Come on, faster!

There is a lot of valuable information in this text. It is known that a third-tier civilization in the Guardian Alliance, named "Lucca", rented this teardrop probe from the alliance to patrol the third star field and found itself.

"It seems that ... has me pegged as a Tier 2 peak mechanical civilisation. I wonder what they are relying on to base their classification on? What's the difference between a Tier 2 and Tier 3 civilization?"

"Well, none of these things are important ... What is important is that my location information has been exposed, what should I do next?"

Hawke pondered silently.

"It is currently known that water droplets travel at FTL, and this Lucca civilization, too, has been given a free opportunity to teleport at fixed FTL speeds, could this mean that the Lucca civilization has not mastered FTL navigation technology? And the Guardian Alliance has singled out this reward, does it mean that this reward is weighty enough?"

"Let me analyse the response of the Lucca civilisation afterwards. According to statistics, from 37,000 A.D. until the destruction of the water droplets in 37,220 A.D., a total of twenty years, this Lucca civilization has harvested a total of ... nine hundred Alliance contribution points by manipulating the water droplets to cruise in the Third Star Domain. Forty-five points per year on average. It seems that this Alliance contribution point is still quite valuable."

"Destroy me, or capture me, to get two thousand five hundred Alliance Contribution Points ... I'm worth more than that water droplet. Then it is certain that the Lucan civilization will not actively disclose my information, but will choose to capture me alone. In the water droplet's division, I am a peak Tier 2 mechanical civilization, and the Luca civilization is a Tier 3 civilization ..."

"Should we escape immediately?" Hawke pondered nervously.

With less than 10,000 ships left, Hawke had plenty of energy to reach any star within twenty light years if he fled now. But the phrase from the Water Drop's voyage log, "Get a free opportunity for targeted FTL teleportation," made Hawke hesitate.

"The water droplet took twenty years from departure to reach me. But it may have been delayed by stopping midway and exploring, meaning that the Lucan civilization fleet is definitely faster than the water droplet, and they will likely come to me any time between the next moment and twenty years."

"At my speed of fifteen hundred kilometres per second ... if they arrive here within five years and then launch a pursuit, they will have a good chance of finding me and then, in empty space, I will have no chance of winning against the Lucca civilization fleet "

"And ... facing a big fish like me, the Lucca civilization will definitely move out quickly, which is dangerous, and if I escape ... my mortality rate is eighty percent."

"What if ... it stays within the ε Eri star system galaxy?"

"With just five years, I can restore my battle power to that of before the arrival of the water drops, or even further, and then, with the help of various space fortresses, turrets, I will have the possibility to fight against the fleet of the Lucca civilization, or even, wipe it out!"

"If I win and come back to capture me, they will have to bear the cost of FTL teleportation alone, which may lead to a disproportionate benefit to the risk, and they will probably simply give up on capturing me, and even if they refuse to give up and organise their forces again, they will definitely consume more than five years, and I will have a much better chance of escaping!"

"Let's do the math. Staying in the ε Eri system, with the help of the location, I would have ... a forty percent chance of defeating it. The mortality rate will be sixty percent, and then, while they are caught in the middle of the conflict, I will have more than ample time to escape, and the mortality rate during the escape will be reduced to ten percent."

"On balance, the mortality rate would be eighty percent for direct escape, and seventy percent for staying in the ε Eri system, crushing them once and then escaping."

"Moreover, by staying in the ε Eri system, I will have the opportunity to upgrade my technology to another level within that time, which will further increase my chances of winning. Moreover, I will have enough time to gather supplies and make preparations for my escape, which will be to my advantage."

"So it's decided, stay in the ε Eri system!"

Hawke made up his mind.

"It's just a pity that, after a chance to develop technology peacefully, all hopes are now shattered by this one water drop. It's an unmitigated disaster." Hawke lamented.

Having made up his mind, Hawke did not hesitate a bit more, but immediately began the construction of the ε Eri star system's star system.

The restoration of the interstellar fortress at ε Eri c and ε Eri b, the construction of the spaceship, the analysis of the water droplet shell material, the development of technology, and so on, were among the many things that awaited Hawke.

The first thing Hawke did was to resume work on the ship construction base at ε Eri a. Originally, due to the limitation of computing power, Hawke had stopped the construction of the ship, and now that the ship was half lost, it was necessary to speed up the construction of the ship.

Inspired by the teardrop chip, Hawke began to develop a trinary computer. Normally, computers are binary, made up of zeros and ones. But a trinary computer is different. A trinary computer consists of one, zero, and minus one. One stands for true, negative one for false, and zero for unknown. A trinary computer is closer to the human mind, and Hawke estimated that a trinary computer would be more than five times more efficient than a binary computer given the same hardware.

If the trinary computer is developed successfully, Hawke's computing power will be able to control 100,000 ships at the same time, moreover, more flexible and more efficient. The increase in power would then be leaps and bounds.

In addition to the construction work at ε Eri a, the upgrading of various weapons in the asteroid belt was also in full swing. In Hawke's estimation, the combat forms of the Lucca civilisation would themselves not be very different, in which case the various concealed mines, controlled turrets in the asteroid belt would be of great use, and would not be largely useless, as they had been in the face of the water drops.

At ε Eri b and ε Eri c, several moons whose crustal structures had been destroyed by the water droplets had not yet regained their composure, which meant that it would not be possible to start all kinds of engineering repair work on them. Hawke had no choice but to start construction work on the remaining alternative moons.

In addition to the construction inside the galaxy, Hawke learned the hard way and began the construction of a massive information gathering system. The specific content was to make signal coverage all over the galaxy far beyond up to 20 billion kilometres, so that as soon as the Lucca civilization fleet appeared, Hawke could immediately detect it.

At the same time, after the Moludon civilisation and the Water Drop incident, Hawke also began to think about the way of interstellar warfare. Hawke embarked on a massive war projection, trying to find a more advanced and efficient way of interstellar warfare.

Hawke's defensive forces are located on the ecliptic plane of the ε Eri system. Interstellar space, on the other hand, is three-dimensional. But Hawk was not worried about the Lucan civilisation bypassing the ecliptic and attacking the base camp directly.

The way interstellar warfare works is similar to the way warfare worked in ancient times.

In ancient times, warfare was flat, that is, it was fought only on the ground; it was two-dimensional. In a two-dimensional war situation, the various castles were equivalent to points on this plane; the castles were one-dimensional. But until a castle is captured, the attacking side will not dare to bypass it and attack directly. This is because it is possible to store forces inside the castle and, after the attacker has bypassed it, to move out from the rear and attack the attacker on both sides.

By the same token, the Epsilon Eri star system is three-dimensional, but the fortress is two-dimensional. If the Lucan civilisation dares to bypass the fortress and attack Hawke's base camp, Hawke will have the opportunity to attack it on two sides. Generally speaking, a civilisation with a bit of common sense in warfare would not make such a low-level mistake.

After thinking about it, Hawke came to the conclusion that the defending side, will always have an advantage of one more dimension than the attacking side.

Hawke decided that he would put this advantage to good use. If there is enough time, Hawke intends to equip ε Eri c and ε Eri b with 10,000 ships each, which will, each contain two City ships.

The interstellar fortresses at ε Eri b and ε Eri c would have a greatly increased combat capability.

Hawke entered into the busy business of construction. Under the pressure of life and death, Hawke's enthusiasm for his work was unimaginable, and every second was spent in intense construction, at least several times more efficient than when he first arrived in the ε Eri star system.

Thousands of satellites equipped with long-range communications were created and scattered in orbit tens of millions to twenty billion kilometres away from the ε Eri system, providing a net-like surveillance of the entire ε Eri system.

In addition to the ε Eri a base, Hawke has opened a second and third construction base in the asteroid belt, at the moons of ε Eri b and ε Eri c. Several construction bases are being built at the same time, and every moment, all kinds of equipment are being built.

In order to speed up the construction process, Hawk developed several artificial programs with extremely high intelligence, which were distributed on the Chongqing and Washington, allowing these two supercomputers to divert some of the computational demands, and Hawk was able to support them.

The construction of the entire ε Eri star system was in full swing.

However, a huge sense of crisis was always weighing on Hawke's mind. Every moment, Hawke was silently shouting: "Faster, faster, the Lucan civilisation will be here any minute!