Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones-Chapter 282: Mars class Battleship

As early as the war with the Havilah Civilization, Tom had discovered a weakness in his military system.

That was, his side lacked a type of war equipment with sufficient combat power and deterrence, making it difficult to gain enough influence in a specific area or a specific battle.

For example, when both sides were in a stalemate, his side lacked this kind of war equipment to break the deadlock.

When his side had the advantage, it was difficult to quickly convert this advantage into results.

When at a disadvantage, it was also difficult to quickly turn the tide or break out quickly.

To put it in classical military terms, his side had the ’Marshal’ as the battlefield commander and the ’soldiers’ at the grassroots level, but lacked the ’Generals’.

Originally, the Earth-class battleship served as this ’General’ in the battlefield ecosystem. However, with the advancement of technology and the increasing strength of enemies, the Earth-class battleship was no longer capable of playing this ’General’ role.

And now, with the significant improvements in various technologies and the prerequisites being met, the Mars-class battleship that Tom decided to develop was intended to serve as this ’General’ role.

Based on the important responsibilities the Mars-class battleship would inevitably bear in the battlefield, Tom spared no effort in developing this Mars-class battleship.

Tom overturned the initial overall design blueprints alone over a thousand times. And each time a blueprint was designed, Tom needed to deploy at least tens of thousands of clones, doing nothing else but focusing on design.

Each overturn meant an improvement, an optimization.

Tom was constantly optimizing and iterating on the more subtle internal layouts, spending several years to complete the overall design.

Once the design blueprints were completed, it entered the next development stage. It was at this point that the real problems emerged.

The design standards for the Mars-class battleship were too high; the requirements for material performance, energy intensity, armor strength, chip stability, weapon system performance, etc., were simply too demanding. Even with the significant technological advancements he had achieved, existing materials and equipment still could not meet the requirements of the Mars-class battleship.

There was no other way, Tom had to specially establish a working group for the ’Mars-class Battleship’ project, specifically allocating over 100 million clones to the research and development of every detailed component, and specifically allocating resources for this, assigning the industrial capacity and scientific research capabilities of hundreds of thousands of factories, research institutes, and laboratories to this working group.

Finally, after several more years, and even encroaching upon the space exercise resource quota, which forced Tom to temporarily reduce the attrition of exercise battleships, all technical obstacles to manufacturing the Mars-class battleship were finally overcome.

A giant space dock has been built, and all relevant equipment and resources have been allocated in place.

Tom was filled with excitement.

After such a long time, it was finally time for the blueprint to become reality. That super battleship, which only existed in his dreams, was now truly entering the actual construction phase!

One heavy transport ship after another shuttled between the dock and the industrial base. Within the super-long-range communication system, the computing power of hundreds of supercomputing bases converged here, and the wisdom of tens of millions of clones was poured into it under Tom’s control.

Soon, the first keel was laid. Based on this keel, equipment, compartments, cables, pipelines, etc., were rapidly laid out.

It was like a tree in spring, with branches rapidly spreading from its bare trunk, and green leaves and flowers growing on the branches.

Finally, after more than two years, this unprecedentedly massive super battleship truly appeared before Tom.

Tom was deeply moved looking at this colossal battleship, which was overall rectangular in shape, covered with protrusions and depressions, and equipped with various armaments.

The overall mass of an Earth-class battleship is about 16,000 tons, while this Mars-class battleship has directly increased by more than ten times based on the Earth-class battleship, with its full-load mass reaching 300,000 tons.

Its total length reaches over 400 meters, and its widest and highest points reach 60 meters and 40 meters, respectively.

Compared to a transport ship or an aerospace carrier, it is a true midget. But compared to a battleship, it is a true behemoth.

Even an Earth-class battleship looks like a tiny speck in front of it.

Its sufficiently massive volume and mass allowed Tom to install all the large, and even gigantic, weapon systems developed at this stage onto it.

Among them, what Tom valued most were the four energy cannons, which could be called giant cannons.

Normally, the projectiles fired by an energy cannon do not exceed 5 grams in mass, and their muzzle velocity does not exceed 200 kilometers per second.

But at this moment, the mass of the projectiles fired by these four largest giant energy cannons has directly increased tenfold, reaching 50 grams. At the same time, their muzzle velocity is also higher, a full 300 kilometers per second!

Calculated this way, the kinetic energy alone of such a projectile is 2.25 billion joules, equivalent to the explosion of approximately 500 kilograms of TNT explosives.

But kinetic energy damage is only its most insignificant part.

These giant projectiles are also in a strong nuclear excited state! Once an impact causes the excited state to become unstable, approximately 0.005\% of the mass will also be converted into energy. For this projectile, that means about 2.5 milligrams of mass, which is equivalent to the energy released by the explosion of approximately 50 tons of TNT explosives!

Just a single conventional projectile, if it were on the former Earth, would have been enough to collapse a mountain. If it hit a small battleship like a Mercury-class, one shot would be enough to destroy its energy shield.

And these four giant energy cannons can achieve a firing rate of 50 rounds per second.

At full load, it will carry approximately 80 million of these special projectiles in total, enough to support the four giant energy cannons firing continuously at full power for 110 hours.

The mass of these projectiles alone has already reached approximately 4,000 tons, which is heavier than a fully loaded Venus-class battleship!

But these four giant energy cannons are only one of the weapon systems on the Mars-class battleship.

In addition to these, it is also equipped with 4 ultra-high-power laser cannons, as well as numerous medium- and small-sized energy cannons and laser cannons distributed across the hull with no blind spots. There are also a large number of space mines that can be deployed at any time, and even more intercepting energy cannons and laser cannons for self-defense, as well as a total of 640 interstellar missiles, 128 energy cannons, and so on.

In terms of defense, it is also equipped with Tom’s latest multi-layered high-strength energy shield, elevating its defensive power to an unprecedented level.