Town-class cruisers fill the middle tier

Battlecruisers had become too expensive to replace armored cruisers one for one across imperial stations. Town-class ships filled the gap between routine sloop patrols and the scarce high-end ships that would respond to a major threat. They were credible wartime opponents, yet inexpensive enough for the Royal and Royal Australian navies to acquire roughly twenty-one. Their place in the force supports a high-middle-low fleet rather than the familiar high-low shorthand. A rough hull-count model assigns about one quarter to high-end ships, one quarter to the middle, and half to the lower tier. In that model, the middle tier supplies enough combat power for serious regional work while remaining numerous enough to spread across the map.