Testing out my Spanish Dreadnought Designs

A game design exercise asks what HMS Dreadnought might look like with triple 14-inch turrets, more speed, and a deliberately modernised secondary battery.

A flawed game-generated Spanish capital ship becomes a practical discussion of balanced guns, armour, machinery, and displacement.

The first simulated battle shows why a broadside and numerical advantage can overwhelm individually formidable ships before close-range weapons matter.

Repairing a 1940 Spanish battleship opens a discussion of protection, radar, machinery, and why generic German-looking components obscure national design traditions.

A Spanish force with a three-knot speed edge still faces a losing approach because British 18-inch guns can engage from roughly 20 kilometres farther away.

The simulation repeatedly closes the range when the ships were designed to exploit long-range heavy-gun fire.

A deliberately absurd 400,000-ton design tests how armour, huge guns, torpedoes, and machinery interact when practical limits are ignored.

The counterfactual moves beyond combat power to ask how a 400,000-ton British battleship would force American design and canal infrastructure to respond.

A second design pass explores an Italian-style 1920 battleship through belt layout, hull form, secondary guns, ammunition, and weight balance.

The Italian-Spanish trial becomes a discussion of fighting around torpedo range, local control, secondary hits, and ammunition capacity.

Broadly yes: it was close to an export Tribal in size and general-purpose intent, though its armament details differed from British preferences.

The Spanish force would probably win, but likely at a severe cost, with multiple España-class ships sunk, crippled, or left unserviceable.

It could redirect British capital ships and procurement, but Spain's weak escorts and harbour defence would leave the battleship vulnerable to submarine ambush.