We stopped in an open field as the sun came up. The girls were stretching their legs as I looked at my skill. Now that I was out of the underground, I needed to grow my army, so I pulled up the blueprint for the 120mm main battle drone and looked it over. I changed it from a wolf to a lion as the main on the face served as a wider frontal magic shield.
I fixed the 120mm gun from the Abrams classic, turning it into a full-automatic belt-fed version. Think of it as a 120mm machine gun now; the drone can now hold 500 rounds in a belt feed. Granted, it wouldn't be fast-firing, but it would be way faster than loading it by hand or having an autoloader.
Estimating the rate of fire at 400 rounds a minute, but unlike the Caesar units, which have fixed placement for the gun, this gun can rotate 360 degrees as I upped the leg stabilisers. It won't be as fast as the other units, but it's pretty much a tank; it wasn't meant to be quick.
I had to add a whole new bolt-style system for it, which brought me great joy, as it was a work of art I couldn't wait to see in action. As I pressed the make button, a massive drone showed up in front of me.
It was 40 feet long, 16 feet wide, and stood 20 feet tall. It was 8 feet longer than an Abrams and four feet wider. But what was even more was the height, almost three times taller.
The main gun wasn't all that it had. I fitted two M250 cambered in 6.8; each gun had 2,000 rounds in the ammo compartment. The body has several grenade launcher systems to shoot off the M82 smoke grenades. The standard on the Abrams was two six-barrel grenade launchers, but I increased this to ten, as they would be used to cover the advance of my other drones.
Since my drones can see through the smoke, it would be best to send them out first, forcing the enemy to engage them and pop smoke in turn. That way, they can move back, and my smaller calibre combat drones open fire as they let the enemy enter the smoke. When they exit, they will be met by a wall of smaller drones firing at high volume.
Even in my world, that would be hard to deal with, let alone this world that has only just begun to awaken to my wonders. It looked a lot like the Panzer Liger and the Shield Liger from that one show.
"Your class of drone will be called the Ulysses," I said, looking at it with a wide smile. The others looked on in shock, with Morticia being the most shocked. This was the first time she had seen my ability, but she had heard rumours of it. As I walked around the drone and inspected it, I found it cost only 85,000 to make, meaning I can make roughly 12 now that I have finished absorbing the crystals.
I made twelve more before pulling out a mana potion and drinking it as I moved onto the flying drone. I kept it pretty much the same as the warthog, without the cockpit and slightly bigger, and increased the ammo and missile slots. The engineering was perfect to begin with, so changing it would be pointless, as it's the best ground-attack aeroplane ever built.
The only difference was that it didn't have wheels, since the metal would make it float, so there was no point in adding them. I also made it able to carry three additional armaments, in addition to its 30mm. One being two thousand-pound napalm bombs, the US stopped using them because of stupid rules after the Vietnam War.
The second one was two thousand-pound cluster bombs, which open up and drop one hundred hand grenade-sized bombs. Perfect for carpet bombing in this world for now, that is, until I work out the way to make the B-2 bomber drones I plan to make. The last is eight air-to-air guided missiles. Since I doubt any flying animal in this world can out-fly these things, they will work fine for now until something shows me otherwise.
As I made the flying drone, I had to give it a name, so I picked Hap after the best US Air Force General of all time, whose nickname was Hap. His full name was Henry H. Arnold. He was the only US Officer to earn a five-star rank in two services, the Army and the Air Force. He is cited as one of the US generals that many air forces worldwide draw on. For knowledge and how to train their Air Forces, it's only fitting that I name one of my first air drones after him.
Looking at the cost of it made me smile; it was 70,000, meaning I could make 14 before having to drink another potion. Making thirteen more, pulling out a potion as I stored them, and drinking it. I had planned to make only these two, but I had completed another one of my drones.
Since I wanted an artillery unit other than the mortar unit, I skipped the 155mm style and picked missile artillery instead, since I had the recon units. They could guide the missiles and rockets in. Plus, they weren't as hard on the stabilisers as shell artillery.
Using the M270A2 launcher as the baseline and mounting it on a terantula-style drone. It can fire different kinds of MLRS ammunition from the M270 and HIMARS series. I am more focused on the ATACMS and M30 GLMRS. The M30 is a bigger version of a cluster bomb than the one on the Hap.
As I smiled at it and pressed create, the spider drone was wider and taller than the M270A2, as expected, with eight massive legs. It stood about the same height as the Ulysses-class drone, but was about 2 feet wider and the same length. It was the same price as the Hap, going for 70,000.
As I was thinking for a moment, I smiled. The Lee class of drones, after all, hate the guy or love him. Robert E. Lee was one of the best Generals ever to walk the halls of West Point and lead the South to the best of her ability. One of the only reasons Ulysses beat him was that he had slightly better officers under him. Plus, the North being able to get their hands on better canons.
But if you look at tactics, I would say Lee was better than Grant; it was just that some of Lee's generals were incompetent, which led to his defeat. Well, that's just my feelings on it. As I summoned the 13 others and drank another potion, I kept doing so until I had 50 of each type, which made me smile.
Now that's all that's left to do: stock up their supplies. I have more than enough for the others to fight the Warish Empire, but you can never have too much ammo. Spending another thirty minutes just to be able to stock up ten of each of the drones before turning to the ladies and speaking.
"I am all done for now. Let's head out. I will have to take care of some stuff tonight at the next rest area." I said, and they nodded and mounted up as I got into the driver's seat and started the engine. We will be stopping in a city tomorrow night before camping again.
I need to make my new magic rounds tonight so I can start stocking up. I had come up with a way to make them without putting myself at risk. If it worked, then I would be safe to make magic weapons from now on without fear of dying.