A Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts Campaign: Building a Battle Cruiser Navy... part 6

Eight battlecruisers face two battleships, using range and numbers instead of asking lighter-armoured ships to duel the battle line alone.

The relaxed campaign is distinguished from the battle simulator, which is used to probe historical ship performance and design choices.

Destroyers are used to keep the opposing fleet occupied while the battleships and battlecruisers move into better positions.

The discussion asks whether a hypothetical 20-inch projectile might rely on a solid steel body and kinetic impact rather than an explosive filler.

A successful action still exposes a weakness: the battlecruisers miss too often and need fire-control upgrades.

A nominal battlecruiser may consume crew and funding while contributing little usable combat power.

A French ship's best chance is a torpedo approach, but closing makes it more vulnerable to heavy guns and an unusually dense six-inch stern battery.

The campaign combines an army operation with naval invasion pressure and then moves more than 55,000 tons to support a conquest of Venezuela.

New construction is limited by occupied yards, including foreign orders for British-built ships, rather than by a simple desire to add more hulls.

A large reserve of trained personnel lets ships be crewed quickly, making manpower an immediate constraint on usable fleet strength.

The campaign connects a growing economy and a large naval allocation with reserves equal to roughly twenty-two months of naval spending.

Campaign play is compared to poker: avoid closing with a better-armed battleship when the odds are unfavourable.

Continuous research produces results over time, but emphasis choices decide which naval capabilities mature first.

A historical aside argues that British naval activity at sea could have altered German assumptions about intervention during the July Crisis.

British turbine sales and earlier investment helped the German Navy acquire high-speed battlecruiser capability before its own industrial base had matured.

Fisher's ability to push policy personally is contrasted with successors who may have judged technological limits more cautiously.

The discussion argues that early-20th-century cranes and facilities could be enlarged, but metallurgy and barrel stiffness make a 20-inch naval gun a far harder proposition.

Old cruisers and battleships are deliberately retired so crews and resources can support a more useful modern fleet.

A 16.5-inch shell passing through a lightly protected cruiser is still likely to inflict catastrophic damage, even without detonating inside.

At very short range, equal-calibre heavy guns can overwhelm protection that would matter much more at normal battle distances.

A new battlecruiser design begins with a 36-knot target, heavy guns, and a large weight deficit that must be solved through linked compromises.

The final design pass trades deck and belt armour, pitching, range, speed, and ammunition choices against a fixed displacement allowance.

The finished battlecruiser is judged by how many 15-inch and six-inch guns can bear through each sector, not merely by its total battery count.