"Yes, if I increase production to 5 million ships per year, almost every family will have to mobilize. At that time, our population and the living standards of residents will decline significantly, which is something I don't want to see. Academician, is there any way to address this?"
"I've discussed this issue with the academicians in the Engineering Department, but they don't have any good solutions either. We've expanded too much; there are tens of millions of types of machinery and equipment, and hundreds of models of intelligent robots. None of these can be fully autonomous for long periods. In addition, the geographical environment of each planet is completely different, and the equipment on the front lines requires direct human operation. There's also fleet maintenance, and so on. Although each location requires very few people, the total number adds up."
"Unless they adopt a system like the Far Watcher Civilization, where one person is responsible for one ship, then they only need to reproduce a sufficient population, and everything else can be left to individuals, allowing everyone to contribute to the construction of warships."
"That won't do, Academician. I don't want our people to become like those inhuman, ghostly beings from the Far Watcher Civilization. If the Leader and Minister Luo find out, I'll be dead."
"Haha, that's of course impossible, but we do need to speed up our shipbuilding. Besides the large-scale development of intelligent robots, we are also exploring three new shipbuilding methods."
"Academician, speak quickly!!!"
"The first type of modular shipbuilding, although we have been working on modularization, warships are too large and complex, and the degree of modularity is not high. In particular, the later assembly takes up almost a third of the entire production process. I am thinking about whether we can truly modularize the Reaper, divide it into several parts for manufacturing, and then assemble the manufactured modules simply like building blocks, and then lay out the Reversed State Armor to move."
"Academician, this might be a bit difficult, especially the space cannon, which almost runs through the entire Reaper, making it impossible to cut and assemble. There are also countless other lines and pipes, making modularization quite challenging."
"Yes, there are still many problems to be solved with modularization, but I believe it can be done. After all, these are all technical issues. The only challenge is how to ensure that the overall strength of the warship does not decrease after modularization. If it falls apart in a fight or collapses with a push, then the purpose of modularization is lost."
"Furthermore, our tests showed that Reversed State Armor cannot completely block the effects of force. If the force is strong enough, it can still affect the warship's structure. Therefore, we devised a second method of shipbuilding."
"Construct a giant planetary shipbuilding machine."
"Planetary shipbuilding machine?"
"That's right. This shipbuilding machine might be as large as our habitable planet, or even larger. It's still under research. According to our plan, the Reaper will be optimized to reduce the number of material types to less than 50. In addition, the survival pods will be built independently, because the survival pods require the most types of materials."
"With the reduction in shipbuilding materials, we input various materials directly from the entrance, and after the operation of various machines and equipment inside, the Reaper products are directly output. The advantage of doing this is that we can integrate all our current production lines in a three-dimensional manner, which not only saves transportation time, but also makes the three-dimensional production line more conducive to building such large warships."
"We are now exploring a third, more advanced shipbuilding method: to manufacture a warship like an injection mold. In that case, we would only need to build some necessary, non-injection molded parts inside the hull. This shipbuilding speed would be even faster than planetary shipbuilding machines. Although our Reaper is enormous, more than 90% of its parts are integral from start to finish. As long as the materials are available, these parts can be completely injection molded."
"Academician, have you ever estimated how fast these shipbuilding methods could be built using current production capacity?"
"Yes, modular shipbuilding can increase production by about 1.3 times, reaching an annual output of 2.6 million ships. Planetary shipbuilding can double the speed, reaching 4 million ships. If injection molding can be solved, it can increase the speed by at least ten times, reaching an annual output of 20 million ships."
(Narrator: Regarding the shipbuilding speed, let me reiterate that while I made this up, there are some general bases. As I mentioned earlier, the global production of passenger planes in 2018 was 8,000, not counting fighter jets. If there were a global crisis, this production could easily increase tenfold. So I multiplied the data by 10. With a global population of 7 billion and a current fleet size of 300 billion, 3000/70*10*8000 = 3,428,571 aircraft, or over 3 million ships per year. Currently, the fleet only has 2 million ships. I haven't considered other technological advancements or improvements in production efficiency, etc., for fear that the sheer number would be overwhelming. Or perhaps the sheer size and complexity of warships are offset by these technological and production efficiency improvements.)
"Furthermore, the latter two methods will greatly reduce the number of personnel involved in shipbuilding. A single planetary shipbuilding machine may only require tens of thousands of people to maintain. With these two methods, our industrial planets will be completely eliminated except for the production of daily necessities for the people, leaving only mining bases. Moreover, we will no longer need to move planets to our territory; we can send machines to operate remotely and transport the minerals directly."
"Academician, let's put modularization aside for now and start directly with the planetary ship-building machine. We can slowly study injection molding technology later. But building a planetary ship-building machine will take a long time, won't it?"
"That won't take long. The planetary ship-building machine will still use the current production line, but we'll integrate it vertically. The Engineering Department is currently designing the planetary ship-building machine and solving related problems. Once the design is complete, we'll only need to modify the production line, build a framework using Reversed State, and integrate the production line on that framework. That will complete one planetary ship-building machine. General, don't worry, the academicians in the Engineering Department will be able to solve the related problems in a short time."
"I'm not in a hurry, I'm not in a hurry." Hu Yu said he wasn't in a hurry, but in reality, he was more anxious than anyone else.
"It's good that you're not in a hurry, General." Academician Zeng smiled. How could he not see Hu Yu's anxiety? Not only Hu Yu was anxious, but everyone was. The several insect swarms had arrived, which meant that there were abnormalities in the Insect Zone. The Insect Race could launch a large-scale attack at any time. If there weren't enough warships, it would be impossible to guarantee everyone's safety.
"General, the situation with the Zerg swarm seems to be getting increasingly dire. To prepare for the future, we plan to build several hollow inhabited planets, completely encased in Reversed State on the outside, with hollow interiors. We will construct living spaces and store food inside. We need to start preparing for this now. Even if it delays the Reaper armor construction, we must store enough food, build enough housing for our people, and stockpile all kinds of supplies for any eventuality."