Designing for Chinese cruisers and local maintenance

Fleet judges his proposed battleship against the Republican Chinese cruisers it would actually be expected to fight. It has a ten-gun broadside of short 12-inch/30 weapons, 8-inch casemates, a 4-inch dual-purpose battery, and a speed of 24 knots. That leaves it vulnerable to foreign capital ships, but would let it outrun and outgun the approximately 23-knot coal-fired cruisers used as its regional comparison. Coal firing and minimal beam and draft suit the intended user's support constraints. The game forces turbine propulsion, although Fleet would prefer forced-lubrication triple-expansion engines because components could be removed and repaired more readily. He also sees the short main guns as useful for high-angle shelling, making the design a proposed regional flagship rather than a competitor for first-line foreign battleships.