the northern area of the entire Pratos Castle. This area covers more than 10,000 square kilometers. If it is developed in the future and part of the territory is expanded, a new county can be established.
After stationing troops in the Losa Basin for three months, Richard saw that the situation had stabilized and it seemed that the orcs were not going to counterattack, so he decided to slowly reduce the garrison in the Losa Basin.
Among the five counties, each of them needs garrisons in the current situation.
Grota River County, Losa Basin County, and Salt Lake County are all frontline areas for defending against orcs, and large armies must be stationed.
Although the Southern Foothill County of the Eagle Mountains is already the rear area, King Roger requires additional troops in this county to cooperate with the Mad Lion Legion to control the upper reaches of the Kaia River. Harland Territory must increase its troops and take responsibility.
In fact, the main reason why the Duke of Harland needs to station troops in this area is that the Earl of Donny Martins cannot withstand the orc army.
Harland County is the capital, and the area near Fort William is the administrative and industrial core of the territory, and it cannot be without an army.
The regular army of Harland Territory now has eleven infantry battalions, one cavalry reconnaissance battalion, one magic beast cavalry battalion, three magic hot air balloon squadrons, one lion duck cavalry squadron, plus the staff and logistics personnel of the headquarters, with a total number of about 20,000 people. Although the Harland Territory Mage Association has followed the army in battles many times, they are not soldiers in terms of identity.
In this year's war, the regular army of the territory suffered more than 4,200 casualties and 1,700 deaths. After a few months, the soldiers who were not seriously injured have returned to the barracks.
The current shortage of the regular army is about 2,000 people.
This year, due to the expansion of the territory, the number of troops is far from enough.
In January this year, Harland recruited 4,000 new soldiers, but the new soldiers have not yet completed their training and will not be added to the army until February next year.
By the beginning of next year, Richard plans to expand two infantry battalions, add two magic hot air balloon squadrons, continue to train 4,000 new soldiers, and strive to expand the army to 30,000 people in three years.
Hurricane Castle has not been completed yet, and Richard dare not take it lightly. He can only let the garrisons of Salt Lake County and Grotta River County return, and the garrisons of Harland and Eagle Mountain County are still stationed in the Losa Basin.
Just as Richard was busy adjusting the administrative plan and repatriating soldiers from the Losa Basin, the magic research team led by Sofia has developed another important invention.
Through the combination and splitting research of magic arrays, in-depth comparison of the use of magic power by knights and magicians, and exploration of the deep principles of magic energy particles, Sofia has developed a special combination of magic rune arrays.
This magic array is called the energy shield array, which is a range array.
This magic array is composed of twelve magic shields, which are engraved with special runes and installed with standard magic crystals.
With the magic crystals on each shield as the core, they are connected in series at key nodes to form a special rune structure. Once the soldiers use magic power to activate the shields at the same time, they can release a large one-ring magic energy shield.
Although the energy shield is only a one-ring magic, it is not very good at defending physical attacks, but it is very useful for defending magic energy attacks.
If a squadron is equipped with twelve magic shields, the soldiers will hold up the magic shields, and the restraint on the magician will be greatly increased.
Because this large energy shield has a very large defense area, it can protect a squadron of soldiers when assembled.
According to the simulation of the Harland Mage Association, twelve high-level warrior apprentices equipped with magic shields, scorching ray guns, and alchemical bombs can easily rely on the power of the equipment to kill two three-ring magicians.
Richard was shocked by the simulation effect.
You should know that it is very difficult to train a three-ring magician. The Harland Mage Association has been established for more than ten years, and only Anne has truly trained a three-ring magician. Heath and Butler are both mages from the Death Tower, and Roentgen is a wild mage.
A three-ring magician is more difficult than a fifth-level warrior. Normally, a fireball can kill five or six soldiers. It is relatively easy for a three-ring magician to defeat an ordinary squad of soldiers.
Now twelve elite veterans can defeat a three-ring magician through the power of equipment.
If these equipment spread, the threat of magic power to secular regimes will be greatly reduced.
Moreover, Sofia's research has very good development prospects. With the advancement of research, it may not be impossible to create protective magic props with higher combination and range?
Moreover, the research can also extend to other magic fields, representing countless directions.
This research means that ordinary warriors can also rely on the power of equipment and combination to increase their combat effectiveness.
From a historical perspective, this research will lead the development of the times, just like the legendary priest who created the warrior breathing method, changing the power comparison and balance of the Dawn Plane.
Of course, this kind of magic shield is not easy to make and requires a very high cost.
The shield uses mountain copper to smelt precious magic ore. In order to make the magic nodes communicate, the formula of the magic inscription solution needs to use very valuable mithril.
Not counting the labor, the material cost of a shield alone requires about 120 gold coins. Such a cost is a few points higher than that of a Warcraft warhorse.
Due to cost constraints, Richard can only equip elite soldiers. He carefully selected 16 squadrons from the elite infantry of Harland Territory, each of which took out a squad to equip the first batch of new magic shields.
Making 192 magic shields not only requires a lot of gold coins, but also wastes a lot of Sofia's time. After all, she is the only one who can engrave magic runes.
After the magic energy shield was researched, Richard took the time to return to Fort William.
Because Sofia was short of time, it was impossible to make magic energy shields every day. So Richard carefully analyzed the manufacturing process of the magic energy shield, split the magic runes into twelve parts, and taught them to different people.
In addition, the shield alloy material and the formula of the inscription solution need to be strictly confidential, and the process is split and handed over to different people.
The use of various means makes it much more difficult to leak secrets. Fortunately, the Harland Territory now has the royal seal, which plays a great role in preventing leaks.
Richard came out of the Harland Mage Association and went directly to the Magic Alloy Research Center.
The core of the Magic Alloy Research Center is the magic alchemy furnace.
The manufacturing technology of the magic alchemy furnace in the Harland Territory comes from the Tower of Death. Compared with the Tower of Death, the Harland Mage Association has a deeper understanding of the essence of magic.
The magic alchemy furnace of the Tower of Death uses the fire attribute magic core as the energy core.
The first magic alchemy furnace built by the Magic Alloy Research Center is a copycat product, which copied the construction plan of the Tower of Death and also used the fire attribute magic core as the energy core.
Although the fire attribute magic core is not particularly rare, it is also not an easy task to find it.
In addition to hunting fire-attributed monsters, Harland County can only trade with nearby magician organizations. Because the magic alchemy furnace is used very frequently, ensuring the stability of energy supply has become an important matter.
And using the magic cores of fire-attributed monsters as energy, the supply is indeed unstable.
In order to solve this problem, five or six years ago, Richard brought several auxiliary researchers to change the design drawings of the magic alchemy furnace, using magic crystal as the energy core and adding a flame conversion rune array.
Adding a flame conversion rune array is equivalent to redesigning the magic alchemy furnace drawings. After many experiments, it took more than two years and overcame many difficulties before the new generation of magic alchemy furnace was successfully manufactured.
Because the new magic alchemy furnace added a new rune array, the volume was almost doubled compared to the original magic alchemy furnace, and the use of magic bricks also increased dramatically, resulting in the construction cost doubling to almost 10,000 gold coins.
Despite this, in order to get rid of the dependence on the fire attribute magic core, even if the construction cost increased a lot, the new magic alchemy furnace was built. After all, Harland Territory lacks fire attribute magic cores, but not magic crystals.
Up to now, the magic alchemy furnace in Harland Territory has been researched to the third generation, and the third magic alchemy furnace has been built.
There are three magic alchemy furnaces, and the Magic Alloy Research Center continues to invest in different super magic metals to make different magic alloys. In the past few years, a lot of valuable experience has been accumulated, and many special alloys have been successfully manufactured.
The rolling bearing, the flagship product of Harland Territory, is a product of the Alloy Laboratory.
By manufacturing rolling bearings, the Magic Alloy Laboratory has accumulated a lot of funds, without using a penny from the territory, improved a small amount of design, built the third magic alchemy furnace, and successfully manufactured a new super magic alloy.
The key part of manufacturing a magic energy shield is not only the combination of runes, but also the material itself.
If the manufacturing material has poor magic conductivity, the magic energy shield will basically have no practical use even if it is manufactured. In addition, the compatibility of super magic metal and magic energy is also a key indicator. If the compatibility is low, a lot of magic energy will be lost, increasing the cost of equipment use. If the cost is too high and the cost performance is too low, the equipment will be useless.
In addition to magic conductivity, the density, hardness, and durability of the material itself are also very important indicators. These physical indicators determine the physical defense properties of the magic energy shield.