Although the temperature has dropped sharply recently, it is still early winter, and with the continuous cloudy and snowy days of the first few days, the sun has come out again, and the temperature has temporarily warmed up.

At noon, the temperature rises above freezing, and although it is still cold, ordinary ants and insects can go out for a while. It's just that in the afternoon, as soon as the sun is tilted, the temperature begins to drop, and you have to return to the nest soon.

The protagonist takes the opportunity to send a messenger to contact [Bridgehead] on a daily basis, and learns that The Destroyer has not attacked. After rushing a shipment of food and ballista arrows to the [bridgehead], the protagonist takes advantage of this peaceful time to intensify his experiments with his "tank" plan.

The "tank" plan was to add a ballista to the beetle, and first of all, a platform needed to be added to the back of the double-pronged rhino beetle, so that the ballista and warriors could be placed on the platform.

The protagonist initially wanted to use a wooden platform, after all, wood was the most versatile material before metal and plastic became widespread. But after experimenting for a long time, unlike [Dongyang City], there are a large number of qualified carpenters in [Linshui City], the efficiency of processing wood is too low, and it is impossible to make too complex large pieces, and it is difficult to process it into a shape suitable for fixing on the back of the double-pronged rhino beetle.

The ceramic platform is relatively easy to manufacture and has a low cost, which can perfectly solve these problems.

In the experiment, the protagonist has the ants put a small beetle in a cooler place outside the nest. When the beetle is dormant and unable to struggle due to the low temperature, it immediately wraps its dorsal carapace with damp clay and applies it to glue it, and finally turns into a flat shape with a flat top and a concave bottom.

That is, the upper plane is a circular plane, and the lower plane perfectly fits the beetle's protruding curved dorsal carapace.

After the clay platform is dry, it is fired in an expanded pottery kiln, although the finished pottery platform has shrunk, but it is supplemented with filling, and the rope is passed through the reserved hole and then tied to the beetle's abdomen, which can still be almost perfect to firmly stand the platform on the beetle's back.

In this way, a terracotta platform was also made for the two-pronged rhinoceros beetle, so that it had a small platform on its back where the ballista could be placed.

With the size of the double-pronged rhinoceros beetle, the circular platform on its back is only about 3 centimeters in diameter, and the existing ballista obviously cannot be placed, and 51 ballista operators cannot squeeze into it.

Therefore, the protagonist also has to reduce the size of the ballista and reduce the number of ballista operators.

The size of the current ballista is indeed large, nearly half a centimeter high, and the ballista arm is also six or seven centimeters long. Therefore, even the main entrance and exit that can pass through large beetles cannot directly allow the ballista to be moved in, so they can only be disassembled and transported first.

Torsional ballistae can actually be miniaturized, unlike giant ballistas with bow arms, once their size is reduced, their power will continue to decrease.

The power source of the torsion ballista is the torsion spring group, and the spring of the ballista of the Divine Envoy King Legion uses locust tendons with excellent elasticity, and the volume of the spring group is not large, so it can be completely reduced in size, and it will not affect the power.

The reason why the ballista was made so big in the first place was that to wind the ballista, it required the strength of thirty soldier ants, and it was necessary to pull the six ropes tied to the bowstring to wind it.

If the ballista is too small, so many wound soldiers and ants will not be able to stand, so they can only be made bigger. However, it has become bigger, and it has brought new problems, even with the help of a simple ratchet device, it will take twenty soldier ants to assist in aiming.

Therefore, theoretically, the ballista designed by the protagonist can be made smaller, and the number of ant hands needed to control the ballista to aim can be reduced accordingly. But then came the problem that the ants that wound the ballista could not be discharged.

After careful design and experimentation, the protagonist finally chooses a scheme that does not require ants to be wound.

The design of the main character is:

Tie a leash to the center of the ballista's bowstring backwards. The tow rope extends backward from the top of the ballista arm, passes through a fixed shaft at the end of the ballista arm, turns forward from the lower section of the ballista arm, and ends in front of a clay ring that limits the position and prevents the rope from falling off, and a wooden hook is attached to the end of the tow rope.

A little further ahead, there is also a leash, with a wooden ring at the top that hooks together.

This second section of the leash is also attached to the lower end of the ballista wall, but extends forward, passing through the platform to the double-pronged rhino gold ** part that carries the platform, and is then tied to the horns of the double pronged rhino gold ** part.

In this way, as long as the two sections of tow rope are hooked together, the rider controls the double-pronged rhino turtle to wind the ballista as soon as he lowers his head. And if the two sections of tow rope are separated, no matter how much the two-pronged rhino beetle swings its head, it will not affect the ballista.

This kind of shooting does not need to be wound by ants at all, with the power of the double-pronged rhinoceros beetle, winding the ballista is a piece of cake, and it is just a matter of bowing your head, which can greatly speed up the shooting.

The protagonist is very proud of his genius shooting.

The fly in the ointment is that after the reduction of the ballista, some parts can only be made of pottery or wood, and the life span is limited, and it is easy to be damaged when firing at high frequencies in fierce battles.

The protagonist wants to replace it with cast copper parts, but there is no special copper smelting blast furnace in [Linshui City] like [Dongyang City], and there is no copper ore in reserve, so he can only wait for the spring of next year to replace it.

After the transformation of the protagonist, the ballista now does not exceed three centimeters in height and length, and can be placed on the platform at all.

The three brackets of the ballista are fixed in the three holes reserved for the pottery platform, and then fixed with ant glue and filler, and the ballista is successfully installed on the platform.

After the reduction in size, the number of soldier ants that control the ballista to aim horizontally and vertically has been reduced to four. The thirty soldiers responsible for winding and firing were reduced to only two, one for connecting or releasing the two sections of tow rope as needed, and one for assisting the commander in firing the trigger.

In this way, with the addition of the commander, only 11 ants are needed to operate the ballista on the upper back of the two-pronged rhinoceros beetle. Plus 2 drivers, there are only 13 ants on their backs.

About a week later, the protagonist transforms the only two-pronged rhino beetle in the 1st Legion into a beetle "tank".

After experimentation, the "tank" traveled as fast as a weightless beetle, and the ballista was on par with the stationary ballista used in the fort's defenses. The only downside is that there is little accuracy in shooting on the move, and the beetle must be stopped to shoot accurately.

However, the advantages of such a "tank" that can provide fire support in field battles are enough to cover up the shortcomings.

The protagonist equips this "tank" with 38 accompanying infantry guards, which, together with the members on the back of the beetle, happens to be the formation of a squad.

After the beginning of spring next year, the protagonist plans to breed as many large beetles as possible such as the double-pronged rhinoceros beetle and stag beetle, and then build at least ten "tanks" in April!