The Age of Giant Ships and Cannons

  Chapter 7 Building a Base

  Li Qing's destination is to pass through the entire low-security area, pass through the entire low-risk and medium-risk areas, enter the high-risk area, and find a galaxy that is not occupied by other teams and does not belong to other spheres of influence to establish a personal base.

  Although it is dangerous, there is no need to be taxed.

  Some large legions will occupy a large number of galaxies. Set up outposts in these galaxies, patrol fleets to clear wild monsters, and establish low-security areas one by one.

Non-legion casual players can mine in the low-security galaxies occupied by these large legions, but each mine can only be sold to the legion, and the price must be lowered, that is, taxation. Although it is safe, the profit is lower than wild mining. a lot of.

   If you have no ambitions, this is not a way to pay off. You can even directly join the legion as an industrial player. Any legion welcomes this kind of industrial player, even more than combat players.

  Any legion is composed of a small number of combat players and a large number of mining and industrial players.

  For example, an official legion has a total of 10,000 official members, almost all of whom have part-time jobs, have their own mining fleet, establish personal bases in the galaxies controlled by the legion, and establish industrial factories to produce various commodities for sale.

  Besides, in any official legion, there are at least ten times or even dozens of times the peripheral affiliated members of the official members, all of whom are miners or industrial players, who specialize in making money to supply the legion.

   Here, raising a warship is very, very costly.

Take a frigate as an example, in addition to the 10 million buyout clone crew, the senior crew needs to pay 300,000 + the captain's salary of 500,000 every month, and a basic maintenance fee of 200,000 is required. Moonlight alone needs 1 million to maintain this frigate.

   In addition, if there is a battle, ammunition consumption is required, and energy shield replenishment needs to consume energy blocks.

  The death of the crew requires compensation.

   If the battleship is damaged in a fierce battle, repairs are a lot of money.

  This does not include the cost of configuring better weapons and equipment for the battleship, and the cost of modifying and strengthening the battleship, which is the big one.

It can be said that simply buying a ship is not expensive, but maintaining a ship is the big deal. A naked frigate costs 20 million, and it costs 30 to 40 million when it is fully equipped with five-level weapons and accessories, and it costs tens of millions to refit and strengthen it. The consumption of a top-equipped frigate is estimated to reach 100 million.

   Then the salary plus maintenance fee for one year is already 12 million, and 120 million for ten years of service.

  If it is not destroyed halfway.

  If a frigate is not destroyed, it can serve for up to 50 or 60 years, and the salary alone is 700 to 800 million

  Add ten years of various maintenance costs, ammunition costs for battle losses, etc.

   And this is just a frigate.

  So, in the star sea, the strength of a team is not judged by how many combat players and warships you have, but by your economy and industry.

  When the cannon is fired, gold is worth ten thousand gold, and what is fought in war is money. This has been the case since ancient times.

  Li Qing's plan is to first establish a personal base in a suitable distant galaxy, and concentrate on mining to make money first.

He is going to use the way he used to store mining ships and industrial ships to open a channel connecting the universe in his palm, store meteorites in it, and then take them out and use the set of small crushing extraction and refining equipment to refine all the raw ore into refined ore. This saves space and can be sold at a higher price.

   After a year and a half, I will go back to the Jinmen galaxy, or sell it to a nearby team or legion, save more money for a few more waves, and then I will consider increasing the number of warships.

  So in the early stage, I just ignored everything and focused on development.

  As time passed, the frigate passed through galaxies and entered the depths of the starry sky.

Having nothing to do for a long time, he tried to enter the channel newly opened by the Yu family, and found that although he could enter, but because it was just established, the settings in it were not perfect, and it was impossible to separate the small branch channels and small rooms. In the channel, there are not many people communicating.

  Li Qing watched for a while, then closed the channel without saying a word.

   Those who can enter this channel are either the children of military masters and powerful families, or the descendants of big families from all over the world.

After crossing the 226th galaxy to the south, he ran for about three months. After crossing the southernmost boundary of the Skywatcher Legion, he no longer crossed slowly, but turned on the hyperspace engine and began to leap forward. .

  The maximum jump range of the three-stage jump engine is 30 light-years. According to the star system distance of Tianjin Star Field, it can jump about five or six galaxies in one go, which saves a lot of time.

  Running and jumping all the way to more than a hundred galaxies, the frigate no longer jumps, and no longer travels at sub-light speed. Every time I enter a galaxy, I will drill in and turn around, looking for a suitable place to build a personal base.

  A frigate is very flexible. There are all kinds of wild monster warships here. I found it early and avoided it in advance. If I couldn’t avoid it, I turned around and went back to another road. Anyway, I didn’t specify a destination, so the journey was safe and sound.

There are 350 or 60 hops away from the Jinmen galaxy, thousands of light-years away, and they have left the Jinmen province and entered an unknown area. However, there are still players here, but there are only a small number of players on the road. I only occasionally saw some player battleships guarding a few armed transport ships, probably transporting ore or industrial products produced by themselves to sell.

  Every time he saw one, he greeted him from a distance, and took over the communication to ask about the nearby situation.

   Quickly obtained a few coordinates that they thought met his requirements, and the frigate turned to one of the galaxies and flew.

  JM-N-348 galaxy.

A main-sequence star is a K-type star, which is theoretically the most suitable main-sequence star for the birth of life-bearing planets, but it is a pity that this star system did not give birth to life-like planets, and on the contrary, there is no imagination in its theoretical optimal habitable zone planet, but a huge belt of broken asteroids.

  In addition, there is a larger asteroid belt at the edge of the star system close to the gravitational well, which means that this star system has two asteroid belts.

   As we all know, the asteroid belt is composed of countless meteorites and broken asteroid remains. Generally speaking, it is rich in various ores, and occasionally there are some rare ores of high value.

  The coordinates of this galaxy come from a player named Yang Yunbo, that is, a transport fleet player I met before, and his personal base is in this galaxy.

  According to Yang Yunbo, because there are two asteroid belts in this galaxy, it is rich in mineral resources. There are a total of six players who settled here and established personal bases.

They are all individual players, and like him, they are the ones who are dedicated to making money. The galaxy is so big, and the asteroid belt surrounds the stars. A hundred players can't finish it all together. There is no competition at all. On the contrary, there are many people and a companion. .

   After all, this place is far away from Jinmen Province, and there are very few players coming here. If you come a few more, you can chat together and have dinner occasionally.

Li Qing drove the frigate to the asteroid belt in the inner circle first, and spent two days going around it. Through space geology and mineral analysis and other skills, he roughly determined that the ore classification of the asteroid belt is mainly metal ore, and a small amount Spar mine, a large number of rock mines.

Minmetals refers to the common gold, silver, copper, iron and tin. The price varies. However, under normal circumstances, various types of iron ore or copper-like ore are common. The price of raw ore is 15 stars for iron ore, and 31 stars for copper-like ore. Yuan side.

  Of course, this refers to the current price, which may not be the same price after a while.

  Although everything in the new universe is digitized and the rules of the world are like games, it is not a real game after all, but a real universe. Prices are determined according to output and demand, and change at any time. There is no fixed price.

  Even if it is the same original iron ore, the prices in different places are different. The price of iron ore in Jinmen Province is definitely different from that in the hinterland of the United Empire of Mankind.

  And iron-like ore is a general term, and it is subdivided into different types of iron, such as magnet, hematite, siderite, iron sulfide, etc. There is a slight difference in price, but not much.

  In the end, Li Qing did not choose the location of the base in the asteroid belt, but on a satellite of a large planet more than 70 million kilometers away from the asteroid belt.

  The reason why it is not placed in the asteroid belt is mainly to consider that some collection devices can be placed on this large planet in the future to collect some planetary materials, and by the way, to see if there are large mineral veins on this planet.

   There are many mines in the asteroid belt, and there are mines on the planets, but there is no asteroid belt full of meteorites that are easy to collect, and a mining base needs to be established on the planet to dig mines, which is too laborious.

   But if some high-value planetary material can be found on the planet, that investment is nothing.

  The so-called planetary material refers to all the minerals that can only be produced on the planet. The value is not too high, but the advantage is that as long as the collection mine is established, it can be collected automatically. It only needs to be harvested at a fixed point, without too much effort.

   This planet, which is not marked on the star map, has a diameter of 11,545 kilometers. According to the Star Sea standard, it is a barren planet with a size of 23 grids.

   It is worth mentioning that the diameter of the Earth in the old universe was 12,756 kilometers. According to the current star sea standard, it is a second-class continental planet with a size of 25 squares. Every 500 kilometers of the equatorial diameter is calculated as one square.

  The frigate circled the planet and found that this barren planet, which is slightly smaller than the earth, has a thin atmosphere, but there is no trace of water vapor or life on the planet. It is the most common barren planet in the starry sky.

   This planet has three satellites, the largest diameter is 2100 kilometers, not as big as the moon, the smallest is only 530 kilometers, and there is no atmosphere.

  After a preliminary observation, he placed the base on the satellite in the middle.

   The frigate stopped in the orbit of the No. 2 satellite, reopened the palm space channel, and the mining ship and the industrial ship drove out and parked around the frigate.

   Fortunately, there are no wild monsters near this planet, and no abnormal points have been spawned. It seems safe now.

  The diameter of the No. 2 satellite is only about 1,400 kilometers, and its gravitational force is smaller than that of the moon. Small warships such as frigates can directly land on the surface of the satellite.

   Levi contacted the mining ship and the industrial ship through the network system of the warship radar, and remotely commanded the industrial ship to stop slowly at the bottom of a huge annular crater on the No. 2 satellite.

  As we all know, a satellite without an atmosphere cannot withstand meteorites in space at all. Meteorites collide almost every day, forming shock waves. Bases built on the surface are prone to damage from various shock waves. Hiding in craters can avoid this problem.

   At the same time, hiding in the crater can also avoid the radar scanning of warships in space. Unless you happen to see it, the normal radar scan will not scan the base in the crater.

  The industrial ship stopped in this crater with a diameter of four to five kilometers and a depth of more than 200 meters. The hatch door was opened wide, and packed containers were put down one by one.

  Li Qing was sitting in the command room, rubbing his chin with his hands, looking at the huge light curtain in front of him, giving orders from time to time.

  Wait until all the boxes are put down, and then the ten-meter-high mining robots fall down one by one, open these containers, take out the base modules inside, and assemble them according to the assembly plan preset earlier.

  With the development of science and technology, module assembly has entered all aspects. Not only these buildings, but even the construction of warships have achieved module assembly.

  Divide the battleship into different blocks according to standard modules, and different factories produce different modules, and finally transport them to one piece and assemble them into shapes.

  However, this kind of warship has a flaw. Because it is assembled in modules rather than formed in one piece, it is destined not to enter the interior of a planet with strong gravity. Once it enters, it is easy for the modules to break apart and fall due to the strong gravity.

  So in the star sea, only small ships such as frigates can enter the interior of the planet, destroyers and above are generally unable to enter, and can only be parked above the orbit of the planet to carry out orbital bombing.

It took half a month to put together the core module of the base. The interior space of the core module with a diameter of 100 meters * 100 meters * 100 meters is extremely large and can be subdivided into multiple layers. Li Qing divided it into ten layers according to ten meters. The main control room is placed on the fifth floor.

   This thing is made of composite metal and contains various compartments, which can greatly buffer the impact of small meteorites in space, and isolate most of the harsh environment from the extreme environment in space.

  The surface is also equipped with a layer of energy absorbing layer, which can absorb the light energy of stars and various radiation rays in the starry sky as energy, and can provide energy for the base even in extreme environments, maintaining the minimum energy demand.

   Then move all the 16 fully automatic sentry guns to the top of the main core cabin, and put them in groups of four at the four corners.

   Then, the four 30m*30m*30m auxiliary cabins are all placed in the east of the core cabin, side by side.

  At the same time, the height of 30 meters is divided into three layers, and each layer is also ten meters.

   Then, put the small ore crushing, screening and refining equipment outside the base.

The main reason is that it cannot fit inside. Although it is only a small set, crushing, refining and refining are actually three sets of machines. The size is quite large. Any one of the auxiliary cabins is not enough to put other things in it. When the time comes, guide the raw ore in and refine it. There is no place to pile them up, so it is better to just put them outside. When the time comes, the raw ore collected will be thrown directly into the crater around the base. After refining, it will be stored in the attached warehouse. After a certain amount is accumulated, it will be stored in the palm universe.

  (end of this chapter)