Following other navies' reactions to one changed program

Writers need not provide complete parallel histories for every foreign design, but they should show how other powers react where those choices touch the main story. If the United States completes every Colorado-class battleship, Britain and Japan cannot be assumed to proceed unchanged. Britain might build three Nelsons instead of two or alter their balance of speed and survivability because a larger class changes the value placed on each individual hull. Those responses would feed back into treaty tonnage and the competitive position of the original ship. A practical counterfactual follows foreign reactions far enough to explain their contact with the central story without attempting an exhaustive history of every navy.