Balancing a 61,000-ton fast battleship

The design begins with the largest battleship hull available in the campaign and a target of about 30 knots with strong protection. The 16.5-inch battery, machinery choices, armour, and secondary weapons repeatedly push the ship over its displacement limit. Chordite increases the main guns' stated range to about 33 kilometres, but that benefit still has to be reconciled with weight and protection. Fore-and-aft balance, pitch, and roll also matter, and the armour calculations eventually reach an 18.5-inch main belt. Although the numbers belong to the game scenario, the sequence demonstrates naval architecture as a linked set of compromises instead of a list of maximum specifications.