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"The original plan was to directly replace two or three of the five 450mm combined railguns in the Higra-class with strong laser cannons, but later, considering that the Sijing Starship has recently strengthened the energy defense capabilities of the shield and hull armor, the lethality of the laser weapons will also be greatly affected. The power of the strong laser cannons used by our capital ships is difficult to penetrate the shields and armor of the Sijing starship at a long distance, and the reactor power is not as good as the Higra class of the capital ship. ”

"In long-distance engagements, it is difficult to concentrate fire, and if the laser can't keep it illuminated, it will be difficult to cause damage to the shield on the Sijing starship, unless you replace all five main guns of the destroyer with strong laser cannons." Towin shook his head and directly opposed this modification method, "What's more, the Sijing starships are not bad at maneuvering, sometimes we need firepower coverage to attack their navigation routes, so that they can't avoid it, if the weapon is not powerful enough, the firepower coverage effect is too poor to achieve the tactical goal." ”

Speaking of this, Towin looked at Lin Hai: "I remember that on that combat space station, there are already small ion cannons, right?" When can it be reloaded onto a battleship? ”

"It was just a miniaturized test battery, and it didn't work as well as it should." Lin Hai also shook his head, he would only be more concerned about the attention of this new equipment, "Although it meets the needs in terms of rate of fire and energy consumption, the power is not as expected." After the miniaturization of the ion cannon, the destructive power plummeted, from a superweapon that can severely damage or even directly destroy a planetary assault mothership with one shot, to a conventional weapon that is only a little more powerful than the pulse laser cannon, and its size miniaturization is not satisfactory, at least the three-hundred-meter hull of the Higra class wants to be modified with five ion cannons, which is absolutely impossible, unless the entire ship is turned into a cannon like an orbital ion cannon platform, but then I might as well continue to make an orbital ion cannon platform. So Dr. Kane is working on it to continue to improve, even if it's going well on his side, but given the cost, the manufacturing time, and the need to keep the weapons technology ahead, those destroyers can't be retrofitted with the same power, at least for a short time you won't have to think about turning the ion cannon into a battleship's turret. ”

"Exactly, General Towin." Li Zhengyang hurriedly added after Lin Hai finished speaking, "Advanced weapons like ion cannons can only be qualified by our own core forces that can be modified, so the most basic requirement for the improvement research carried out by the technical department here is that the modified starship cannot threaten ourselves." There are also requirements such as less modification time and controllable cost, so powerful weapons will never appear on the list of starship equipment provided to outsiders. ”

"I understand......" Towin still knew that it was a big taboo for his proposal to install an ion cannon even on a Higra-class destroyer, and after being reminded many times by others, he no longer discussed this idea, but continued to talk about the modification standard that Li Zhengyang said, "So, the power of strong laser weapons against Sijing people may not be enough, what is your alternative?" ”

"The new plan for the replacement has just been decided." Li Zhengyang operated the holographic projection equipment, projected a set of images - all of them were the wreckage of the starship that the Sijing people had been towed away by GDI after the last battle - and then said, "Originally, we were only considering various laser weapons, but we recently added a new batch of weapon samples, so we have a new idea." The wreckage of the starship of the Sijing people, although it is said to be the wreckage, but we are very lucky in this operation, there are three of their starships that are relatively well preserved, whether it is the power system, or the weapon system, or even the electronic equipment, they are all available for us to study, the only pity is the shield system, the shield system on the wreckage of all the Sijing starships is seriously damaged because of the combat relationship, we can't get what we want on it, and we can't copy the shield technology that can resist most attacks of the Sijing people, So for the time being, we only have the kind of deflection shield that Dr. Kane has worked on. ”

"Back to the original topic, although the wreckage of the Sijing starship has just been transported to the moon base, but earlier on, we were studying the weapon system of the Sijing people, although their plasma weapons are huge, but the speed and range of the bullet are weaknesses, so we focus more research on their high-energy ray weapons."

"Dr. Kane initially thought it was a gamma-ray weapon, but then based on various sources, it was supposed to be a high-energy particle beam, so in the process of dragging, we sent technicians to board the wreckage to confirm that it was indeed a weapon that emitted neutral particle beams. Although it is still very advanced, but with our current technical level, there is still the possibility of cracking and mastering, after all, we have mastered the technology of the ion cannon, the only thing that is more troublesome is the same problem of miniaturization, and Sijing people are indeed more advanced than us at this point......"

"So, you're planning to develop a neutral particle beam weapon?" Without waiting for Li Zhengyang to finish speaking, Torwin couldn't wait to ask, "Let's not mention how much time it will take your technical department to complete the research, just the question just now, after you finish the research, do you plan to install the neutral particle cannon on the Higra-class destroyer?" ”

"No, I just want to say," Li Zhengyang didn't get much angry about Towin starting to accuse him before he could finish listening to his words, but continued his speech in a calm tone, "Through the research of the Sijing people's weapon technology, especially the confined field technology in their weapon systems, as well as the research of multiple focusing technology, the information we get can multiply the power of our own laser weapons." Both the range and lethality can be greatly improved, and because we have our own mirror armor and deflection shield technology to defend against this new laser cannon, we finally decided to make this new laser cannon the standard for weapon modification. ”

"How are you going to do the modification?" Colonel Tagate asked, he is also a senior commander of the Space Force, and he is also qualified to ask about the changes in the combat effectiveness of the fleet under his command, "Do you want to replace all the starship main guns with new laser cannons, or do you want to replace them partially?" ”

"For our own capital ships, all strong laser cannons will be replaced with new high-energy laser cannons, but the Higra-class and the weakened external version of the capital ships will only be partially replaced." As Li Zhengyang's explanation progressed, the holographic image was transformed into a three-dimensional map of a Higra-class destroyer, "As the largest number of Higra-class general-purpose destroyers in our space fleet, which will continue to be produced in the future, this battle starship needs to perform a variety of different tasks, from ship attacks to ground support bombing, so the modification and upgrade will only modify them to be partially armed." But there is one problem......"

The three-dimensional Higko-class image on the hologram was magnified several times, occupying the entire conference table, and the five main guns on the hull turned into a red model.

Li Zhengyang pointed to those turrets and said: "The Higra class was designed from the beginning, emphasizing the side shelling, and the five turrets can effectively shell one side, which is extremely efficient in close shelling battles and non-precision bombardment on the ground, but because of this, the Higra class can attack the front, in addition to the four space torpedo ports, only two combined railguns can attack." This is very important when engaging the Sijing fleet, because we usually engage the Sijing fleet head-on, there are few opportunities to face the enemy on the side, resulting in such a design having a large shooting blind spot, and it is impossible to fully exert the firepower of the Higra-class destroyers. ”

Of the five main gun modules on the stereoscopic Higra-class image, only one main gun in front of the upper and lower parts of the main gun is marked in red, and the rest of the main guns change back to their original color.

"So in order to improve the frontal firepower, but also to retain the destroyer's ability to bomb the ground, we have two modification plans, the first plan is to replace the first turret and the fourth turret below this starship with laser cannons, depending on the situation, the rear No. 3 turret may also be replaced with laser cannons to deal with the enemy coming from the rear. This retrofit has minimal modifications, lower retrofitting costs, and minimal retrofit time. ”

"And the second modification plan," the turrets on the Higra-class destroyers on the hologram were all removed, and then with Li Zhengyang's explanation and the operation in hand, they reappeared on the hull, but the position was no longer as distributed as before, "Considering that compared with ground attacks, our space fleet has more occasions to fight against the universe and ships, so the starship's frontal fire projection capability has been further strengthened, and we have installed four main guns around the front of the Higra-class hull, In this way, there can be four main guns on the front of this model to attack, in order to prevent the appearance of enemies in the rear, a turret will be installed at the rear of the hull - if it is not for the presence of reactors and engines, four turrets can actually be installed at the rear of the hull, but now, only one turret can be installed up and down - in this design, this model also has four turrets to face the enemy when facing the enemy on the side side, and there are fewer shooting dead ends. But there is still a problem with this design......"

On the hologram, the front of the Higra-class destroyer's hull, on the upper and lower sides, a new turret appears on it, and there are also turrets on the upper and lower part of the rear.

"The second plan, the change is too big, it is equivalent to designing a new starship: six turrets, because too much emphasis is placed on the space and the ship, they all need to be replaced with new laser cannons, the turret layout has changed dramatically, and those anti-aircraft weapons have to be re-arranged and increased in number, which leads to insufficient energy supply for the starship reactor, and as a result, we need to upgrade the starship's reactor, upgrade the reactor and redesign the hull. This goes back and forth, and it means that a new ship needs to be designed to accommodate these things. ”

"They all had good ideas, so I decided on the first one." When Li Zhengyang finished speaking, Lin Hai also added, "And the second modification plan will not be wasted, I will directly ask Wang Hammer and them to turn this plan into a new starship design scheme for redesign, as a new ship supplement between the Higra-class destroyer and other capital ships." ”

"So what is the positioning of this new ship?"

"The light cruiser will also be the flagship of the small fleet, thus freeing our capital ships from such an unimportant task as the alert fleet."