Recently, there have been significant changes at Northern Ridge.
Under the influence of Tang Mo, Alice, who successfully inherited everything at the Northern Ridge and was recognized by the Kingdom, becoming the new Lady Earl, is now transforming her mansion.
She obtained a new set of equipment from Brunas and commenced a major construction project, installing a steam engine boiler within the originally modest-looking Earl's Mansion.
That's right, she installed a steam engine in her own home, and now, after complete installation and tuning, it's being connected to new devices...
An officer, looking at the busy workers, stated with a sense of pain, "Steam engines are very expensive! Do you know how much it costs to use this thing specifically to drive that gadget?"
In fact, he had visited the bullet manufacturing factory at Northern Ridge. A single steam engine could make a huge quantity of bullets, and its production efficiency was far greater than manual labor.
Northern Ridge, with Tang Mo's full support as an industrial base, could obtain far more support than the distant Poplar Kingdom.
Tang Mo had almost no reservations when it came to technology, transferring nearly all technologies except the major weapon, the Maxim, to Northern Ridge.
There was no helping it, considering he shamelessly seduced the daughter of the former Earl during the funeral period... well, or maybe it's the current Lady Earl that he seduced... That's the gist of it anyway.
With this additional relationship, the industrialization process at Northern Ridge hit the fast track. Alice enjoyed writing letters to Tang Mo, always proudly referring to Northern Ridge as her dowry.
This was already a tremendous achievement, as in this era, a factory capable of producing enough bullets to supply the firing rate of ten machine guns was considered to have an amazing capacity.
Therefore, with the support of the new factory, Tang Mo installed four Maxim guns on his new warship, allowing for the deck of approaching enemy ships to be swept with gunfire.
Remember the design standards for the new ships? Yes, the Navy's new warships were planned to use six Maxim guns, but in the end, only four were installed!
It was still due to production capacity issues that Tang Mo eventually decided to reduce the number by two and allocated the spared guns to the second warship.
There was no way around it. Even a landlord's house doesn't boast unlimited supplies. Although Tang Mo was lavish, his factory's capacity was already significant; however, he couldn't possibly invest all resources into the Navy.
The officer, who had never seen a telegraph machine, still expressed his pain, "What a joke! I just don't understand why you would use an entire, expensive steam engine just for this thing?"
After all, he had seen steam engines powering equipment and producing various weapons—if they had an additional steam engine to produce C64 field guns, wouldn't Northern Ridge be able to have even more field guns?
As a military man, he didn't care if Northern Ridge's three legions were already equipped with thirty C64 field guns! In his view, it wouldn't be too much even if a legion was issued twenty C64 field guns!
After all, he didn't handle logistics or artillery personnel management; he simply wanted more cannons! And... more shells!
Following Tang Mo's advice, after the new Lady Earl took office, Northern Ridge conducted military exercises to demonstrate its power to both Leite Kingdom and Suthers Kingdom.