Long Beach needed a heavier cruiser design lineage

How should USS Long Beach be judged as the first purpose-built nuclear-powered surface combatant?

Long Beach made sense as a test bed, but her two reactors and tall superstructure would have benefited from a broader heavy-cruiser hull lineage rather than a light-cruiser-derived one.

Long Beach makes sense as a ship required to test many systems at once. The main design criticism is that the hull appears to descend from light-cruiser practice even though two reactors and a very large sensor installation demanded greater stability and margin. A later class based on heavy-cruiser proportions could have turned the experiment into a more balanced operational cruiser.