The design exercise spaces the guns so that magazines are divided, improving the chance that a single damaging event does not silence the entire main battery. Yet the layout has to fit physically, preserve weight balance, and leave room for the rest of the ship. A twelve-gun arrangement may therefore look like the sensible maximum that the hull and infrastructure can support. Losing a large multi-gun turret still removes a significant fraction of the ship's firepower, even when the magazines have been separated.
Notable Point · 22:31-25:25
Magazine separation versus a concentrated battery
Spreading 18-inch guns apart can improve magazine separation, but the hull must widen and the battery still consumes scarce weight.