Not Enough Penetration? Make Up for It with Yield!

"Holy crap! These bandits run fast!" Yanking his bayonet out of a marauder's corpse, Indebted Big Eye stood on the trench parapet and peered down the slope ahead. Scattered crookedly along the mountainside below the high ground lay dozens of corpses, alongside rifles and shovels abandoned by the fleeing marauders. This was the high ground on the north side of Pine Valley, and the defensive position held by Bear Fang's thousand-man unit. Barely ten-odd minutes earlier, the Death Corps had laid down a routine mortar barrage against the marauders entrenching themselves here, just as they did every day. Harassed by New Alliance mortars day in and day out, the marauders holed up on the heights had grown thoroughly accustomed to it. They routinely hunkered down in their half-dug trenches, waiting for the shelling to cease before getting back up to dig. What they never expected, however, was that when they raised their heads this time, what met their eyes was a forest of gleaming bayonets. The trench-digging marauders hadn't dreamed in their wildest nightmares that with so few men, the New Alliance would actually dare to countercharge their positions! Even more shockingly, the moment the enemy mortars stopped, these maniacs had stormed right up behind the barrage. In short, by the time they came to their senses, it was already too late. Shrill charge whistles and battle cries slammed right into their faces, practically treading on the heels of the still-smoking craters. At that moment, many marauders still clutched shovels in their hands, while the rifles they had dropped to the ground weren't even chambered. Construction Site Youth and Brick was the first to vault into the trench. His assault rifle barked in staccato bursts, instantly kicking up a storm of blood and gore within the cramped trench. The marauders assigned to dig trenches were merely third-rate combatants in the tribe to begin with. Though they had followed Bear Fang all the way from the northern reaches of the River Valley Province to the south, they were used to running down helpless prey. Where had they ever witnessed combat this ferocious! Especially after seeing their centurion—an Awakened—skewered into a sieve by several bayonets on the spot, the morale of the remaining two hundred or so men collapsed completely. Unable to muster an ounce of courage to fight back, they wished their mothers had given them four legs as they fled in panic toward the forest down the mountain. In under ten minutes, the battle was over. Kakarot lifted his binoculars and glanced to the north. The routed marauders had already plunged into the woods north of the high ground. "...Their reinforcements will probably be here soon. According to intel from the air wing, Bear Fang and his men seem to be encamped in a ravine about five kilometers north of here." Indebted Big Eye chuckled and asked, "Do they still have a thousand men left?" "Who knows? Marauder unit sizes are weird. A squad could easily be twenty people, and a thousand-man unit isn't necessarily exactly a thousand." Construction Site Youth and Brick looked over at Edge Slacker. "Commander, what's the play?" Edge Slacker grinned. "What else? Rig explosives!" "Didn't the boys from the Burning Corps say they wanted to blow these bastards' latrines to high heaven? We can't let our allies down." At that point, he suddenly remembered something and added, "Oh right, haul back all the rifles, shovels, wheelbarrows, and dirt bags they left behind. We're confiscating every last bit!" Hearing this, wicked grins broke out across everyone's faces. "You got it!" After burying TNT across the marauders' trenches, Brother Edge led his men on a swift retreat back to the southern hill before enemy reinforcements arrived, ducking into their bunker without another word. They waited for a solid hour before the enemy artillery finally arrived late, plastering their positions with several salvos of 100mm shells. By the time the shells began crashing into the players' positions, however, aside from a few who stayed online for watch duty, the rest had already logged off. Some had even finished dinner in the real world. Emboldened by the bombardment and terrified by Bear Fang's threats, the marauders who had previously abandoned the position crawled back onto the heights. To their sheer disbelief, not only had the New Alliance scavenged all the discarded weapons and ammunition, but they had also dragged away every shovel, wheelbarrow, and dirt bag. The entire position had been stripped bare. Even the corpses had been piled up, doused in fuel, and burned to cinders; not a single hair was left behind. Who the hell was the real marauder here?! Lacking tools, they had no choice but to scrounge up whatever materials they could find or dig with their bare hands while waiting for fresh supplies to arrive from the rear. And once the marauders climbed back into the trenches, a cascade of deafening explosions erupted—and their nightmare truly began... *** North of Dawn City. Inside the weapon testing grounds. A decommissioned Conqueror 10 tank sat squarely in the center of the open ground. Its twisted armor plates were warped out of shape, only three pairs of road wheels remained, a gaping hole was blasted through the chassis, and the entire hull was scorched pitch-black. Back when Black Snake's thousand-man unit drove this tank to raid the northern suburbs, a bomb-carrying Crawler quadruped robot had detonated its ammo rack and fuel tank on the spot. The tank had subsequently been hauled into the industrial zone, repeatedly dismantled and studied, and once the last ounce of value was extracted, it was dumped at the testing grounds to serve as a target. At that moment, Chu Guang was standing at the edge of the range with Vannus, inspecting the latest anti-armor weaponry developed by Goblin Technology. According to battle reports from the front line, the marauders had begun getting wise and were scheming to modify light trucks into anti-aircraft gun trucks. Though Goblin Corps' air wing had flattened the marauders' factory with support from the Burning Corps, Chu Guang didn't believe they would keep all their eggs in one basket. The marauders would surely be far more cautious in the future. They might even move their workshops underground entirely. The marauders had clearly realized that without dependable anti-aircraft weapons, their tanks would be sitting ducks on the front lines. And without the cover of armored units, they would have to suffer exponentially higher casualties to wrest Qingshi County back from the New Alliance. Before the Fang Clan's tanks rolled onto the front, the New Alliance needed more and better anti-armor countermeasures to adapt to the rapidly shifting battlefield. "Commence test of Equipment One." "Understood!" Hearing the Administrator's order, Mosquito waved his hand, and the player named Sha Shen trotted to the edge of the range. Crouching behind a firing shelter built of sandbags, Sha Shen deftly pulled a recoilless rifle tube from a crate and unfolded its tripod to set it up. Loading, aiming, releasing the safety... The whole sequence flowed like water, executed in one seamless motion. With a sharp bang, a cloud of smoke and a shaped-charge anti-tank shell burst from the tube together, trailing a column of smoke as it roared toward the tank a hundred meters away. The moment the projectile struck, sparks and thick smoke erupted across the tank's left flank. "Direct hit!" Seeing this, Soul Chaser called out from the side, then dashed forward to check before shouting in excitement, "Penetration! We penetrated it!" The lifestyle-class players spectating nearby couldn't help cheering excitedly as well. "Badass!!" "Awesome!" "Damn, that's criminally hardcore!" Many of these players were newcomers who joined during the Beta, recruited into Goblin Technology by Brother Mosquito for their unique real-world skills. They had always read Mosquito boasting on the forum, but now they were finally seeing it with their own eyes. Naturally, some know-it-all veterans remained unimpressed. "What's there to brag about blowing up scrap metal?" "Looks like T-72 tier at best." "You're exaggerating. WWII peak at most. Not even any reactive armor; an RPG would punch through in seconds." "Bullshit! Did a Tiger have this kind of protection? That's clearly composite armor, okay?!" Two novice players began bickering over the tank's specs. It was merely a brief interlude, however. Standing off to the side, Chu Guang gazed at the Conqueror 10 wreckage in the distance with a pleased smile. Still, constrained by his dignified persona, he kept his grin subdued around the crowd. Only one person across the entire firing range wore a somber expression. That was Vannus. As a former chiliarch of the Legion, he knew the Conqueror 10's true capabilities better than anyone. Shaking his head, he poured cold water over the celebration. "Useless." "This is already the twelfth test." "Even if it penetrated, it proves nothing." Though he didn't understand the players' slang, their jubilant expressions spoke for themselves. He could guess what they were so thrilled about with his eyes closed. An already-wrecked tank. It had taken twelve solid shots to pierce it, and through the side armor at that. As long as the accompanying infantry and hull-mounted machine guns weren't useless ornaments, no one on an actual battlefield would ever get that many chances to shoot. Mosquito had evidently realized this as well. Once the initial rush subsided, he scratched his head in utter bewilderment. "This doesn't make sense..." "This armor takes a ridiculous beating!" Benchmarked to a T-72? A T-72 wasn't nearly this tough. Before modernization packages were introduced, its side armor was a mere 80mm. What was more, they were firing shaped-charge HEAT rounds. Without ERA bricks, slat armor, or composite skirts on the flanks, even an M1 Abrams or Leopard 2 would cringe, let alone an old Soviet T-72. Especially on a Leopard 2, where ammunition was stored in the hull—punch a pencil-sized hole in the front left and the turret could be blown into orbit on a bad day. In order to boost penetration, Mosquito had even sacrificed effective range, increasing the Type III warhead's weight by 1.5 times while keeping the propellant unchanged. He currently dubbed this model the tandem shaped-charge round. Although its range was pitiful at just 150 meters, its maximum penetration against vertical armor reached an impressive 400mm! No matter how one looked at it, the Conqueror 10's side armor shouldn't be that thick, and it wasn't equipped with explosive reactive armor either. After turning it over in his head, Mosquito could only come up with two explanations: It was definitely a bug! Either way, it sure as hell wasn't his fault! Hearing Mosquito muttering, Chu Guang relayed his confusion to Vannus beside him. After listening, the former chiliarch gave a concise answer. "...The Legion's main battle tank is the Conqueror 5 light tank. Designed to deal with ordinary mutants or survivor settlements, its armor isn't particularly thick. The Conqueror 10 heavy tank, on the other hand, was conceptualized from the start with factions possessing industrial capabilities—like the Great Rift Valley and the Enterprise—as hypothetical adversaries." "Composite armor, positive-pressure CBRN systems, minimal reliance on electronics, sustained operational endurance... these were all core design priorities." "Especially the armor. The Conqueror 10's hull features an interlayer of specialized ceramics and fibers sandwiched between two layers of homogeneous rolled steel, with the interlayer's surface protected by a lightweight, heat-resistant porous material. When an ordinary shaped charge's molten metal jet penetrates the first steel plate, it disperses along the surface of that interlayer, causing the jet to rapidly defocus." "Debating nominal armor thickness is meaningless; a shaped-charge jet simply cannot pierce the second layer. Against a factory-mint Conqueror 10, ten shaped-charge hits might not do a thing. You'd have better luck firing hard-core kinetic penetrators." As was widely known, once a shaped jet lost focus, it became like a water gun fitted with a showerhead—its penetrating power dropped to zero. Crushing the enemy with sheer numbers and relatively cheap production costs had always been the Legion's strategic doctrine. The Conqueror 10 was never built to outmatch the Great Rift Valley's armor in performance, but to drastically inflate the enemy's cost to destroy it. If any random foot soldier shouldering a recoilless rifle could snipe and kill a tank, an armored spearhead would lose all purpose. The fact that it had finally penetrated on the twelfth shot was largely because this tank had been pummeled countless times as a target dummy. For all they knew, previous molten jets had completely clogged the dissipation pores across the interlayer! Chu Guang wasn't discouraged by Vannus's explanation. He merely gave a faint smile. "No matter. Even if it can't handle a Conqueror 10, bullying light and medium vehicles won't be an issue. Besides, if shaped charges don't do the trick, we have other options." Vannus asked curiously, "Oh? Such as?" Chu Guang looked at Mosquito. "Commence testing on Equipment Two." Seeing the Administrator addressing him, Mosquito nodded vigorously. "Right away!" It was only natural that the client wasn't satisfied with Equipment One's performance—he wasn't thrilled with it himself either. No problem, though. He had devised two solutions for the Conqueror 10. A higher-penetration tandem shaped charge was just the first. If you can't pierce it, blow it to pieces! The tank wreck on the range couldn't withstand another beating, so Mosquito led Chu Guang and Vannus toward the testing ground for Equipment Two. On the bare dirt stood a reinforced concrete fortification molded into the shape of a tank, mimicking its hull and road wheels. Vannus said nothing upon seeing the mock-up. However, when his eyes landed on the aluminum alloy launcher behind the firing bunker and the hexacopter drone resting upon it, he froze. "This is..." Before Chu Guang could speak, Mosquito stepped forward and launched into a zealous pitch. "This is Equipment Two, crafted by Goblin Technology specifically for conquering tanks—the 'Switchblade' kamikaze drone! Of course, I personally prefer to call it the 'Flying Anti-Everything IED'!" Vannus wore a completely blank expression. Even reading the simultaneous translation on his VM, he couldn't make heads or tails of what the guy was babbling about. Then again, Mosquito wasn't talking to him anyway. Only one person had the authority to pull the trigger on a purchase order, and that was the Administrator beside him. Butter this patron up right, and the deal was made! "...A hexacopter frame ensures unmatched maneuverability! Powered by a solid-state hydrogen battery, it has incredible endurance! Thanks to its aerodynamic shell, once it locks onto a target, it can fold its rotors and glide without power! We've boosted the motor output, pushing its maximum payload capacity up to a staggering fifteen kilograms!" "A fifteen-kilo payload! Heheh, packed with composite explosives, its detonation power rivals two tandem 155mm artillery shells!" "We designed two types of warheads for the Switchblade: top-mounted, or underslung for diving top-attacks. And because of the folding rotors, our Switchblade can take off from flat ground, be launched by catapult, or even be dropped from the air." "To sum it up in one sentence: it destroys armor, it shreds infantry, and it's ridiculously effective!" The entire drone was essentially an enlarged version of the Y-1 Firefly. Its motors were produced by Lister Factory, the carbon nanotube structure had been designed by the Scientific Expedition, and the flight control software was Xiao Qi's handiwork. As for Goblin Technology, they were primarily responsible for the aerodynamics and the warhead modules. Compared to compact drones that could slip into a backpack, this "Switchblade" resembled an agricultural crop-dusting drone. Having finally digested the VM translation, Vannus glanced at Chu Guang with a strange expression. "So... this thing is basically a drone strapped with a remote bomb?" Chu Guang was quite satisfied with its design. Smiling, he said, "Is that a problem?" Vannus fell silent for a moment before offering a hesitant reply. "Not necessarily impossible, but the conditions are exceptionally strict." "How strict?" Vannus answered prudently, "Only under very specific conditions can an explosive's kinetic force focus onto the armor plate. If you merely drop a bomb onto it... a ten-kilo warhead won't be nearly enough." Normally, an explosive's blast wave expanded in all directions. To achieve armor-piercing effects, the kinetic energy generated by the blast had to be concentrated onto the armor surface as much as possible. And the contact area needed to be as focused as possible. If an explosive was simply tossed onto the plate, ten kilos would barely scratch the paint—unless it was something like metallic hydrogen, a monster with a detonation velocity of 24,000 meters per second. As for the New Alliance's domestically produced "solid-state hydrogen"? Its potency was nowhere close. Chu Guang paid no mind to Vannus's skepticism, merely chuckling cheerfully. "...So as long as those specific conditions are met, a ten-kilo warhead can disable a Conqueror 10, right?" Vannus nodded. "The Conqueror 10's only weakness is its belly; the underside has the thinnest armor on the hull. But you can't count on being lucky every time—breaking its tracks when accompanying infantry aren't looking, and shoving explosives underneath to detonate." Chu Guang didn't argue. He simply waved a hand, signaling Mosquito to proceed. Seeing the Administrator's signal, Mosquito immediately jogged over to the launcher in high spirits and shoved aside Sha Shen, who was just about to operate it for him. Why would he let someone else steal his chance to show off in front of the faction's supreme NPC? "Out of the way, move! Let daddy handle this!" Sha Shen instantly protested. "Damn it! Didn't we agree I was testing it?" Mosquito shot back without a trace of shame, "I said you could test the shaped-charge rocket, not the Switchblade! Take it from a bro, this gear has a high learning curve; I'm worried you won't handle it right. Let me take the wheel!" "#%*@&!" It wasn't even a fixed-wing craft—what high learning curve?! Sha Shen walked off, swearing under his breath. Having chased his underling away from the launcher, Mosquito linked his VM directly to the drone, synchronizing its camera feed onto the screen. Target locked! Flight path set! Launch! At the press of the button, the drone resting on the rail shot forward like an arrow released from a bow. Rotors whirred in a droning scream. Before everyone's eyes, the drone skimmed low along the terrain, streaking hundreds of meters in the blink of an eye before plunging headfirst directly under the concrete tank's belly. With an earthshaking crash, a pillar of fire erupted skyward. Dense smoke surged twenty to thirty meters into the air, lifting the concrete mock-up bodily from the ground and shattering it into pulverized chunks! When the dust cleared, nothing remained on the ground except a crater over ten meters wide surrounded by shattered concrete rubble. Even the rebar embedded inside had been blown apart; not a single intact bar could be found. Spectators scattered, dodging raining dirt and stone fragments. Meanwhile, Vannus stood frozen beside Chu Guang, struck utterly dumb. A drone carrying a remote bomb to dive straight between a tank's treads into its belly? You could do that?! No matter how you looked at it, the cost of a drone and a remote explosive was astronomically cheaper than an anti-tank guided missile. "Brilliant!" Chu Guang couldn't help clenching his fist and cheering. Though it was only a concrete target, with such terrifying destructive power, an actual tank would find it impossible to roll out of that blast cloud in one piece. Glancing at Mosquito as he strutted back over, Chu Guang cleared his throat lightly and adopted a solemn expression. "I am very satisfied with Plan Two. It would be even better if its mobility could be slightly improved." "I intend to procure one hundred units, with delivery within a month. Can you manage that?" Upon hearing this, Mosquito thumped his chest and vowed confidently, "Rest easy, honorable Administrator! Goblin Technology never disappoints its clients!" Chu Guang turned toward Vannus, a hint of smugness in his smile. "Well? Is that enough firepower for you?" Vannus's Adam's apple bobbed. Staring blankly, he nodded. "...Perhaps? Provided your drones can fly across without getting shot down." The weapon was undeniably powerful, but it couldn't match the speed of rockets or artillery shells, and rotor noise was a major concern. Still, purely in terms of raw yield, even he couldn't find fault. In any case, if he were the one driving a tank, he definitely wouldn't want one of those going off under his ass. Even if the tank survived, the crew inside certainly wouldn't! Looking at the pulverized concrete rubble not far away, Chu Guang's face beamed with pure satisfaction. "You needn't worry about that. By the end of the month, we'll have at least one hundred Switchblades, while our enemy has at most twenty to thirty tanks." "Even if we trade ten drones for one of their tanks..." "We still come out massively ahead!"