Survivability rules impose fleet-level tradeoffs

Samuel B. Roberts, Stark, and Coventry serve as examples of battle damage influencing later ship design. Sal Mercogliano supports protecting crews while questioning where additional redundancy stops producing an acceptable fleet-wide tradeoff. More fire-main loops and other safeguards can make an individual vessel more survivable and also make ships harder to produce in numbers. The argument accepts that neither a ship nor its crew can be protected against every possible loss. Alex Clarke adds that French and Italian survivability choices should not be treated as indifference to sailors' lives simply because they differ from American practice.