The Long War
Of course, this path to break through was not directly opened up. Rather, as the Lyra moved, the warships of the fleet, under the control of Strong Artificial Intelligence, would appear at various nodes in a timely and planned manner, opening up new spatial paths for the Lyra.
This is like someone wading across a river, with the river automatically parting in front of them.
Without the coordination of Strong Artificial Intelligence, such cooperation would be difficult to accomplish. However, in order to cover the Lyra's breakout, the warship group also paid a heavy price.
By the Lyra successfully extricated itself from the chaos of battle, there were fewer than 300,000 warships following it, and the number was still decreasing.
However, this situation changed after successfully breaking out of the melee, because the Donghai (East Sea) Warship and West Sea fleets had arrived at the battlefield and were only about 7 light-seconds away from the Lyra.
In this round of competition between the two sides, the Lyra fleet sacrificed more than 1.8 million warships in order to hold back the Crimson Flame Civilization, while the opposing fleet also lost more than 3.6 million warships in the melee.
In fact, if it weren't for that support fleet equipped with Alloy No. 1 armor, the casualty ratio would have been even higher.
At this moment, the two fleets once again transformed from separate fleets into a single Great Fleet, albeit in much smaller numbers than before the war began.
Humanity's three fleets combined have only 2.9 million ships left, while the Crimson Flame Civilization has only 5.07 million ships left.
The Crimson Flame Civilization's warships plummeted from 1.4 million at the start of the war to 5.07 million, suffering more than half of their strength. Humanity's warships also dwindled from 6 million to 2.9 million, with nearly half of their forces lost as well.
Of course, in terms of the casualty ratio, humanity still has the upper hand, but the results are much smaller than five years ago, and the overall casualty ratio is no longer 1 to 3.
The high-ranking officers on the Lyra believed that this was the reason for the appearance of the armor equipped with No. 1 Alloy Material.
Over the years, the combat power of the human fleet has not improved, while the Interstellar Transaction Market has seen a significant improvement in its defense due to Alloy No. 1 technology. More importantly, the improved defense brought by Alloy No. 1 armor seems to have had a chemical reaction with their advanced Super Micro Nanobots technology, causing the combat power of their New Warship to surge to a level comparable to that of human warships.
Therefore, some people on the Lyra complained that they shouldn't have told the other side about the manufacturing technology of Alloy No. 1. Of course, it was just a complaint. At that time, in order to obtain that Level 4 Civilization creation, namely the Negative Mass Generator, humanity promised to hand over Alloy No. 2 technology. If they hadn't revealed the manufacturing technology of Alloy No. 1 to confuse the other side, they wouldn't have obtained that creation at all.
"Commander Yue, the longer this war drags on, the more disadvantageous it will be for us."
Just as the Lyra broke through the encirclement of the melee and met the Donghai (East Sea) Warship and West Sea fleets, a military expert immediately said in the internal channel, "Although we destroyed their Planet Six base and are now preparing to destroy their Second Planet base, overall, they have been operating in this system for many years."
They still hold an absolute advantage in the speed of resource extraction and the number of resource-rich lands they occupy, which is why they can produce warships much faster than we can. We only produced one hundred New Warship in five years, while, as seen from the recent World War I, they produced at least three million warships.
In other words, our production ratio is 1 to 3, with us at 1 and them at 3. As for the battle loss ratio, previously we could achieve an overall ratio of 1 to 3, or even higher. However, after their New Warship joined the fleet, the gap widened to 1 to 2.8, even with this instance of extremely effective tactical execution."
"If the enemy uses all new-type warships in the future, they might be able to trade two of our warships for one of ours in a direct confrontation."
In short, the expert's statement can be summarized as follows: after the emergence of the enemy's New Warship, the overall strength of the Interstellar Transaction Market has surpassed that of humanity. If this continues for a long time, humanity will inevitably be the one to lose.
After listening to the military expert's words, Yue Yuan pondered for a moment and said, "What you said makes sense, but you have overlooked one issue, or rather, you have overlooked one issue, which is the population. Oh, the alien population."
As you may have noticed, since we destroyed that Strong Artificial Intelligence, the enemy fleet has never again shown a mode controlled by Strong Artificial Intelligence. In other words, they are fighting our steel with their lives.
Even if we take this into account, and even if they manage to achieve a two-for-one exchange in future wars, can their population really keep up?
Yue Yuan's words seemed like a rhetorical question, but in reality, he was also asking himself the same question.
However, this question remains unanswered, because humanity still does not understand how life forms exist in this Interstellar Transaction Market, how many life forms are needed to operate a single warship, or their birth rate.
All that is known is that the third, fourth, and Fifth Planet bases located inside this Star System are their core regions, where their individual life forms reside.
Aliens cannot reproduce like humans. If they did, Yue Yuan was absolutely confident he could wipe them out of manpower. The real fear is that they might lay tens of thousands, or even hundreds of millions, of eggs like fish. In that case, the longer the war drags on, the more disadvantageous it would be for humanity.
Of course, there were ways to deal with it. Yue Yuan quickly learned about the number of Strong Artificial Intelligence that humanity currently possesses.
Currently, the Strong Artificial Intelligence on the South Sea is in charge of resource development and warship manufacturing on the Planet Thirteen. In fact, whether it is the South Sea, Donghai (East Sea) Warship, West Sea, or North Sea, the Strong Artificial Intelligence they carry originally only had military functions and was not professional in resource development and warship manufacturing.
However, with the Lyra, the most complete and Strong Artificial Intelligence, and of course, Yue Yuan's highest level of authorization, it was indispensable.
The reason the South Sea was able to handle this task was because Yue Yuan, through his authority, allowed the Strong Artificial Intelligence on the Lyra to share its knowledge and experience in this area. In other words, if Yue Yuan wanted, he could transform other ships equipped with military-grade Strong Artificial Intelligence into Strong Artificial Intelligence capable of both mining and production.
In this way, humanity can also conduct multi-point resource development on other planets, and then use machines to manufacture machines, greatly increasing production capacity, and then directly surpassing the Interstellar Transaction Market in terms of productivity.
That way, the war would be won.
Instead of pinning your hopes on the reproductive patterns of an individual whose background you don't know, it's better to find solutions using the resources you have.
Having figured this out, Yue Yuan already had his answer.
However, now is not the time to implement this, because the two fleets have begun a new round of combat. Humanity has 2.9 million warships, while the enemy still has 5.07 million. By all accounts, humanity has the numerical advantage.
If the fighting continues in space, humanity has a very high chance of winning.
Clearly, it wasn't just the human side that saw this; the Great Commander of the Crimson Flame Civilization also noticed it, which is why this new round of conflict didn't erupt on a large scale like before.
After discovering that the Lyra had successfully broken out of the melee, the Crimson Flame Civilization's fleet only pursued it for a short time. After its vanguard encountered the two human fleets that came to its aid, they did not continue their advance. Instead, they consciously fired long-range shots while slowing down. Then, at the moment the Lyra completed its turn, they made a detour in space and headed towards their Second Planet base.
Clearly, the Crimson Flame Civilization knew it couldn't gain an advantage in space, so it retreated to the vicinity of the planetary base to form a joint defense, attempting to use the various artillery emplacements of the planetary base for defense.
A very wise choice.
If humanity were to enter planetary orbit and fight them, it would inevitably face attacks from planetary bases, as well as defensive facilities such as orbital gun emplacements and satellite defense bases.
In the past, given the current number of warships, humanity wouldn't have been afraid. But now, out of those 5.07 million warships, a full 2 million New Warship, and humanity cannot afford to take the risk.
A moment later, watching the fleet disengage from the battle and gradually head towards its planetary base, Yue Yuan realized that this war was truly going to become a protracted one.
Without hesitation, he ordered the fleet to cease pursuit and then began the return journey.
"Let's compare productivity!" Yue Yuan muttered after exiting overclocking mode. He then sent a command from his Brain Chip to bring up the star map. His gaze then fell on the Twelfth Planet, which had been Orbital Bombardment.
Expand planetary bases, intensify resource development, increase the number of shipyards, and accelerate warship production efficiency.