Chapter 1712: Different Expansion Methods

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Not to mention, once the beast horde broke out, the forward base on land would be easily overwhelmed by the overwhelming beast horde. Whether it was a desperate struggle or trying to think of a way to rescue the staff trapped inside, the difficulty was very high.

Therefore, some people had been thinking about the plan of the “forward base in the air” for a long time.

It was to further upgrade the mature technology of the armored airships and use a modular design to combine dozens or even hundreds of armored airships to form a huge air fortress, it would fly directly above the coordinates that the humans wanted to set up the forward base.

Compared with the ground forward base, this air fortress had incomparable advantages.

Firstly, it was extremely easy to pass through and was almost unaffected by the environment on the ground.

Whether it was the deep jungle, the rugged mountain land, the fragmented canyons, the wetlands with dense water webs, or even the swamps that were filled with poisonous fog and unknown depths, all kinds of terrain that required a hundred times the cost to pass through from the ground to the aerial fortress, it was easy to pass through.

Secondly, most of the monsters did not have the ability to fly or fight in the air. No matter how amazing the jumping ability of the monsters was, being able to threaten a hundred meters in the air was the limit.

As long as the cruising altitude of the air fortress was set at more than three hundred meters, it could almost avoid more than 90% of the monsters’ threat.

As for the threat of the monsters in the air, of course, there was still a threat.

However, even if it was a forward base on the ground, it would still be threatened by monsters in the air. They would be able to attack from a high vantage point and dive down.

If they were to deal with flying monsters in the air, they would at least be able to pull each other to the same height. Then, they would be able to use the ferocious firepower of humans to deal with the other party.

On the other hand, in the battle between humans and monsters, or in the battle between humans and the natives of the Other World, the greatest advantage of humans was not their ferocious firepower.

Instead, it was the ability of global perception and control brought about by the highly computerized battlefield data link system.

Through the tactical data link, every armored vehicle, every power armor, every soldier, and even every citizen were organically combined together.

Using the supercomputer that could calculate billions or even tens of billions of times per second, the strategic target was split into tactical targets, and the tactical targets were further split into specific commands through the network, to every combat unit and individual communicator.

Through this method, the entire human civilization became a towering giant, able to mobilize and use 100% of its own power.

In this process, the importance of the information network was self-evident.

If the forward base was set on the ground, whether it was the wired network or the wireless communication, it was very easy to be interfered with or even blocked by monsters and natives from the Other World.

The air fortress was located hundreds of meters or even nearly a thousand meters high in the sky. It had the advantage of looking down from above, so it could easily be transformed into a super large-scale signal relay station so that humans within a radius of 100 miles could share battle information, send out distress signals, and transmit various commands.

Also, the conventional forward base on the ground often had the problem of being difficult to move and could not be used again.

As the battle line moved on and the area under Dragon City’s control continued to expand, many forward bases that were originally located at the front line often became located at the rear of the human race in three to five years or even less, they lost their original functions.

In such a situation, regardless of whether it was dismantled, modified, or abandoned, it would consume or even waste a lot of precious resources.

Of course, the ground forward base could also adopt a modular design. If necessary, all kinds of modules could be dismantled, transported to a more front-line place, and reassembled.

The problem was, considering the power of the Beast horde outbreak, most of the forward bases had very high requirements for defense. Many modules were deep underground and were tightly welded together with the surrounding modules.

Let’s not talk about the cost of reassembling and disassembling them.

Let’s just say that after many disassembly, transportation, and assembly, the durability and defense of some of the modules were greatly reduced, causing the entire forward base to no longer meet the acceptance criteria. This was very troublesome.

And these problems did not exist for the forward base in the air.

After all, the air forward base had the ability to ignore the terrain, fly freely, and deploy at will.

It could even move a few kilometers forward every day as the battle line advanced, constantly spreading the light of human civilization to farther places.

And because the air forward base was composed of countless armored airships.

Its size could be adjusted at will.

If the strategic value of a certain place was extremely high, or the threat of the enemy was extremely great, the air forward base could be made up of hundreds of armored airships connected from head to tail and connected in a three-dimensional manner, becoming a strategic fortress that stood high above and suppressed everything.

If the strategic value of a certain place was not high, or the level of combat readiness was low, or the enemy situation was unknown, and it only needed long-term observation, then a small air fortress made up of ten to twenty armored airships would be enough, to be able to do most of the regular operations.

Based on these advantages, in addition to some of the companies in the nine mega corporations, they already had quite a deep technical accumulation in the field of armored airship research and development.

Therefore, when the situation of the monster war slightly eased and Dragon City could gather more strategic resources, the Air Forward Base Project began to move forward at full speed with the support of more than half of the members of parliament.

The Red Dragon Army had originally supported the Air Forward Base Project.

After all, the Red Dragon Army at that time did not have too much combat power and too much say. They only existed as superhumans, mainly as the vassals of the peerless experts of the nine mega corporations.

However, as the war continued, the Red Dragon Army trained more and more of its own experts. When they gradually matured, they discovered that the Air Forward Base Project might not necessarily meet their needs.

After all, there was a limit to how many armored airships could carry.

The nine mega corporations mainly relied on superhumans to fight.

The armored airships were more than enough to transport superhumans and their various equipment and provide logistical support.

However, the Red Dragon Army’s steel torrent, with hundreds of thousands of troops and train cannons that easily weighed dozens or even hundreds of tons, was difficult to transport through the armored airships and stayed on the air fortresses for a long time.

Coincidentally, at this time, humans dug out the remains of the ancient transmigration array from the ancient ruins.

Using this as the blueprint, they carved out their own planetary surface short-distance transmigration system.

After careful consideration, the Red Dragon Army decided to invest most of its resources into the transmigration array technology and rely on the transmigration array technology to rebuild the strategy, tactics, and corresponding equipment that were more suitable for the Red Dragon Army.

At this point, the Red Dragon Army and the nine mega corporations went their separate ways in terms of strategic direction and development methods.

A hundred percent of the Air Forward Base Project fell into the hands of the nine mega corporations.