Seven Seas Beacon Fire

After the refit work officially began, the designers initially wanted to install eight 203mm guns on the ship and use twin-mounted turrets, so that its firepower would be no less than that of Western treaty cruisers.

However, such a small displacement was obviously too risky an idea, so they changed to using six 180mm caliber guns, which were installed in three turrets.

Nevertheless, this was still a bit too heavy for a littoral cruiser, especially one that had been converted from a previous design. So, the 180mm guns were eventually replaced with four guns, which were then installed in four turrets.

However, after this plan was presented, Li Che felt it was not very reliable, because it was too similar to the Red Caucasus. However, since it was designed from the beginning as a heavy cruiser, it did not waste tonnage like the Red Caucasus, which only had a standard displacement of more than 7000 tons to carry four 180mm guns. On paper, this ship at least achieved a displacement of 5500 tons to carry four 210mm main guns. Although the actual tonnage was also approaching 6000 tons, this successful weight reduction in design could not hide the fact that this ship was smaller than the Red Caucasus.

As for the performance of the Red Caucasus... Li Che had serious doubts about whether two of these so-called small cruisers could defeat a proper heavy cruiser together.

In naval combat, there should be a reasonable threshold for the performance of each other. For example, the Garibaldi-class armored cruisers, which were quite successful in the pre-dreadnought era, achieved combat power comparable to those of other countries' first-class cruisers with a displacement of 10,000 tons by sacrificing some adaptability to bad weather and sea conditions. However, we should also recognize that the tonnage of the Garibaldi-class was actually the lower limit for this kind of small-scale advantage. If the tonnage were any lower, the performance of the warships would drop precipitously, even to the point where it would be difficult to gain an advantage even in a 2-on-1 situation.

In Li Che's view, a heavy cruiser with a displacement of around 7000 tons and six main guns might indeed be able to compete with the relatively crudely designed 10,000-ton heavy cruisers like the Columbia and Victoria. However, if the displacement were any smaller, it would probably not even be able to maintain a stable gun platform, let alone have armor or torpedoes.

"May I ask what the armor size of this ship is?" Li Che asked, pointing to the shaded armor belt on the design drawing. "I don't think the data is marked on it."

"The exact dimensions of the armor belt have not yet been finalized, but preliminary plans include a 55mm version and a 75mm version," the designer quickly replied.

“55mm and 75mm versions…” Li Che frowned even more: “Doesn’t that mean that even the thickest 75mm version would have difficulty withstanding six-inch armor-piercing shells at common ranges?”

The designer wiped the sweat from his brow: "Well... if the course is adjusted, it can still withstand it. Moreover, the armor protection of cruisers is relatively small. We have specially designed the protection of the ammunition magazine, which is not only underwater, but also has additional small armor boxes."

"I know that cruisers have limited armor protection, and in many places they actually rely on the hull structure to withstand shells. But the problem is that our ship is not large in tonnage and its structure is not strong enough, right? Heavy cruisers are not only meant to counter enemy heavy cruisers. As the navy's second-in-command, capital ships should also have the ability to suppress other countries' light cruisers, right?"

The designers were sweating even more. Although they had heard that the Crown Prince had a good understanding of naval technology, it now seemed that his knowledge of the cruiser's design was far from limited; he had hit the nail on the head.

However, since this direction was proposed by them, the designers could only bite the bullet and say that they would try their best to make changes and improvements. But judging from the designers' tone, Li Che felt that they probably didn't have much confidence.

After all, if you want to strengthen the armor, you need to increase the size of the hull to maintain seaworthiness and freeboard requirements. Increasing the size requires adding boilers to maintain power, and the ship's tonnage increases to over 7000 tons. Without increasing firepower, four guns are simply too weak. And when you add six guns, you'll feel...

Why didn't I build the ship bigger from the start?

Pressing his temples, Li Che then had someone bring over the 10,000-ton-class design for review. However, he was immediately informed that the designers of the 10,000-ton-class design, which prioritized quality, seemed to have gotten into an argument with the naval representatives.

Upon hearing this, Li Che, with the spirit of rushing to the scene to watch the drama unfold... and the spirit of rushing to the scene to mediate the fight, quickly followed the others over. In the corridor of the Navy Headquarters building, he could hear the arguing coming from the room inside: "General, you can't possibly expect our cruisers to have a speed of over 33 knots, be able to defend against their own naval guns, and at the same time install 10 210mm naval guns. This is simply not something that can be achieved with a displacement of 1 tons!"

“We can play around with the tonnage, just a little over, right? For example, we can make it 11,000 tons. The extra tonnage won't be noticeable. We can just claim it's 1 tons, right?”

“哪有这么容易的？就算是放大到11,000吨这也是几乎不可能实现的指标！将军阁下您知道要跑到33级以上，需要多少动力多少锅炉吗？您知道能够防御八英寸级别穿甲弹的双连装210毫米炮塔有多重吗？一个炮塔的重量就有300吨！5个炮塔加在一起就已经有1500吨了！”

Why does the designer's voice sound like a girl's? How dare she speak to a general in the Navy like that? Which design bureau is this girl working for, and how can she be so fierce?

Chapter 349 The Dispute Over 25mm Armor (1)

After Li Che walked in with his hands behind his back and intense curiosity, he saw someone who was somewhat familiar yet somewhat unexpected but also reasonable.

That's right, it's the same tough woman who, during the previous discussion about the warship's boilers, brandished a slide rule and yelled as she was about to pounce on her boss.

It seems like it's been a while since we last met. This beautiful designer's temper is even worse than before. She's now evolved to the point where she dares to slam her fist on the table with a naval vice admiral wearing two general's stars.

Indeed, only this person would dare to argue so loudly with the client. There were not only the two of them in the room, but also a middle-aged man dressed as a staff member of the design bureau. He looked at the two who seemed to be about to start arguing with some nervousness, and then his gaze fell on Li Che who walked in.

Upon seeing the Crown Prince, he immediately began to give Cheng Mingna meaningful glances, signaling her to stop arguing. However, Cheng Mingna had already been driven to a fever pitch by the Navy's repeated unreasonable demands, and now, in a fit of rage, she was no longer able to control herself.

"Initially, your speed standard was 31 knots. Then, after the Lexington-class battlecruisers from Columbia entered service, you learned that these battlecruisers were likely to have a speed of over 33 knots. So you demanded that we also increase our speed to 33 knots. If I hadn't strongly objected, you would have even increased the speed to over 36 knots! How important is the speed target to a ship? Can it be changed so frequently?"

"The navy must adjust the performance specifications of our warships according to the actual threats we face. If you, woman, can't do it, then replace us with someone who can!"

The war is over now, and the navy's main future orders revolve around these cruisers. If your design bureau isn't interested, plenty of others are! And you come here slamming your fist on the table, questioning why I say your designs are substandard? Do any of your turrets even meet the protection standards?

"I can accept others questioning my character, but I cannot accept others questioning my abilities! I'm fed up with you, an outsider, constantly making a series of unrealistic demands on us!"

On one hand, they demanded ten 210mm naval guns, not one less; on the other hand, they required four quadruple 550mm torpedo tubes, each equipped with a reloading system. Furthermore, they wanted the ship to be able to withstand eight-inch armor-piercing shells while fulfilling all these requirements. General, we're shipbuilders, not fantasy novelists!

Li Che didn't have much of an impression of the general with the rank of general hanging inside the room. After all, there were quite a few people who were able to rise to the rank of lieutenant general after the war ended. Even in some non-frontline positions, including logistics, there were quite a few generals who worked their way up to this rank. So Li Che wasn't very familiar with this general.

However, the general clearly recognized him, because his face had visibly turned a deep purplish-red from the beautiful designer's beating. He had opened his mouth, probably about to retaliate or even throw something, but upon seeing that it was the Crown Prince who had walked in, he swallowed back any potentially vulgar words he was about to say, and then stood at attention and gave Li Che a military salute: "Your Highness, Crown Prince!"

Li Che casually returned the greeting, then watched with interest the interesting expressions on the faces of the people in the room, especially Cheng Mingna, a beautiful designer who would be quite rare even in another world, let alone in this era.

In Li Che's mind, the connection between beautiful women and military equipment only existed in the world of anime and manga. Therefore, when he saw Cheng Mingna again last time, Li Che was indeed a little interested in this beautiful designer and even had someone inquire about her background.

Of course, it's not that our Crown Prince is interested in every beautiful woman he sees; that needs to be clarified. Aside from simple curiosity, the main reason is that Li Che wanted to see if this girl might also be a time traveler by looking at her resume.

If so, this might be another unlucky soul who transmigrated and was gender-swapped. Back when we were chatting in a group in another world, the group members had a heated discussion about what would happen if hundreds of us transmigrated together and drove vehicles from War Thunder, gender-swapped, and went to the battlefield. At first, we were discussing things like driving a Panzer III to crush a Panzer IV, or driving a Type 279 to fight at Chosin Reservoir. But later, the discussion turned into who would become a white-haired loli after transmigrating, and who would become an approachable older sister with an E-cup.

Now that we see there really is such a beautiful female warship designer, we should definitely consider whether there really is a pen in the group that has traveled through time.

Of course, the investigation and probing proved that this was not the case; she was indeed a native, but she did possess extraordinary talent in warship design. Otherwise, she wouldn't have been able to join Bureau 229 as a woman in this era. This was a design bureau directly under the Jiangnan Group. Therefore, Li Che suspected that during the transmigrator's soul's journey, it was swallowed up by the original girl's soul. The transmigrator's consciousness was gone, but her skills were inherited by the girl as a bonus.

Of course, all of the above is just our Crown Prince's wild guess. After that brief encounter, Li Che didn't pay much attention to this beautiful designer. After all, he is the Crown Prince, and because of his grandfather, he has many things to do and needs to focus his main energy on military affairs. (Fenghua accent)

He went straight to the table, picked up the tender document that Cheng Mingna had rolled into a paper tube and was about to throw at someone, but as soon as he opened the cover and saw the simple diagrams and the simple data with annotations inside, Li Che couldn't help but raise his eyebrows.

The tender document doesn't just have one design; it has two models, one slightly larger and one slightly smaller. But regardless of the model... it all looks so cheap and cheap.

Especially the bridges... The bridges of both ships really look at least 70% similar to Takao's. They are both quite large and beautiful in design, and to people of later generations, they look like a few Aegis phased array radar panels pasted on them.

If there is any difference, it would probably be in the layout of the guns. Of the two proposals in the tender, the one with a standard displacement of 9980 tons is equipped with four twin-mounted 210mm naval guns, which is similar to the Takao, as if the hull is shortened and the No. 3 turret at the front of the hull has been removed.

The slightly larger one, with a standard displacement of 10,980 tons, is equipped with five twin-mounted 210mm naval guns. However, its gun layout is different from that of the Takao, and is instead somewhat similar to that of the Amagi-class battlecruisers. Two twin-mounted main gun turrets are arranged superimposedly at the front of the hull, while the other three turrets are located at the rear of the hull.

Both cruisers were equipped with four quadruple 550mm torpedo tubes as required by the Navy. However, there were several different designs for the torpedo layout, with some located in the middle of the hull and others in the stern. Neither cruiser was equipped with a torpedo reloading system as required by the Admiralty.

If there's anything lacking about these two ships, it's probably due to the limitations of the era or the treaty's displacement restrictions. The secondary armament of both cruisers is somewhat weak, with both designs equipped with only six single-mounted 105mm secondary guns. Of course, this isn't a major problem. With the right modifications, it wouldn't be difficult to replace the secondary armament with four to six twin-mounted medium-caliber DP guns, given the size of these two ships.

Clearly, one of these two ships was designed strictly according to the tonnage limits of the treaty, while the other was designed to exceed those limits. However, it seems that Cheng Mingna, as a designer, was not shameless enough. In Li Che's view, a displacement exceeding the limit by 980 tons was nothing for a treaty-regulated heavy cruiser. Is exceeding the limit by such a small amount really considered excessive? We are all trying to make a living. Go ahead and talk to the naval treaty.

From any perspective, these two cruisers are excellent designs, especially their beautiful clipper bows. This is probably the least "unlikely" aspect of their style, but to be honest, they are more aesthetically pleasing than the original hyperbolic bow of the Takao.

"These two ships look quite good." Li Che noticed the nameplate on the table out of the corner of his eye and realized that the lieutenant general in charge of reviewing the cruiser designs was named Wang Youde. "General Lin... Oh, I meant General Wang, I think these two ships look quite good. You just said that the designs of these two ships are substandard?"

Lieutenant General Wang Youde didn't notice that the Crown Prince had misspoken his surname. It was perfectly normal for the Crown Prince to be unaware of this; he simply picked up the latest naval tender document from the table and handed it to Li Che.

"Your Highness, according to the Navy's latest requirements, the protection standard for the 10,000-ton heavy cruiser design should be able to withstand eight-inch guns on the main body of the warship, and preferably withstand its own 210mm naval guns. This is clearly stated. None of the other bids have turret armor less than 150mm. Look at how much armor their cruiser turrets have! Only 25mm!"

Chapter 350 The Dispute Over 25mm Armor (2)

So this is what Lieutenant General Wang Youde cares about. But that's normal. Given his age, he must have joined the army during the era of steam-powered ironclad warships and grown up alongside the rapid development of armored cruisers at the end of the last century.

In the eyes of these generals, the heavy cruisers stipulated in the treaty were actually equivalent to their "first-class armored cruisers" back then. In fact, the Ming Dynasty Royal Navy had the "Yangtze River" class, which was similar to the Victoria Royal Navy's Hawkins-class cruisers, in service during the war.

If the guns on these armored cruisers were deck guns, that would be one thing, but if they had turrets, those were basically the thickest armored parts of the entire warship. For example, the turret armor of the Garibaldi-class armored cruisers was 152 mm thick, the same as the main armor on the sides, and the frontal armor of the armored cruisers of the Royal Navy of Victoria could reach seven inches thick.

It is precisely because there are so many such examples that, in the eyes of the older generation of naval personnel like Wang Youde, how could the turrets of your 1-ton cruiser be so naked?

"There should be at least 150mm of armor, right?" Lieutenant General Wang Youde finally said.

"Even 150mm of armor is difficult to withstand eight-inch armor-piercing rounds in combat. The turret's frontal armor is different from its side armor. Side armor can increase effective protection by adjusting the azimuth angle during combat, but the turret always faces the enemy head-on in combat." Since you've mentioned data, Cheng Mingna is no longer sleepy:

"According to the test results of the new generation of 210mm hard-capped armor-piercing shells, they are enough to threaten armor up to 190mm thick at a distance of 1 meters. Even if the shell's initial velocity decreases to 500 m/s, it can still penetrate 150mm of armor at a 30-degree angle of incidence. General, how thick should the turret armor of this heavy cruiser be? Does it have to be more than 200mm?"

"This..." Wang Youde was speechless for a moment, while Cheng Mingna turned to face Li Che:

"Your Highness, I will only say one thing. The weight of the twin-mounted 210mm turret in the design I submitted is estimated to be around 150 tons. If we want to adopt it, the weight of the heavily protected turret that can withstand 210mm armor-piercing rounds may be 100 tons higher than that. Moreover, this is the weight of the saddle-mounted turret. The weight of the non-saddle-mounted turret will be even higher."

Li Che nodded. In fact, he was very satisfied with the proposal submitted by Institute 229. In the other world, he knew that 25mm iron turrets were the choice of most countries' heavy cruisers. The heavy cruisers of Xiao Rizi and Niu Niu both had 25mm turrets. The early heavy cruisers of the United States also had 25mm iron turrets. During the treaty era, the heavy cruisers of various countries generally adopted heavy protection schemes, and almost all of them were equipped with saddle guns.

From Li Che's perspective, light cruisers, which are generally only effective at medium range, have already adopted the common saddle, so the dispersion problem is not so prominent, and the rate of fire of the guns is also relatively fast. However, based on many examples of war history in another world, heavy cruisers have a clear need for long-range gun battles.

At least the gunnery of the American heavy cruisers with their saddle guns during World War II wasn't terrible, but it was certainly not great. Although some of the Japanese heavy cruisers had a slightly larger range of motion, compared to the Americans, it was like comparing one's own lower limit to the other's upper limit.

"But Your Highness, our navy's first-class cruisers have never abandoned turret protection like this before. The main gun turret is the mainstay of a ship's firepower. If the main gun turret can be easily penetrated... then even destroyer guns could easily penetrate this kind of armor, right?"

"Which destroyer's guns can accurately engage targets over 15,000 meters? With shells around 120mm in diameter, how much dispersion would a target at that distance have after being affected by wind?" Cheng Mingna continued, her tone unyielding.

"Your Highness, I believe that our heavy cruisers should first consider how to defeat the enemy's heavy cruisers. Only after achieving this goal should we consider how to suppress the enemy's light cruisers and destroyers. 25mm homogeneous steel will not trigger the fuse of armor-piercing shells. Even if the shells hit, our turrets will leave two through-holes before falling into the sea behind them. Sometimes, no armor is the best armor."

This 25mm armor wasn't something we came up with on a whim; it was the result of a series of explosion tests. 25mm homogeneous steel armor can withstand most shrapnel from exploding shells. As long as the shell doesn't directly hit the turret interior, it can protect the personnel inside to the greatest extent possible. Even if an armor-piercing shell hits the turret, it will at most cause a few casualties among the personnel inside. Unless it directly hits the main gun, the entire turret will remain combat-ready.

Li Che nodded in deep agreement—before the interior of the 2S38 on Anton Star was modified, this fragile vehicle was almost more durable than a pot lid, truly capable of withstanding steel needles piercing through it, leaving only the BVVD in its heart.

While games certainly cannot fully represent reality, lightweight structures do indeed have an unusually good effect on some ammunition with less sensitive fuses in actual combat.

Especially during the treaty era, when the design of cruisers with a capacity of 10,000 tons required meticulous attention to weight, it was more worthwhile to use that weight to enhance the horizontal and side protection of the warship rather than strengthening the protection of the turrets.

"What if the enemy uses high-explosive shells or semi-armor-piercing shells?" In his haste, Wang Youde's rebuttals even became somewhat thoughtless.

Cheng Mingna almost burst out laughing when she heard this. Let them use high-explosive shells or semi-armor-piercing shells, right? A 25mm turret is still very likely to be penetrated without damage by semi-armor-piercing shells. Even if it explodes inside the turret and destroys the turret, so what?

Semi-armor-piercing and high-explosive shells are even less likely to threaten the ship's armor, while our armor-piercing shells can penetrate them. Before they can destroy all our turrets with high-explosive or semi-armor-piercing shells, their cruiser's ammunition depots will probably have already been detonated by us.

Li Che had clearly received more professional training, so he didn't laugh. However, he also knew that relying on the concentrated firepower of destroyers or cruisers to wash away a heavy cruiser or battleship with tactics like deck-washing was something that could only happen in a certain magical naval warfare game.

In actual combat, heavy cruisers, whose shells are heavier and less affected by wind, will almost certainly be able to effectively suppress light cruisers at a greater distance in artillery battles. Even in extreme environments such as night battles, the more important factor is which side spots the other first, and the advantage of rate of fire is far less important in actual combat.

After all, in naval warfare, there is always this rule: ten shells that can't penetrate the core are no match for one shell that does.

Seeing that Wang Youde was about to continue arguing, Li Che interrupted him with a smile: "General Wang Youde, I think we shouldn't make a simple comparison between the armored cruisers of the past and the heavy cruisers of today. The armored cruisers of the past, which were 10,000 tons long, were only 130 or 140 meters long. But look at our heavy cruisers now. In order to ensure that they have a high enough speed, their length-to-width ratio is far superior to that of the warships of the past."

The two proposals submitted by Institute 229 have waterlines exceeding 185 meters in one and 200 meters in the other. In terms of length, these 10,000-ton cruisers are no less impressive than those 20,000-30,000-ton capital ships.

On such a long hull, I believe our designers have done their best to equip the hull with sufficient side and horizontal armor. As for the turrets... as Chief Designer Cheng just said, no armor is the best armor.

I think the proposal submitted by Institute 229 is very good. The Navy Ministry can certainly set performance requirements, but I believe those requirements should also meet actual needs. Or, General Wang Youde, do you have any other proposals submitted by other design institutes? I'd like to see if any other design departments have submitted proposals that can meet the requirements set by the Navy Ministry.”

Li Che's words made Lieutenant General Wang Youde's face even uglier. What other designs could meet the Navy Department's standards?

So far, it seems there isn't a single solution that can fully meet this requirement. After all, it's 20 years now, and the ship's boiler power alone cannot compare to many of the heavy cruisers that everyone is familiar with in another world. With an even more cumbersome engine room, it would be difficult to achieve the performance that was difficult to achieve even in the 30s in another world. In any case, it is almost impossible within the tonnage limit of the treaty.

Li Che glanced through the other tenders and found a heavy armored cruiser with 150mm side armor and 200mm turret armor. This protection was even better than the first generation of battlecruisers of the Victoria Empire. However, the top speed of this heavy cruiser was only 29 knots—and that was under overload conditions.

Other designs feature both 150mm side armor and 150mm turret armor, but with only four twin-mounted turrets, the tonnage already exceeds the limit. Moreover, the 150mm side armor is only a thin strip, and even a bikini provides more protection for the human body.

Other designs offer sufficient protection, but 100mm of side armor is clearly insufficient to stop an 8-inch gun, and 120mm of turret armor is also insufficient to stop an 8-inch gun. It's essentially a weapon designed to easily defeat light cruisers, but its main purpose is to dominate weaker targets.

"General Wang Youde, I think we should give Chief Designer Cheng and his team's proposal a chance and move it to the next stage of evaluation so that the representatives from the front-line fleet can see which proposal they think is better. What do you think?"

Although Wang Youde's style is indeed a bit old-fashioned, he can still understand what your leader really means when he asks you "What do you think?" It's definitely not that the leader really wants to follow your opinion. In fact, when a leader says this, it means that the leader has already made a decision.

In the end, Wang Youde could only nod reluctantly under Cheng Mingna's smug gaze, and then put the tender document into the stack of those that had passed the initial screening.

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P.S.: My migraine has been really bad since yesterday, it's literally a literal headache. The doctor warned me not to stay up late, so the next update...

I can only post this before midnight (sigh).

I know this is a very challenging thing for me, but for the sake of my health, I have to do it now.

If you see me still chatting in the group between 6 pm and 11 pm from Monday to Friday, please be sure to tell me: Go back to writing!

Chapter 351 In peacetime, slow and meticulous work is essential.

The warship development process of a country's navy is completely different in wartime and peacetime. During wartime, the ships developed should naturally strive to use mature and reliable technologies. Rather than achieving a huge leap in performance or perfecting the indicators, the most important thing is to finalize the design, put the ships into production, and put them into service in the shortest possible time.

In this regard, the Royal Victorian Navy and the Colombian Navy are good examples. After achieving a huge technological leap on the standard battleships before the outbreak of war, the Colombian Navy continued to make small-scale improvements on the standard battleship structure throughout the war, ensuring that the expansion of the fleet was not delayed due to technical problems in production.

Even when preparing to upgrade to more powerful weapon systems in the later stages of the war, the Colorado-class battleships were still able to use the Victorian Empire's 15-inch turrets as a substitute when the 16-inch guns were difficult to produce. Although the South Dakota-class battleships had significant improvements in hull size and weapon systems compared to the previous standard battleships, structurally they could almost be seen as scaled-up versions of the standard battleships.

The Victorian Empire was more conservative than the Columbian Empire in the design and production of warships during the war. Even before the outbreak of the war, during the arms race, the Victorian Empire’s super-dreadnoughts with 13.5-inch main guns adhered to the concept of small steps and quick progress, pursuing as many ships as possible by keeping the price of each ship low.

所有的13.5英寸超无畏舰和13.5英寸战列巡洋舰在包括军舰的主机锅炉还有武器系统上基本保持了统一，因此维多利亚帝国才能在短短的09~12年这4年当中开工了多达17条装备13.5英寸舰炮的战列舰和战列巡洋舰。

Admittedly, the Victorian Empire's capital ships were somewhat lacking in performance due to the naval's excessively demanding shipbuilding costs and some structural problems with the early Victorian Royal Naval Ordnance Bureau. However, it is undeniable that the overwhelming number of these capital ships ensured that the Victorian Empire could cope as calmly as possible with multiple fronts during wartime.

When the era of 15-inch naval guns arrived, from the Queen Elizabeth and Revenge to the Renown and Admiral, except for the Revenge-class battleships which reverted to coal-fired boilers due to conservative thinking within the navy and concerns about the temporary lack of sufficient fuel supply, the other three types of ships remained basically consistent in terms of weaponry and important subsystems such as fire control.

If it weren't for the fact that the threat from the Leitanian High Seas Fleet had been effectively eliminated in the later stages of the war and the increasingly obvious manpower shortage in the Victorian Empire's shipbuilding industry, the Admiral-class battlecruisers would have been the first super capital ships to enter service among the top three powers. However, it was precisely because of this that the Admiral-class battlecruisers in this world were able to replace their boilers with a newer generation compared to the Admirals and battlecruisers in the other world. The significantly reduced engine room successfully accommodated an additional twin 15-inch turret.

However, compared to the Longyuan, which has undergone generational upgrades in power, firepower, and fire control, and even further meticulous modifications to its protective layout, anyone can see the huge gap in firepower and protection between this rare "high-quality" Longyuan, which still follows the traditional development process of "slow and meticulous work" even during the outbreak of war.

However, anyone with common sense can see that the success of the Longyuan-class battleship in terms of performance and its strategic failure are two sides of the same coin. At least for the Ming Empire, which invested in and developed the Longyuan-class battleship, they never got the Longyuan that they hoped would turn the tide at sea until the moment of the empire's collapse.

Even for the Tang Dynasty, the successor state, the time it took for the Longyuan-class battleships to be put into service was not enough to significantly alter the course of the war; it merely added another factor to the West's efforts to reach a ceasefire.

Now that the war is over, during this naval holiday period, the construction of capital ships by all countries' navies will be completed within the next few years. In fact, the largest surface warships that countries can build in the first 15-year period of the treaty will be heavy cruisers with a tonnage of 10,000 tons.

Therefore, apart from the Kingdom of Gaul, which has a large number of old armored cruisers that will be decommissioned in the future and lacks other light cruisers, and must quickly build new cruisers to replace them, most countries are very cautious about their first heavy cruiser that they are about to start construction on.

Since the possibility of war breaking out in the short term is extremely low, the design of heavy cruisers was naturally cautious. In contrast, the Royal Navy of the Tang Dynasty, due to its predecessor, the Ming Dynasty, had started construction on two new first-class armored cruisers with attributes similar to heavy cruisers during the war. Therefore, it was clearer than other countries about the combat missions that heavy cruisers should undertake.

Or to be more precise, it refers to the combat missions that heavy cruisers should undertake within the combat system of the Tang Dynasty Royal Navy.

Compared to the naval officers sitting in their offices and generals like Wang Youde, the middle-aged officers in the front-line fleets of the navy, when invited to review more than a dozen different design proposals submitted by several design bureaus, were the first to be rejected for those that sacrificed speed to increase armor and firepower—all cruiser proposals that could not reach a speed of 31 knots were unanimously rejected by the front-line officers.

However, the reason these officers rejected these slower options was not because the United States Navy of Colombia had built Lexington-class battlecruisers that could reach 33 knots. Although the design specifications of these heavy cruisers included the important task of maintaining and disrupting trade routes, based on the practical experience of the last World War, while speed was indeed important for carrying out such missions, the most important thing was not the maximum speed but the sustained maximum speed.

To put it bluntly, what we need is a marathon champion like Kipchoge, not a sprinter like Bolt, the king of the 100 meters.

The requirement of a minimum knot of 31 knots stems from the need to coordinate with destroyer formations in torpedo attacks. Many tactical norms of the Tang Dynasty Royal Navy were inherited from the Ming Dynasty Royal Navy. For example, when carrying out torpedo attacks during fleet battles, cruisers needed to accompany destroyer formations and provide reliable direct support firepower. In this process, cruisers would defeat enemy cruisers and destroyers that came to intercept them, playing a crucial role in securing advantageous torpedo positions for their own destroyer formations.

Although the speed of the Navy's new generation of destroyers has increased to over 35 knots, that high-pressure ventilation speed is reserved for the final sprint stage of torpedo strikes. As part of the high-speed flanking position of the future main fleet, heavy cruisers only need to achieve their maximum speed to cooperate with the destroyer force to seize the position.