Chapter 485 On the Voyage

Regional movement is a very boring thing. The time of fighting may only account for less than 1% of the time the army spends on the battlefield, and constant movement and transfer is the norm for an army.

Move, then act, and use 99% of the time to prepare for the 1% of victory.

The cruise fleet slowly sails in the clouds, avoiding the dark gray, large cumulonimbus clouds in the distance that seem to be able to swallow life.

The sea of ​​fog is rolling.

Of course, everyone likes this kind of boredom, and no one wants to encounter some small surprises when moving from one area to another.

It is still a long cruise transfer stage.

This is not the first time they have come to the airspace where Pangu Sky Island is located. With previous experience, the round-trip speed will be faster than before...

In theory.

If there is no bad weather.

Small-sized fast fleets need to avoid cumulonimbus clouds/thunderstorm clouds and air turbulence in advance according to meteorological measurements. These common weather conditions will have a serious impact on the movement of air units... Very serious impact.

There is also a certain degree of danger.

This is the price to pay for mobility.

Only ships that have reached at least the first level of sky ships can lead members through small-scale cumulonimbus/thunderstorm clouds relatively smoothly, and facing large-scale thunderstorm clouds...even a hundred-meter giant ship can only choose another way.

It is these constantly appearing bad environments that block the normal routes between various airspaces, causing delays between two places that should have been directly accessible.

A two-day journey on the map may actually take more than ten days to avoid bad weather conditions.

More than five times the delay.

And now the returning cruise fleet is avoiding the thunderstorm clouds that appeared on the route, making the originally short return journey a long journey counted in days.

It is not easy for a small body of 30 meters to rush directly into the thunderstorm cloud.

They can choose to rise to high altitude, pass through the danger zone from the clouds and then descend, or turn to quickly avoid the cumulonimbus clouds.

The fifth day of the cruise.

Ji Lin tapped the table lightly, flipping through the technical reports submitted to him by the engineers during this time.

From time to time, he looked up at the cumulonimbus clouds that blocked the airspace like a curtain wall not far from the window... This cumulonimbus cloud interfered with the advance of his troops and also allowed the troops of the island alliance to launch an attack before the cumulonimbus cloud ended or floated away.

It was not a bad thing.

There was also a hard red shadow like a volcanic rock flashing from time to time in the sea of ​​clouds outside the window.

It was a female dragon.

Unlike Fang Ai who sat quietly in the assigned cabin reading technical books, and different from the elf battle mages who chose to live directly on the top of the cruiser.

Ji Xia originally thought that it would be boring to follow his fleet and accompany his cruise fleet.

But he didn't expect that this red dragon would often disappear from the fleet's sight, and catch up with the fleet again after dozens of minutes or hours.

She would penetrate the sea of ​​clouds and descend to the ground to find food and drink water, and then catch up with the fleet.

Occasionally, she would hold some "specialties" on the ground in her mouth.

At least when they were sent to Ji Lin, most of them had only their arthropods left, whether they were furry or had shells...

Only a part of their body remained.

Then Fang Ai explained to it that the kitchen on the airship had no way to process food it could eat... The food that humans could eat for a full meal was not even enough to fill the gap in the dragon's mouth.

And the elf war wizards were not used to being with humans, Ji Lin could understand... After boarding the ship, taking a bath became a luxury.

Even the officers had become low-level spellcasters, and they could release the water-making spell that could extract water from the air.

There were thirty people on an airship, but only three officers, and if they were lucky, there were six spellcasters... They needed to use the water-making spell to meet the daily consumption of thirty people.

You asked about the ship's water tank? Ji Lin was very moral not to let the soldiers use secondary purified water, and the empty mass left by the airship could not allow them to carry much water.

The caster officer replaced the water tank, saving a lot of space for life-sustaining supplies for the cruiser.

And the water carrying capacity needs to give way to more valuable things, such as the wreckage obtained and the recovered technical assets.

If the airship could open the portholes for ventilation at any time, so that the fresh air at high altitude could take away the stagnant smell in the cabin...

Otherwise, I really have to issue temporary gas masks to each soldier to fight the smell in the cabin.

So Ji Lin can understand why the elf battle mage chooses to rest on the top of the airship.

Their physical fitness is also enough for them to smoothly flip to the top of the airship and rest on the cloud sea level at an altitude of thousands of meters... an aerial platform with a length of 30 meters and an average keel width of about 3 meters.

Ji Lin flipped through the technical evaluation report, thinking about writing down his needs for future battleships in the notebook next to his right hand.

He needs a large airship that can serve as a fulcrum for long-distance travel.

After installing a steam-driven engine, his large ship will not be as slow as the sky ship built by the Ring Island Alliance that relies only on the repulsive force of the floating stone... it can be faster.

The powerful steam turbine blades replace the inefficient airship repulsion propulsion system.

The capital ship is the core of the fleet and needs to provide supplies and support for the entire field fleet... The loading capacity limit of the small airship was very obvious during these two deployments.

You can only bring enough ammunition/supplies for one battle, and retreat directly after the battle.

Retreat to the second-line node hundreds of kilometers away to resupply and launch another attack.

If you have a route that can carry a large number of small airships to the front line, and these small airships provide repairs and supplies, your regional deterrence and suppression capabilities will be further improved.

At the same time, it is better to have some long-range artillery to provide fire support to the front line - damn, your territory has not yet developed heavy artillery.

Modern artillery with a range of kilometers is not as easy to manufacture as firearms, rockets, and mortars.

High-strength gun barrels, impact-resistant mechanical parts, airtight design...

As long as one item does not meet the standards, complaints will fly like snowflakes... If it is a little worse, it will not be complaints but casualty reports.

Heavy barrel artillery has a longer range than arcane weapons and is more powerful - but the pre-technology is also more complicated. This is the serious sixth-era artillery technology.

Until modern times, heavy barreled artillery is still the most direct and powerful support for the front line.

It can react quickly and launch fire strikes within 3-5 minutes, can pour tons of explosives on the enemy's head, and crush steel and flesh with overwhelming force.

It's just that the territory doesn't have it now.

Ji Lin coughed lightly and pulled himself out of the idea.

Heavy barreled artillery is far away...

But the territory is not short of small-caliber artillery.

Based on the original ship-borne 75mm support naval gun.

Replaced with high-quality steel produced by the fifth-era forging furnace, and used the rubber-like material produced by Li Yan to deal with airtight defects... A barely usable 75mm improved support naval gun was born.

He looked at the rectangular blueprint drawn on the paper.

But... why does the more he designs, the more it looks like... a mobile dock ship?

There was a knock on the door.

The lord put down the paper and pen, rubbed his temples, and said to the soldiers outside the door to come in.

"Sir, we found an island ahead. Do we need to stop temporarily?"