Chapter 119: War Behemoth
After many years of dedicated efforts to advance technology and numerous breakthroughs, Tom believed that the time was ripe to research and manufacture larger, more strategically significant Earth-class battleships.
As a higher-tier battleship, it would inevitably possess greater offensive and defensive capabilities, able to act as a stabilizing force in even the most chaotic situations; once an Earth-class battleship arrived, the situation would calm down.
It needed to possess unparalleled long-range offensive capabilities, able to inflict massive damage on enemies from tens or even hundreds of thousands of kilometers away.
Only then could it cover a sufficiently vast battlefield space and extend its influence to every corner of the battlefield.
It also needed to have the longest endurance. In extreme cases, it had to be able to operate continuously in battle for several months, or even a year, without external resupply.
It also needed to possess the most stable communication capabilities. It had to maintain constant contact with the strategic version of Goku AI, and at the same time, project signals to every Venus-class battleship and Mercury-class battleship on the battlefield, ensuring these small and medium-sized battleships did not become detached from the whole.
Every aspect of it had to be the most excellent. Only then could it fulfill the role Tom hoped it would.
Compared to these extremely demanding requirements, its maneuverability requirements were not as high.
It did not need to achieve accelerations of dozens or even hundreds of meters per square second like a Mercury-class battleship, nor did it need to go from stationary to high speed in an instant.
For such a massive battleship, this was also unrealistic.
It only needed to have an acceleration between 0.1 meters and a few meters per square second.
Although the acceleration was low, based on the Earth-class battleship’s massive fuel reserves, it could still achieve a relatively high cruising speed after accelerating for a period.
Following this line of thought, Tom quickly completed the design drawings for the Earth-class battleship.
Although the drawings were designed, to truly build it, Tom still faced over ten thousand technical obstacles of varying sizes.
But it didn’t matter. These obstacles were only on the technical level and did not involve fundamental principles; they could be tackled and overcome.
Under Tom’s full dedication, in just half a year, numerous laboratories reported good news.
All technical obstacles were overcome.
During this period, the factories specially designed to meet the needs of the Earth-class battleship were also completed.
Thus, after upgrading the production line and refining the production process, the manufacturing of this first Earth-class battleship immediately began.
Just half a year later, a brand-new combat spaceship appeared in Tom’s vision.
It was no longer butterfly-shaped like the previous Mercury-class battleship and Venus-class battleship, but resembled two rectangular prisms connected together.
The total length of the two rectangular prisms was approximately 210 meters, with the larger one being about 150 meters long and having sides of about 30 meters. The smaller rectangular prism had sides of about 20 meters.
One end was large, the other small.
Its surface was not smooth but was covered with various devices, densely packed, almost completely occupying the ship’s total area of over 30,000 square meters.
Matching its enormous size was its equally unprecedented massive mass.
In Tom’s plan, the Mercury-class battleship had a fully loaded total mass of about 300 tons. The Venus-class battleship, however, soared directly to about 2,500 tons.
And now, the Earth-class battleship, building upon the Venus-class battleship, climbed again, with its fully loaded mass reaching a staggering 16,000 tons!
Such immense mass and volume finally allowed Tom to unleash his full potential, installing almost all the advanced equipment he had developed onto it.
For defense, it was equipped with a total of 3,000 small electromagnetic cannons and laser cannons!
For offense, large electromagnetic cannons and laser cannons were distributed in various parts, totaling over 100.
In addition to these, it also had four ultra-large electromagnetic cannons installed, two at the front and two at the back.
Due to its extremely long hull, the barrels of the electromagnetic cannons could be made very long, which correspondingly increased their acceleration capability.
As a result, these ultra-large electromagnetic cannons were capable of accelerating a 10-gram electromagnetic cannon projectile to 20 kilometers per second.
A 10-gram electromagnetic cannon projectile was unprecedentedly large. A speed of 20 kilometers per second was also unprecedented for an electromagnetic cannon.
At this speed, each such electromagnetic cannon projectile possessed 2 million joules of energy! Converted to TNT explosives, it was roughly equivalent to half a kilogram of TNT explosives!
In the Earth era, the explosive charge of ordinary hand grenades was usually only a few tens of grams. Thus, a single one of these projectiles possessed energy equivalent to ten high-explosive hand grenades exploding together.
Furthermore, when a hand grenade explodes, its energy is released in all directions. However, once this electromagnetic cannon projectile hits a target, its energy release is extremely concentrated, directed only toward one direction, and highly focused, with almost no dispersion. Ultimately, all its energy is unleashed onto the target without any waste, making it much more effective than ordinary hand grenades.
And with such powerful electromagnetic cannon projectiles, based on the Earth-class battleship’s sufficiently long hull providing ample acceleration capability, the firing rate of these giant electromagnetic cannons could even reach ten rounds per second!
It was almost comparable to a machine gun.
In addition to the giant electromagnetic cannons, it was also equipped with four large laser cannons.
Also due to their ability to have a relatively large mass, the laser beams emitted by these laser cannons had extremely high energy and a very small divergence angle.
In actual verification, these laser beams possessed a certain lethality even against targets 50,000 kilometers away, far exceeding the maximum combat range of a few thousand kilometers for Mercury-class battleships and Venus-class battleships.
Beyond weaponry, the high-speed radar it was equipped with also had the most powerful performance.
A total of 1,024 deep space scanning modules continuously scanned the celestial sphere, collecting information on any target approaching its side. Once scanned, the 3,000 defensive weapons would immediately react.
The supercomputer acting as the brain of this battleship also had performance unmatched by other battleships.
This supercomputer utilized 2,048 2 nm chips! Including sensors, controllers, and so on throughout the ship, a single Earth-class battleship alone used over 100,000 chips of various processes and models!
Now, such a behemoth, armed from head to toe, with no omission anywhere, truly a war beast, began its first voyage since its birth, under Tom’s command.