Lin Cuo hesitated for only a moment.
"Then increase it."
Li Xingke looked at him.
"Do you think weight, cost, and maintenance requirements will disappear on their own as long as you put them in a budget spreadsheet?"
"I just think that if everything were cheap, reliable, and easy to manufacture, why would the state need to support so many engineers?"
The engineers at the meeting had initially worried that the Regent would insist on having every performance advantage at once. Hearing this, they actually relaxed a little. What they feared most was senior leadership putting forward requirements, then demanding no increase in weight, no rise in price, and no extension of the schedule, until anyone who pointed out that the laws of physics disagreed was branded disloyal.
At least Lin Cuo was willing to pay more. How much more he was willing to pay was a battle for another day.
Ultimately, the Earth-Shaking Type retained its role as a sixty-to-seventy-five-ton tactical heavy assault platform. Whether the main gun would keep a fully traversable turret or switch to a fighting compartment with a limited firing arc was left to the engineering team, which would produce three prototype designs.
This was precisely what made Great Han truly frightening at present.
The palace coup, the great purge, professional wage reform, and the Kashgar War had all taken place almost simultaneously in less than half a year.
By the experience of ordinary countries, political upheaval this violent would have been enough to paralyze the bureaucracy and plunge the military-industrial system into prolonged chaos amid changes in management and panic among personnel. Yet Great Han had not completely collapsed. It could even arrest people, restart production lines, and design the TQ-21, the Shen Hu Mech, a spaceflight return capsule, and a 180-millimeter heavy gun