Xiao Xuan was not very satisfied with this result when he heard this, as early as the end of the war, he did not have a significant advantage in firearms firepower compared with the Manchurian Army, and mainly relied on gunnery and explosives to make a copy.

If the weight of the body is 15 to 20 catties, counting the others, the weight of the entire firearm is still more than 10 kilograms, and in essence, it will still be a kind of firearm similar to carrying a gun and a cannon. Two-player firearms have many advantages, such as mutual supervision, but this reduces the density of firepower and affects the effective conversion between long-range and melee combat.

A major innovation in the West of this era compared to the West in the 16th century is that arquebuses that can be effectively operated by individual soldiers began to replace heavy arquebuses similar to turtledoves, and if the consequences of the explosion were weakened by more complete protective equipment captured such as masks and gauntlets, and according to the standard charge of about 400 joules per kilogram of body barrel doubled in the past, then about 5 kilograms of body barrel could also fire a projectile with a power of 2,000 joules like the Western musket of this era. Let the heavy bomb of about 100 grams reach the muzzle velocity of 200 meters per second.

Through the accumulation of previous firearms tests and actual combat experience, Xiao Xuan at this time is no longer an amateur in this regard. It is understood that if the muzzle velocity of a firearm is significantly higher than 200 meters per second, it will begin to be somewhat affected by some sound barrier at about two-thirds of the speed of sound. A lot of archery experience and algorithms that surpass shooting are not zero. It's just that at this time, Xiao Xuan was not sure whether the firearm with an initial kinetic energy of about 2,000 joules could form a deterrent at a relatively long distance for the level of individual shield armor protection of the main force in Jianzhou. Although higher bullet weight and lower muzzle velocity seem to be conducive to a better proportion of long-distance energy storage, it stands to reason that the increase in caliber area and specification will also affect penetration?

The actual combat also told Xiao Xuan: The effectiveness of a new firearm is not simply something that can be achieved through assumptions or dead-target tests. Thinking of this, Xiao Xuan seemed to be a little enlightened, and thought of some things: "In this battle, how many prisoners of war were captured by our army?" Are there 200 people still alive? ”

Although the main force of Jianzhou left more than 4,000 in this battle alone, there were still very few prisoners, and most of the prisoners were seriously wounded, and there was no need to waste the army's medical resources to be executed. Only more than two hundred and forty prisoners, who were not very seriously wounded, were left behind. These people are at least one in dozens of strong people's society, and they are relatively cowards. Along the way, although he was not subjected to the obvious and blatant abuse because of the habits of the Guards Battalion, he was punished like a closed confinement in the Secret Prison and even many of the wrongdoers in the ranks, and suffered more severe mental and psychological weakness than many people who had been tortured by the flesh. Xiao Xuan decided to draw out as few as fifty people and as many as more than 100 people to do related experiments. Firearms are used as targets at different distances after being armoured and shielded. In this way, the effect can obviously be analyzed more reliably.

Of course, in order not to cause too much chaos, the mortality and casualty rates of these "experimented" subjects were controlled as much as possible under the planned arrangement, and more through confrontation with each other, and the promise that the winner could be safe or even free. In this way, this kind of firearms test, which was carried out directly by people, did not cause much trouble in the following half a month.

After many live shots and tests, a new arquebus with a total weight of about 11 to 12 catties was also trial-produced. In fact, the manufacture of the bird gun in the late Ming Dynasty was still a weapon with a high cost of man-hours and a great need for skills, especially if it was qualified. Even if the thousands of craftsmen in the Guards Battalion and the Brave Guard Battalion had no management shortcomings, they would not be able to produce the long-barreled small-caliber shotgun that was very difficult to process at a low cost. It is self-evident why many of these weapons were unreliable in the late Ming Dynasty. However, the arquebus, which fires three or two projectiles at only two-thirds of the speed of sound, greatly reduces the manufacturing cost in the first place. In the case of effective shifts, in just about five days, the first batch of three-tael arquebuses, with a total of about 500 pieces, was trial-produced. Similarly, the ease of reloading under the training standard has also been improved a lot.

In the late Ming Dynasty, the gunpowder that reached the quality standard of the Western Hongyi cannon still did not seem to have much room for improvement, and for some reason, it was still far from the ideal quality stability of black powder, so when the standard charge was filled and fired according to the standard charge of twice the standard in the past, the explosion of the chamber was still inevitable. On average, every five or six hundred projectiles fired will explode once, just with the gauntlets and masks intact. The captive shooters used for the experiment fired more than 1,500 projectiles in a row before anyone was wounded. Compared with many firearms of this era, such a failure rate is not too low, but it is not too high, and it seems to be reluctantly acceptable.

A young soldier who still has some brains in the army also thinks that it should not be a big problem to load this kind of firearm according to this standard: "With the level of our army in this actual battle, it will definitely not be able to kill or wound a single person on the battlefield with hundreds of rounds of projectiles on the battlefield, and it will not be able to kill or injure a single person within the range that can effectively break through the armor." This security is also acceptable... ”

It is only after the actual measurement of the power that the distance of the effective shield armor of this kind of projectile with an initial velocity of about two-thirds of the speed of sound has been reduced from about 200 meters from the original 1450 paces to a distance of about 150 meters per 100 paces. And the previous actual combat proved unsurprisingly: if at a distance of about 100 paces, in the face of those Manchurian heavy arrows thrown over, the whole team is still unsafe. In addition, if a large-scale horizontal formation is deployed, it will be difficult to ensure the safety of the flanks. Therefore, the children in the pro-military camp, who have a lot of deduction experience and have entered the barracks, still feel a little worried.

After weighing it, Xiao Xuan still felt that this was not a big problem: "If the craftsmen in this firearms team can produce more than 500 firearms on average every five days, and there are enough people to do other work, then according to the rhythm of the expansion plan, there should be a lot of man-hours left to reinforce some parts of the firearms, which may reduce the probability of exploding a lot." Upgrades to shields and armor are of course also imperative. If, in the future, the enemy's strong archers can bring a lot of casualties just by throwing them, as in the past, it will be a trial for those auxiliary craftsmen... ”

Therefore, after returning, the focus of the new weapons is still on the steel shield system, the strengthening of protection, and the popularization of new firearms for individual soldiers.

(End of chapter)