It wasn't that these Red Alert soldiers lacked logic. The main reason was that the place Xiao Fan had chosen was indeed good.
Surrounded by mountains on two sides, building a city here would be easy to defend but difficult to attack.
There was also water sources and food supplies, and the climate here was warmer than other places. Where else could you find such a good location?
They really didn't have any objections.
Xiao Fan didn't ask anymore. Since he had traveled a long way to get here, he had already decided on this matter and didn't need to discuss it further.
"Ai Yin, get ready to survey the terrain and determine the central point of the city."
Engineer Ai Yin pushed up his glasses: "Commander, how big of a city do you want built first?"
Xiao Fan was stunned for a moment. He really hadn't calculated how big of a city to build.
"Wait, let me calculate it."
Xiao Fan started silently calculating how big of a city he needed.
This city of his not only needed to accommodate the population, but also contain many buildings.
For example, power plants. He believed even one power plant would take up no small amount of space, at least 10,000 square meters.
Then there were the barracks. A barrack housing 700 people would not be a small place either.
At the very least, the barracks would have a canteen, training grounds, dormitories, shooting ranges, etc. All these would take up a considerable amount of space.
Then there were the tank factories, which the name alone indicated would be huge.
There were also radar stations, and possibly an Air Command Center in the future.
The Air Command Center was an airport, also a space-consuming facility.
Oh right, there were also the mines, and the Materials Recycling Center currently shown in the system interface.
Of course there had to be residential areas, and the streets would also take up a lot of space.
There was no telling how many more buildings might appear in the future, and the scale of the troops would also expand. Could he keep having just one company to conquer the world? What about expanding to a battalion? Expanding to a brigade?
After calculating all this, Xiao Fan's head started hurting a little.
Oh well, no point thinking too much about it.
Xiao Fan said to Engineer Ai Yin: "The northern boundary is 200 meters from the mountainside. Do the same for the western side."
"The eastern boundary is here, the southern boundary is there. Do you think this area is big enough?"
As Red Alert's chief engineer, Ai Yin's computing abilities far exceeded Xiao Fan's. With Xiao Fan's gestures, he immediately calculated the total area.
"Commander, the area you marked out is around 6 square kilometers. That would be a rectangular city 3 km from east to west, and 2 km from south to north. What do you think?"
"That's fine. This area is probably the largest we can have here. If it's not enough in the future, we can expand eastward."
"Great, then I'll get to work based on the Commander's instructions. But you left the engineer squad and 10 engineers back in Yanshan Town, so I'm short on manpower here."
"No problem, I'll produce more right away."
Xiao Fan immediately opened the system interface and produced another 10 engineers and 30 combat engineers.
He had wanted to produce even more combat engineers, since the city walls would require massive construction.
But Annie reminded Xiao Fan that infrastructure like city walls could be built directly by the system. The main job of the combat engineers was to clear debris and level the ground first, then lay some drainage works.
The engineers would be in charge of designing the streets, zoning, etc.
So with this batch costing 14,000 gold, Xiao Fan was left with barely 100,000 in funds.
The engineers quickly marked out the four corners of the city walls, and Ai Yin reported back: "Commander, the points for the city walls are set. You can start building the walls based on these four points. We can work within the city walls, which will be a huge job, so have the soldiers help out too."
"Sounds good, feel free to direct them as needed. I'll go build the walls first."
Xiao Fan eagerly prepared to build the enclosure walls. He first went to the northwest corner point.
Opening the system interface, he checked the options for building the walls.
The system provided three types of walls: Basic Wall, Intermediate Wall, and Advanced Wall.
[Basic Wall: 3 meters tall, 0.5 meters thick, 5 gold per meter to build.]
[Intermediate Wall: 7 meters tall, 1.5 meters thick, 20 gold per meter to build.]
[Advanced Wall: 15 meters tall, 5 meters thick, 100 gold per meter to build.]
Seeing these numbers, Xiao Fan silently started calculating.
The outer city walls would definitely need Advanced Walls.
3 km long, 2 km wide, so the total perimeter would be 10 km of walls, or 10,000 meters.
At 100 gold per meter, that would need.....1 million gold!
After calculating this number, Xiao Fan was frightened.
Having graduated from college, he should not have miscalculated.
Carefully calculating again, Xiao Fan felt a bit desperate.
Just the outer walls alone would cost 1 million gold, which he simply didn't have.
Originally holding 100,000 gold, he had thought he was nouveau riche, but turns out he was still a poor devil.
What to do now? Surely the outer walls couldn't use those 3-meter Basic Walls?
That was absolutely out of the question. Strength-type zombies could smash through them directly, and agile-type zombies could easily jump over too, so they would provide no protection at all.
Just as he was at a loss, Annie gave a system prompt.
"Commander, don't forget the Materials Recycling Center."
Xiao Fan was startled, and hurriedly checked the Materials Recycling Center again.
[Materials Recycling Center, costs 3,000 gold to build.]
"Annie, what are the main functions of the Materials Recycling Center?"
"Commander, the Materials Recycling Center is primarily built to address the construction of the walls. Building the walls requires large amounts of steel, cement and stones. As long as you can collect these materials and deliver them to the Recycling Center's inlet, the materials will be converted into system resources. This can greatly reduce the amount of gold needed, up to 90% savings."
Hearing this, Xiao Fan's eyes immediately lit up.
With 90% savings, his current funds could basically build the framework of the walls.
This time he didn't hesitate, and immediately built the Materials Recycling Center.
After about half an hour, the construction was completed.
Xiao Fan's system interface now showed a placement icon, which was a virtual map reflecting the current situation.
Just like in the Red Alert game, green spots indicated available placement, red spots indicated unavailable.
Xiao Fan tried for a while, and found this could only be placed on leveled ground.
Following the southern wall, he finally found a flat area and placed down the Materials Recycling Center.
Boom!
After a tremor, a brand new building rose from the ground!
The first physical Red Alert building was born!