Why a fifteen-gun Town-class cruiser became self-defeating

Why did the Royal Navy reject fifteen- or sixteen-gun six-inch Town-class cruiser schemes?

The extra turrets and weight pushed the design toward a size at which fewer, larger guns could make more sense than adding six-inch barrels simply to increase the count.

The rejected high-gun-count Town-class ideas reached the point where marginal firepower began to distort the whole ship. More quadruple six-inch mountings demanded enough weight and volume that an eight-inch cruiser might become the more coherent design. The exchange is a compact lesson in judging a warship as a system rather than by barrel count alone.