I can upgrade the shelter-Chapter 682 - 580: Jetpack

Besides these trivial matters, what Chen Xin is currently dealing with is the military’s request to enhance the combat capability of the existing exoskeletons and develop a power armor that’s easy to mass-produce.

Exoskeleton and power armor, both were products Chen Xin developed long ago, and through the efforts of scientific research staff in the national military sector, both have now been mass-produced and promoted.

Among them, the exoskeletons have been fully equipped across the military, and even civilian versions have been widely spread in cities, providing significant help for production and construction.

However, exoskeletons are ultimately only exoskeletons. Even with the addition of defense armor and enhanced performance and output, they remain merely exoskeletons and, though they play a substantial role in combating alien creatures, their effect is indeed limited to some extent.

After all, exoskeletons allow ordinary soldiers to wield heavy machine guns and use them like light machine guns, effectively injuring alien creatures, which indeed has greatly helped the battle situation.

But when alien creatures approach, and the confrontation reaches the phase of close quarters combat, the alien creatures that require a Titan to counter directly are threats that ordinary soldiers equipped only with exoskeletons cannot handle.

For this reason, although the defense line was held, the fact remains that the casualties among frontline soldiers are not negligible.

Similarly for this reason, the military and the high command agreed to use nuclear weapons and retreat the defense line, and now they are concentrating a large amount of resources on building permanent fortifications to better repel alien creature attacks and reduce soldier casualties.

This is certainly a very effective means, but besides this, some have proposed different ideas, which is to enhance the fighting capability of soldiers so that they may at least survive when facing alien creatures, even if they cannot win without a fight.

And such opinions eventually turned into the requests presented to Chen Xin.

Faced with this request, Chen Xin didn’t find it unreasonable, since it is indeed a very reasonable idea. If it can help more soldiers survive, the battle situation would also become more favorable.

However, achieving this is not so easy.

It’s not that Chen Xin can’t do it; with the system’s capability, not only can he make an exoskeleton that survives in front of alien creatures, he can even create one that excels amongst them.

But the problem is that once this is made, it cannot be mass-produced.

All the problems boil down to the same difference between mass-produced Titans and specialized machines; what the military wants is equipment that every soldier can use, preferably just adding components to existing equipment to achieve the effect.

This not only upgrades the equipment but also avoids the need for large-scale replacements and re-manufacturing, which is the optimal solution.

However, achieving this is undoubtedly very difficult.

After all, given the current performance of exoskeletons, achieving a significant combat capability improvement without major modifications is almost impossible.

Regarding the exoskeletons currently equipped by the military, Chen Xin is quite familiar.

Although the main structure is designed by military researchers themselves, Chen Xin primarily solved the energy problem, so he is familiar and knowledgeable about it.

As for power armor, it is even more his pride, and the current Titans are also developed based on power armor.

So regarding exoskeletons and power armor, Chen Xin can be said to be extremely familiar, but precisely because of this familiarity, he understands that transforming them is by no means an easy task to meet military demands.

Thus, Chen Xin abandoned the idea of seeking breakthroughs in body performance and decided to change his approach, looking for alternative solutions.

After all, given the need to save costs, facilitate mass production, and match existing exoskeletons and mecha, he couldn’t go too far, only thinking outside the box to see if there might be other solutions that are both economical and effective.

However, this indeed stumped Chen Xin.

Regarding what alien creatures are like, he has a say; after all, he has directly confronted them and participated in dissection and live experiments by the biology research group, so he is quite familiar with these alien creatures.

Therefore, Chen Xin clearly knows that without heavy firepower, ordinary soldiers, even with exoskeletons and power armor, are utterly useless against alien combat bodies.

The exoskeletons are basically smashed with one hit, and power armor is just slightly sturdier iron cans.

So direct confrontation is definitely off the table, unless Chen Xin upgrades every exoskeleton to the extent of fighting alien creatures, otherwise, it’s impossible.

But doing so, putting aside the survival points and materials needed for the upgrade, the time it would take is quite long.

Given the inability to win, should one try to run away?

This thought flashed through Chen Xin’s mind.

In past games, there were typically a few defensive schools of thought: one was to stack defense frantically, making oneself so tough that nobody could hurt you; another was to stack attack, killing the opponent before they could kill you.

Besides those, there was another mindset: focusing on speed, making oneself so fast that nobody could hit, naturally avoiding taking any damage. Even for area attacks, having sufficient speed allows for dodging.

On this thought, Chen Xin seemed to have found inspiration.

Alien creatures’ speed is not slow, strictly speaking, it’s similar to a horse running fast. Though not to the level of a famous horse, it matches the average speed of ordinary horses.

For exoskeletons, achieving such speed without modifications is unrealistic.

Though some exceptionally gifted individuals might reach such speed, the mechanical performance alone does not support such running speeds.

But the biggest difference between humans and animals is that we can use tools. If running with two legs doesn’t achieve that speed, how about flying?

If jets are equipped on the exoskeleton, enabling soldiers to jump high and cover a short distance during danger, like a super jump in games, instantly widening the gap, wouldn’t that achieve the goal?

The more Chen Xin thought about it, the more feasible it seemed, and with the increased distance from the enemy after the jump, heavy firepower could continue to be used to kill the enemy.

Moreover, this wouldn’t require significant modifications to the exoskeleton, just adding a jet pack would suffice.

With that thought, Chen Xin’s inspiration burst, driving him to try making one for experimentation.