Starting from the Planetary Governor

Chapter 1273: Chapter 721

However, Jason Morgan was unable to meet Wang Jiarong as he had hoped.

If the situation had been normal, Wang Jiarong certainly wouldn’t have minded having a brief chat with Jason Morgan.

This trade route in the Fox Moon Star Domain is rather important in the future planning of the Alliance Commerce Department, and there is a lot of room for cooperation between the two parties.

She was originally planning to do just that.

A sudden event disrupted her plans.

Their group was to complete the industrial transfer across multiple Star Domains and Star Sectors along the way, engage in interstellar trade, and eventually conduct a large-scale transaction with a caravan from the Infinite Starfield. The number of ships in the entire fleet would certainly be considerable.

Whether large giant-bellied merchant ships or medium and small-sized merchant ships, the numbers were many.

Such a massive transportation fleet, loaded with wealth, was quite substantial; these ships themselves also constituted a significant amount of wealth.

So naturally, a lot had to be invested in security.

Along with the caravan, there were many armed merchant ships.

Armed merchant ships are essentially ordinary transport ships fitted with some ship cannons, and if conditions allowed, some armor could be added, and the strength of the energy shield could be enhanced.

These modifications could provide merchant ships with certain combat capabilities.

Of course, they were not comparable to genuine warships. From the initial design stage, there are many details in civilian ships that determine combat power, and the technical routes differ from those of military ships. Official source is novel⸺fire.net

A giant-bellied armed merchant ship, looking as large as a battleship or even bigger, might still be defeated by an escort ship.

It might even not be able to escape.

The giant belly’s speed is very slow.

Of course, this is also because the ’giant belly’ is one of the most challenging ship models to arm. It is a special-purpose ship designed for cheap, fuel-efficient, and massive transportation. It excels at transport. When modified into a warship, its extremely poor speed, low flexibility, power output limited for cost reasons at the design stage, bulky body that is easy to hit, and lack of suitable positions for installing weaponry…

Some ships are relatively better. For instance, the small Flying Dolphin, when converted into a ’Wild Boar type’ armed merchant ship, is somewhat acceptable.

The most suitable is the ’Tiger Whale type,’ which is a re-designed ship based on the Whale-class transport ship. However, unlike ordinary modifications, the Tiger Whale cannot be modified from the Whale class; it has to be built as a Tiger Whale from the beginning.

The construction cost of a Tiger Whale is about two billion tax coins, more expensive than the Whale class, but cheaper than the Silver Sword class or Silver Shield class escort ships.

However, it can carry almost as much as a Whale-class merchant ship. The key in terms of combat power is that two Tiger Whales can match a Silver Shield class escort ship.

This cost-effectiveness is pretty good.

During wartime, the military rarely uses Tiger Whales; even the logistics teams don’t use them. If the military needs logistical support, they just requisition high-capacity transport ships and then send warships to escort them.

As for ordinary caravans, using Tiger Whales is more ideal.

With no need to carry warships, under normal circumstances, a Tiger Whale can be used as a standard Whale; it’s just 25% more expensive and carries 10% less cargo.

And once it encounters danger, it immediately becomes quite formidable, equivalent to half an escort ship.

The fleet led by Wang Jiarong relied on over a hundred Tiger Whales to provide martial protection.