Fitting twenty-four 16-inch guns on Tillman IV

The Tillman IV exercise tries to fit twenty-four 16-inch guns onto an 80,000-ton maximum battleship. The design also needs 25 knots, oil-fired machinery, an all-or-nothing armour scheme, anti-torpedo protection, secondary guns, and heavy turret and barbette armour. The game fit assigns about 20 inches to the turret sides, 17 inches to the barbettes, 19 inches to the main belt, and roughly 4 inches to the protective deck. Those requirements exhaust the weight allowance and leave a serious fore-and-aft balance problem because much of the main battery sits aft. A later replay compares the battery with the firepower of two and two-thirds Iowa-class battleships. The comparison is about gun count in the simulation, since the broadside still depends on ammunition, fire control, protection, machinery, and a stable hull.