A dockyard network forms part of a fleet's fighting design as well as its repair system. Very large successors to the G3 battlecruisers and N3 battleships would have required enlarged slipways and graving docks in Britain and overseas. Germany had greater freedom to build home dockyards around its intended ships, while the Royal Navy needed facilities across a worldwide network. In this counterfactual, Anglo-American competition after the First World War would probably have become a technology race fought through small batches, perhaps four ships at a time, instead of a simple contest in fleet numbers. A navy designed for global deployment therefore faced different infrastructure limits from a fleet operating mainly from one home base.
Chapter · 3:48-6:18
Dockyards as a limit on capital-ship design
British warship size had to fit a worldwide network of dockyards, so construction infrastructure shaped what the Royal Navy could realistically build.