Approaching the beginning of spring, the first event that the people of Lorraine look forward to is not the investment of the Grummans, but a competition of agricultural and forestry machinery (design) initiated by the people of Lorraine. The main reason why it stands out is that it has a whopping 1,000 gold crown overall and a category winner of 200 to 350 gold crown – what could be more appealing than a heavy gold crown?

In the past year, agricultural and forestry machinery manufacturing has been the fastest growing sector of the Lorraine industry and the one that has had the greatest impact on the lives of ordinary people. Agroforestry in Lorraine, which had been largely traditional, began its modernization and mechanization process overnight, extending not only to most of Lorraine, but also to the south of the neighbouring federal state of Neuchâtel. Agricultural and forestry machinery, represented by ground equipment such as agricultural and forestry tractors and aerial equipment such as agricultural and forestry aircraft, has brought real improvements to the production efficiency of agriculture and forestry. Over the past year, Lorraine's agricultural and forestry production has increased by 73 per cent and 92 per cent, respectively. The positive impact of the post-war return of population and the resumption of production is still there, but more importantly, thanks to the mechanization of sowing and fertilization, and the availability of efficient harvesting and logging equipment, people have dared to cultivate more land and build more logging fields.

The improvement of the efficiency of agricultural and forestry production has made people's demand for agricultural and forestry machinery show a gratifying blowout trend. Optimistic estimates, in the next year, the production and sales of agricultural and forestry machinery will be doubled, which is the significance of the large-scale pilot promotion in the early stage.

The agricultural and forestry machinery produced by the relevant factories of the Lorraine Industrialists Alliance, including the aircraft used by the aviation team, can basically meet the current agricultural and forestry mechanization needs in terms of performance, from an economic point of view, the initial promotion of the model should be less than more, should be simple and not complicated, the reason why such a large-scale agricultural and forestry machinery design competition should be held, on the one hand, is to form a brand effect of promotion, so that more people know the efforts and results of Lorraine in agricultural and forestry machinery, on the other hand, This will allow them to reserve technical strength for their later development - the so-called "later stage", which will not only stay in agriculture and forestry, but will also extend to the military field. As far as the current use of these machines is concerned, both the equipment structure and the potential for improvement are still in the initial stage, and if the military model is developed on this basis, it will inevitably be too thin.

With the wisdom of the people of Lorraine, it is not difficult to make technical improvements to the existing agricultural and forestry machinery, but this is only a small wisdom. In order to make them have more room for development, more in line with the pace of the times, and pave the way for militarization in advance, then more designers and mechanical enthusiasts need to participate, which is the great wisdom that reflects the strength of the Federation.

In order to improve the level and effectiveness of the competition, Weiss spent a lot of money to invite three national advisers with extraordinary achievements in the field of machinery from the Ministry of Industry, and also invited General Fries of the garrison unit, Colonel Martin, a tank technical expert of the Federal Army, and Nikolai Lebold, a kinetic expert (pseudo). Considering that the development of Lorraine was of interest to the Normans, and that the Normans had recently intensified their intelligence work in the western states of the Federation, especially in Lorraine, Weiss deliberately set some conditions for this competition that seemed to be less favorable for the future development of militarization, such as: the competition mainly considered the performance of agricultural and forestry machinery in auxiliary production, and did not limit the overall weight or frame the manufacturing cost, but was a mechanical event that gave full play to the imagination and specifically pointed to agricultural and forestry production.

At present, agricultural and forestry machinery, the structure can be roughly divided into two types of wheeled and crawler, and the organizers also set up awards for these two categories, and the final comprehensive award does not depend on the construction category, but depends on its practicality and creativity in agricultural and forestry production, and is determined by the comprehensive scoring committee.

In order to prevent the contestants from "going astray" in the design of their works, and by the way to screen out those mechanical enthusiasts who are too weak, Weiss made a special report in several newspapers with large federal circulation in the name of the Lorraine state government, introducing the situation of the small agricultural and forestry machinery competition held in Lorraine the previous year, so as to send a message to the contestants who are ready to sign up: if their works are less than 20 miles per hour on the road, less than 5,000 pounds of effective load, cannot cross irrigation ditches, or cannot pass on ordinary bridges, If you can't climb a hill at an angle, you don't have to waste energy to sign up.

Considering that the way of issuing event announcements and publishing guiding news can only play a relatively limited guiding role, Weiss has carefully designed the rules and procedures of this event. The competition is generally divided into two phases, namely the preliminary round and the semi-final, which are separated by a month. That is, participants who pass the preliminary round have one month to refine and refine their thinking, adjusting the structure of their entry to maximize the performance utility of their entry. In addition, in order to provide a high benchmark for the semi-finals, he spent a lot of time having the Lorraine Agricultural and Forestry Machinery Factory produce two entries, a tracked timber transporter with large-diameter load-bearing wheels and a leaf spring suspension system, and a tracked agricultural tractor that mimicked Christie's suspension system. The corresponding hydraulic shock absorber takes a lot of time to debug because of the high technical requirements, and the entries in the preliminary competition were not adopted. In addition, they tried to design and build a dual-purpose vehicle, which was not satisfactory in performance, and the history known to Weiss had proven that this dual-purpose idea lacked sufficient utility, but in order to open up ideas, but also to confuse the Normans who were looking for ways to spy on intelligence, he added it to the preliminary competition.

Limited by the use of agricultural and forestry machinery, the focus of this competition is actually to optimize all types of chassis, whether wheeled or tracked. No matter what kind of positioning they will be in the future, they must have an excellent chassis in order to have a solid development on the road of militarization. Since armor and weapons are not the strengths of the Clumber-Heisen industrial system, especially artillery and homogeneous armor, these technologies are in the hands of the Grumman Group in the west, the Star Group in the East, and the Facks Group in the north. Weiss has already made up his mind that if he wants to further expand, especially on the road of militarization, he must seek the cooperation of these giants, and if he wants to have a certain say in the dialogue with these military giants, at least not to be applauded by the other party, a general-purpose tank chassis or a series of excellent performance is indispensable. Whether a combat vehicle chassis is excellent or not requires not only excellent design in terms of power, transmission, and suspension, but also a balanced state, on which to develop the corresponding anti-aircraft combat vehicle or expelling combat vehicle.

In order to achieve the goal of openness and inclusiveness, Weiss made it clear in the name of the organizer that the freight of the participating machinery and equipment to Lorraine will be fully borne by the organizer, and the transportation, accommodation and accommodation expenses of relevant personnel in Lorraine will also be reimbursed. Despite the announcement of the minimum "technical threshold" in advance, encouraged by the lure of Kim Kluna and the generous offer of full reimbursement of the entry fee, the crowd began to rally in Lorraine with only a month to go before the start of the race. Some people come with finished products, expecting to play at the ideal level during the competition, some people come with semi-finished products, hoping to use the rest of the time to debug and improve, and some people come with design drawings, hoping that some machinery manufacturing companies can look at their designs. In the face of the generous prize money, not only mechanical designers and manufacturers outside Lorraine actively participated, but also many people within the Lorraine Industrialists Union were eager to try. Some people modify the agricultural equipment produced by the agricultural and forestry machinery factory to enhance their load-bearing, cross-country ability and work efficiency, and some people reassemble the parts produced by the relevant factories to create more powerful equipment......

As match day approaches. Top experts from the Federal Ministry of Industry and military experts from Weiss arrived one after another. Before the start of the competition, they interviewed some of the contestants, observed their entries, and reviewed some of the design proposals proposed by the contestants, which contained many interesting designs and all kinds of wonderful ideas. More importantly, they saw agricultural and forestry machinery with different application prospects under different ideas. It can be said that in the industrially developed Ulster Free Federation, the design of industrial products is never short of inspiration.

Among them, several entries from the Lorraine Agricultural and Forestry Machinery Factory unsurprisingly attracted the attention of experts, especially the agricultural tractor designed using the idea of a Christian independent suspension system, which Colonel Martin from the military went up with great interest to experience the "driving pleasure". After this experience, he told Weiss that the chassis was quite promising and that if possible, it should be patented before the start of the race, because it crushes existing military armored fighting vehicles in terms of off-road stability and impact.

Talking about the existing combat vehicles of the Federal Army, Weiss also has some personal experience. In wartime, those wheeled armored combat vehicles, although they played a combat role well, had obvious deficiencies in protection and off-roading. If it weren't for this, both the Union and the Normans would have created more and more exciting tactical ideas and classic examples on the ground battlefield. Relatively speaking, the Federation had a significant advantage in fighter technology, and in terms of vehicles, they were in a backward position throughout the war, and until the end of the war, they were unable to catch up with the Normans. It is for this reason that Colonel Martin feels that such a tournament deserves a higher level of attention. He said that if the results of the preliminary round reach the expected level, then when it comes to the rematch, he will definitely invite the main generals of the army and the bigwigs of the technical committee to watch.

Colonel Martin was impressed by the entries from the Lorraine Agroforestry Apparatus Manufactory, but they were not representative of the average of the preliminary rounds. As Weiss expected, the preliminary round, which consisted of more than 300 entries, was full of hilarious jokes. An extreme example is that nearly 20 of the more than 300 entries had overheated and even exploded during operation, causing not only fires but also injuries, and less than half of the test items could have been successfully completed.

Among them, the timber transport vehicles and agricultural tractors of the Lorraine Agricultural and Forestry Machinery Factory performed very well, but not the best. In the entries from the North and East, agricultural tractors with oversized tires were extremely fast off-road, and transporters with half-track construction showed extreme speed and load...... This made Weiss realize that there were still some loopholes in the conditions of the competition, the preparation of the competition and the scoring system. For example, agricultural tractors with oversized tires do have a place in agriculture, but they clearly lack the prospect of militarization, and the super-heavy roller-converted logging truck, which rumbles and even the ground trembles when it runs, is extremely striking in appearance, but the drivetrain is a mess. Completed all the competitions, broke down more than a dozen times in the middle of the competition, and these did not set enough deductions in the preliminary round, so that this behemoth still came out on top in the final preliminary round. These obviously need to be screened and distinguished in the subsequent rematches.