Gentlemen,
Strange times are upon us. The recent instability in Norway has been exploited by Austria to secure control of the country. We weren't even aware their navy was capable of reaching Norway, much less in the strength needed to get their before the force we sent to restore order. As a result, we and the British have declared war on them to preserve Scandinavia's independence from Central European influence. So far, we have been successful in our first battle, sinking the Austrian light cruiser Zenta.
Overall, we aren't too worried about this war. While a direct numerical comparison shows our fleet as currently inferior to the Austrians, we have several mitigating factors. First, the British, possessors of the world's largest fleet, are on our side. They're unlikely to deploy too much firepower into the Mediterranean, but they are a useful counterbalance to Austrian attempts to reach Norway, and to any possible German entry into the war. Second, the war broke out while a large number of our ships were in yard hands, being refitted with Central Firing. Two CAs and two Bs will commission in two months, with another pair of CAs the next month. Third, our ships are larger and more capable than their Austrian equivalents.
Our current fleet
The new submarines we laid down
Current shipbuilding
War has again opened the purse strings, and we need to decide what to spend our windfall on. The fleet staff would like some minesweeping trawler conversions included in the plan. Beyond that, we're not sure how long this war will last, and when it ends, funding levels are likely to crash again.
We have only limited options to prosecute the war itself, as we can't land troops in any Austrian-controlled territory. We'll simply have to wait and see what happens.
Here's the summary of the past year's activities:
January
Design work began on BC Duquesne. DD Fleuret commissioned. In an interview, I suggest we are most likely to fight Austria-Hungary. Breakthrough: Active Mine Warfare. Germany has increased her naval budget, and laid down a B. A-H has increased naval spending, commissions a CA. UK commissions a CL and two KE, Italy a KE and 2 DD.
February
Isly is finished working up and is sent to the West Africa station. Germany lays down CA, Italy 4xDD, Japan a KE. Italy commissions CL, A-H a CA. US has developed 13" guns.
March
CA Jeanne d'Arc commissions, but much like Isly, has trouble reaching her design speed. A-H is said to have increased naval budget, lays down CA. UK lays down KE, Italy CA and DD. 2xDD of ours finish working up. UK commissions CA and B, US CL.
April
CL Alger commissions, 1 DD finishes working up. We block an arms deal with Germany, increasing tension. BCs Duquesne and Tourville laid down. US lays down KE, 2xDD. Italy commissions 2 B, UK 1 BB, 1 KE.
May
June
CA Dupleix commissions, Jeanne d'Arc finishes working up. We negotiate a treaty with Britain, securing our interests against Germany. A-H lays down a KE and a CA. UK lays down a B and a DD. Italy lays down a CL, US a CA. Italy commissions a B, US a DD. BC Dunkerque laid down.
July
CL Alger finishes working up. Plans for Italian CA Etruria stolen. Breakthrough: Reliable pendulum mechanism. UK lays down 1 CL, 2 DD. Italy lays down 2 DD, Japan 1 KE. Germany commissions 2 CA, 1 CL. AH commissions 1 KE, US 1 CA, 2 CL, 1 DD.
August
Plans for German CA Nurnberg stolen. Germany lays down CA, UK 3 DD, 1 CA, 1 KE. Italy lays down 3 DD, US 1 B, 2 DD. US commissions 1 KE. Unexplained delay in building of BC Dunkerque.
September
Design work begins on KE Diamant, as there's not enough room in the budget for another BC even after CA Desaix commissions later this month. CA Dupleix finishes working up. The government considers offering symbolic concessions to Austria-Hungary, but we talk them out of it. Breakthrough: Early coastal submarines. KE Diamant and Bourbaki laid down. A-H lays down CA, KE. UK lays down B. Italy lays down 2 DD, US lays down 3 DD. Germany commissions CL, A-H and US Bs.
October
4 coastal submarines laid down. The British offer to sell us Periscope technology for 3,200, and we accept. Breakthrough: Central Firing. A-H lays down CA, UK 2 KE and 1 DD, Italy 2 DD, US CA. Germany commissions KE and CL, UK B.
November
Refit of Central Firing begins on B Redoubtable, CAs Jeanne d'Arc, Dupleix. (Ships chosen because they were not Elite crew quality, as crew quality falls after refit.) Japan attempts to expand into Northern Korea, and we push for an international force to thwart it. This greatly increases tension with Japan, and somewhat with Austria-Hungary, but lowers it with Britain and Italy. Italy commissions 4 DD, 1 KE, Japan commissions BB, US DD, UK 2 KE, Germany CL. Germany lays down 1 KE, UK 1 CA, 1 DD, Italy 1 DD, US 1 KE.
December
Refit of Central Firing begins on CA Desaix, Dupetit-Thouars. CL Alger dispatched to South Pacific station. B Solferino delayed 1 month for Central Firing refit. There is an internal upheval in Norway, and we attempt to give it protectorate status. However, Austria-Hungary manages to get there first. Somehow. Breakthrough: Pneumatic recuperator.
We declare war on Austria-Hungary over their occupation of Norway!
Cruiser action near Otranto:
CL Alger and UK CL Leander encounter a pair of A-H CLs. A long pursuit results in lots of hits on Alger, which she mostly shrugs off. Eventually, the range closes, and both sides are hammered. Leander is not particularly effective, staying well behind during most of the battle. We should have easily won, given that both enemy CLs are armed with 4" guns. One CL is lamed, and we circle in for the kill. After a bunch of battering, CL Leander and the enemy CL torpedo each other. Leander survives, the enemy ship doesn't. The other CL manages to get to port.
Unfortunately, I forgot to take screenshots, except for the battle map. Total was 475 VP for us, 398 VP for them.
UK lays down 3 DD, commissions 3 more. US lays down DD, Italy commissions KE. Lots of nations refitting with central firing.
August 1904
Gentlemen, the war goes well. We have met the Hapsburg forces in battle repeatedly, and each time proved equal to the test. Germany has yet to enter the war. Despite the failure of our British allies to close the Strait of Gibraltar, we have protected our coasts, and mostly kept them isolated from their position in Norway. We have simply called you in because the recording department was tired the staff felt it was time for a consultation.
Our current shipbuilding plans. The submarines we have in the yards are 4 months from completion.
The current list of Austrian ships sunk. We've lost a single CL and a DD, for a total of 3,600 tons.
January
Work begins on a new destroyer class. The Obusier is a close derivative of the previous Carquois, but improvements in technology have allowed us to fit a pair of 2" secondary guns. 4 300-ton minesweeper KEs and 4 400-ton escort KEs are also laid down.
Germany is said to have increased naval budget and is building a coastal battery. A-H lays down 6 KE, 1 AMC. UK lays down 1 CA, US 1 KE. A-H commissions CA, USA commissions 1 KE, 2 DD. AH raider sinks 3 merchant ships in Northern Europe.
Austrian coastal raid on the Atlantic coast of France. 2 CLs encounter a pair of Austrian CLs. Three more AI-controlled CLs also intervene on our side. Unfortunately, Austrian gunnery looks to be better than ours, at least initially. Later, the range falls, and one of their cruisers gets pounded. During a long pursuit, my cruisers stay in contact, but don't deal enough damage to sink the target. After a 9-hour pursuit, darkness falls and the cruiser slips away. Minor victory, 342 VP for us, 166 VP for them.
February
4 DD laid down to Obusier design. CAs Dupleix, Jeanne d'Arc, B Redoutable complete reconstruction. Breakthrough: Preheater. Austrian raider CL Jupiter scuttles due to lack of fuel. Raiders sink three merchant ships. Germay lays down 1 KE, AH 3 KE, Italy 2 KE. Germany commissions 1 B, UK 2 DD, Italy 1 B, 2 DD, Japan 1 CA, 1 KE. We gain 230 VP for blockade.
Cruiser action in the Bay of Biscay. (I am very confused by this, particularly as the screen indicates they have 4 battleships in Northern Europe.) We have 2 CAs of our own, joined by 2 CAs from the British, 2 CL and 3 destroyers. We encounter a pair of Austrian CLs at dawn. Again, their gunnery starts off better than ours, despite the new fire-control system on CA Dupleix. Unfortunately, our cruisers aren't quit fast enough to keep up, and they eventually escape with minimal damage. Marginal victory, 138 VP for us, 77 VP for them.
March
B Solfierno commissions. CAs Desaix and Dupetit-Thouars finish reconstructions. Breakthrough: Improved subdivision. Raiders sink 2 of our merchant ships. AH is building a 9" coastal battery in the Med, lays down 3 KE and an AMC. UK commissions 3 DD, Italy 1 DD. 230 VP for blockade.
Fleet battle in the Adriatic. We have most of our battle fleet, but our first enocounter is with a single CA, which runs. We chase them to the port of Cattaro, where they appear to have run. Some of their fleet comes out to oppose us, and the whole thing degenerates into a melee. Both sides get hits, but nothing serious. Eventually, they decide to seek shelter in the port, but I can apparently still fire on them. DD Mousqueton strikes a mine and sinks. We continue bombardment until it begins to grow dark, then head for home.
The final verdict is that most of their battleships are damaged, but none badly so. We took a heavier toll of their destroyers, but didn't sink any, either. We did deal enough damage that it's a victory for us. 397 VP for us, 256 VP for them.
April
With the commissioning of B Solfierno, we have a gap in our construction program. To fill it, and give us a tactically homogeneous unit of four ships, a slightly modified Duquesne is designed. The main improvements, allowed by better machinery, are an extra .5" of belt and two more 4" guns, along with integration of Central Firing from the start.
Improvements in productivity boost our budget. 8 corvettes are commissioned into the navy. Our spies steal the plans for Japanese B Hizen. Raiders sink 2 merchant ships. British operations add 170 VP. A-H commissions 3 KE, 1 AMC, lays down replacements. Italy lays down B, CL. US commissions 2 DD, 1 CA. 230 VP for blockade of enemy.
And we have another coastal raid on Western France. We have 3 CA and 2 CL. Unfortunately, darkness falls before we encounter enemy forces, and they appear to have slunk away without doing anything. 246 VP to us for surviving merchant ships.
May
BC Marseille laid down. CA Chanzy ordered to return to Med from South Pacific. Our light cruisers have not been performing well in action, and an Isly variant, Friant, is ordered into design. It's 100 tons lighter and has two more guns. 2 DD laid down, followed by a third that the shipyard offers in 8 months at a 10% discount. The Austrians attempt to convince us to end the war with no changes to borders, but we persuade the Foreign Minister to refuse. 2 merchant ships sunk by raiders. (Unfortunately, most of the monthly summary was lost when I had to restart the game.)
Cruiser battle near Sicily. 2 Jeanne d'Arcs and two British CAs, with 1 CL as scout. We encounter an Austrian force of 2 CA, 2 CLs, and some destroyers, but they run before we can get many hits. Two Austrian battleships and another CL arrive, but these battleships are actually more lightly armed than our CAs, so we decide to try to fight them. The come broadside to broadside, and definitely get the worst of the encounter, but no fatal damage is dealt. A long pursuit then ensues, when we deal a lot more damage than they do, but again nothing fatal. CA Desaix is at one point hit by a dud torpedo. Finally, one battleship is badly damaged, although we haven't managed to torpedo her. At some point in the fight, we pump enough shells into one of their destroyers to sink her. Attention turns to the other B. Unfortunately, by this time, our ships are low enough on ammo that we aren't willing to press the attack, so we break off to make sure of the first B, which sinks as we are en route. A CL picks up 5 survivors, the last act of the battle. We gain over a thousand VP, as opposed to ~300 for them. (Forgot to record numbers.)
June
CL Friant laid down. B Solfierno finishes working up. Spies steal plans for Japanese B Suwo. Breakthrough: Range calculator. 4 ships sunk by raiders. A-H lays down AMC, Japan orders CA from A-H yard (?). A-H commissions 1 AMC, 3 KE. Germany commissions 1 CA, UK commissions 1 DD, 2 KE, Italy commission 3 DD. Japan commissions 1 CA, 1 B, US commissions 1 DD. 230 VP for blockade.
Coastal raid on Western France. (I really must speak to the British about putting more ships at Gibraltar.) 2 CLs encounter a pair of enemy CLs. They run, and after a mostly-indecisive 6-hour chase, the end up being driven into a bay north of St. Nazaire. One of our CLs closes one of theirs, and manages to torpedo it. However, in the ensuing action, she is sunk by cumulative gunfire, while the other CL continues to pound their ship until it finally succumbs. Fortunately, the CL we lost was of the Sfax class, which have 4 7" guns as their main armament, and are generally unsatisfactory, while their ship was a 6" cruiser. Minor victory, 893 VP for us, 658 VP for them.
July
B Solfierno ordered to Med, B Trident sent for FC refit. 2 KE commission, A-H offers negotiations, but we refuse to accept their terms. 3 ships lost to raiders. British operations add 250 VP. Germany is builidng another coastal battery, and has laid down a B. A-H is building two new batteries, and has laid down an AMC. Italy lays down an CA. Japan and US have each ordered a B. 8 KEs finish working up. A-H commissions 3 KE and an AMC. UK commissions 3 DD and 2 B, Italy commissions 2 DD, Japan 1 KE. 220 VP for blockade.
We raid their coastal shipping in the Adriatic. 3 of our CAs and 2 British CAs form the core of the force, backed by CLs and DDs. The quickly encounter a force of 2 B, 3 CA, and a bunch of destroyers. The Bs aren't the ones that aren't outmatched by some of my CAs, so this is going to be tricky. We manage to maneuver around the Bs and get close to the CAs. One of their destroyers is lamed and then sunk fairly early on. One of their CAs takes enough damage to slow her, and we close in for the kill. Another destroyer is sunk, and a third badly damaged. The CA is finally rendered immobile, and then torpedoed to make sure she goes down quickly. The rest of their forces are almost back to base, and we decide to play it safe and turn for home. On the way, we bag the third destroyer. Total losses? Minimal damage to 1 CA.
Major victory, later dubbed the Battle of Sibenik, +1 Prestige, 2,167 VP for us, 288 for them.
Comments
Definitely agreed we could use some more minesweeping.
As for the rest of the budget, how future-proof are ASW destroyers/corvettes? Almost everyone is starting to build subs.
Small, early destroyers don't automagically become the equivalent of their later and larger cousins just because you've developed the technology. But I believe that if we leave space and weight for "extra DC stowage" when you build the ship, we can add that in a refit when DC technology is eventually developed and get the full benefit. Will have to play with that and see. And we can probably fill that space with an extra torpedo tube in the interim, so long as we're willing to remove it when we need to.
ASW corvettes, if we can fit them in 500 tons, are another thing we can rapidly convert from trawlers in wartime.
As for the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Norway, I think that just highlights the realism hit this game took by knocking Russia out of play.
Turning a destroyer into an escort is pretty easy. I've done it in several of my games, usually dropping a torpedo tube set or two and replacing it with ASW weapons and AA guns (later in the game). Usually not too expensive, either.
I'm not sure that's a consequence of that, so much as reasonable simplifications to the diplomatic model. You get those opportunities fairly frequently, and as best I can tell, it rolls dice to figure out who gets it. In this case, the dice came up silly.
As for Russia, the game is set up for seven powers. The only countries that could benefit from 8 are France and the UK, and I'd rather they'd gone with Russia instead of Austria, but it's normally OK.
So the idea would be to build fleet destroyers and make them escorts later?
If they'll actually help our fleet, and make worthwhile escorts later, it sounds good--better than starting a two-year capital ship build based on a funding stream that will last as long as Austria-Hungary does against a UK-France alliance.
It's natural and easy for fleet destroyers to become escorts. As technology advances, your destroyers will get better. The old ones (ships are designated as obsolete after 10 years, although this usually doesn't have mechanical effects) are good escorts. Sometimes, you'll refit them with better ASW and AA weapons, and sometimes you won't.
How exactly is the geography modeled for the imminent war with Austria? If the main British fleet is deployed in the channel/North Sea, does Austria have to fight their way past us to reach the British? Or might the Austrian fleet pop up randomly near Norway and fight the British without us being present? Trying to figure out how to maximize gaining VPs. If Britain ends up doing most of the fighting, could they end up with Norway instead of us?
Geography isn't modeled that well. We should have them blockaded, which means IIRC that they won't be able to move non-raiding ships out of the Med.
I've found allied forces to be pretty passive. They'll contribute a few ships, but I don't think I've ever gotten more than four battleships from them in a given battle.
I have no clue how them picking up territory will work, or how VP splitting is done.
Can we launch an invasion of Norway, if their fleet is bottled up in the Med?
Unfortunately, no. We don't have any bases within range. The British might be able to, but friendly AIs tend to be really passive in my experience.
By the way, at what point does saving too much money result in budget cuts? I suspect we're going to have more budget than we really want to spend on destroyers and AMC minesweepers, but anything bigger will probably still be building after the wartime budget ends. So saving a good share of the money and spending it down after the war is a pretty attractive option. Or maybe even saving up for our first wave of dreadnoughts--unless we keep going to eat every two years, they should be ready in time for our next conflict.
Actually, I've started playing through 1904. Finally got tired in August, which is where the next installment will be set. War is still going on, and it's a lot more exhausting to write than a peacetime log. We're winning by a big margin so far, despite the stunning inability of our British allies to guard the Straits of Gibraltar.
And two new big/long-term ships have been laid down, one as a replacement for a ship that finished building, the other in an attempt to improve our light cruiser force, which is having some issues.
I would propose the use of the reserve to help smooth out these swings in budget - we could start some major combatants during war, and after war put a large portion of the fleet in mothballs to free up the budget to finish construction.
We'd need to choose ships with low quality crews to mothball, but I think this is a case where quantity is worthwhile.
IMX it's been well over 100,000 before this happens. Though I'm not sure if it's a flat threshold or if it's based on GDP.
I've just posted the course of the war through August 1904. So far, France is winning the war handily.
Well, congratulations on an impressive set of victories. Following the war against Italy, I expect the French navy is getting quite a reputation. If we're not taking a peace offer from the Austrians, do we have a plan in case of a German declaration of war? I assume Britain would back us up, but I'd rather not place too much faith in them.
It sounds like we're having trouble dealing with raiders - are they just armed merchantmen? Would more light cruisers help? Are convoys an option?
"By the way, at what point does saving too much money result in budget cuts?"
See, if they had a realistic budgeting and procurement model, saving any money at all would result in A: a budge cut equal to the amount you saved, and B: the money you saved being clawed back anyway. And wouldn't that be fun?
In practice, I think you'd manage it by laying down more ships than you can afford and tweaking "halt construction" and "accelerate construction" as needed to precisely meet your budget targets. If this results in an occasional ten-year-old ship being scrapped before it is ever completed, meh, it's no worse than having your budget clawed back and at least it doesn't lead to a cut in the baseline.
Any lessons you may think this has w/re real-world defense procurement are not at all coincidental.
The reason for the restart was a peace offering that looked like it would at least net us Norway, but turned out to be a status quo peace. I was irritated because Norway was the whole reason for the war in the first place, and our politicians couldn't be stupid enough to bargain away a winning hand. (On the other hand, this is the Third Republic.) I've been pretty skeptical since then.
I haven't found a good way to deal with them. More CLs would probably help, but it's happening even where we have lots of ships (the Med). My guess is that in fixing a problem from RTW1 (way too much time spent fighting cruiser actions against raiders) they've managed to make it really hard to cull the raider population. What the game really needs is a halfway-decent auto-resolve mechanism to take care of those things for you.
Since we have yet to see a single point of unrest, I wouldn't treat the raider situation as urgent. I say we keep doing what we're doing, trying to sink the enemy fleet and win the war. It'd be nice if they stopped getting away in cruiser battles, but for that the immediate action item is "curse our engineers for building Jeanne d'Arc below design speed" and the longer-term one is "pat ourselves in the back for ordering battlecruisers".
It's not that they're escaping during battles. It's that the battles are never happening at all. RTW1 spent a lot of time in raider-hunting battles. RTW2 appears to have cut that (which got irritating after a while) and not replaced it.
The build plan I'm going to implement involves laying down two submarines now, and two more when the current batch completes. As the destroyers commission, I'll lay down a few more, but I plan to bank some of the money to cushion the postwar crash, too. Play will resume this afternoon.
Editorial published in Le Figaro:
The wisdom of the new board at the Ministère de la Marine has been amply vindicated by the recent conflict. When they took office, we had only two croiseurs cuirassés in home waters. Today, we have seven, and these vessels have been responsible for our great victories at Sicily and Sibenik. What have the lumbering battleships done? Slow vessels can have no part in future wars, a fact that the board recognized after the war with Italy. Today, the vessels currently growing in our yards are the envy of the world. They are more heavily armed than anything else afloat, and capable of running down any cruiser. Yes, this comes at a sacrifice in armor, but who needs armor? Speed is armor! Other powers continue to lay down vessels that are obsolete. Let them. We will show them the way when we crush their fleet in battle!
Ooh, good call on the submarines--not only are they a relatively small commitment, they're fully auto-upgrading (I know they'll always be coastal, but I expect plenty of action on our coasts).
And glad to see some appreciation from the press. They might be jumping to conclusions a bit fast, but I suppose it's the best one can hope for.
They’re not fully auto-upgrading. The only number on submarines is reliability, which is fixed when they commission. I have no clue how torpedoes and such work for them.
As for the press, of course they're jumping to conclusions. That's what they do. But I do think it's a fairly accurate reflection of press/public opinion after the actions that have happened so far.
Ah, I didn't realize submarines were even tracked individually (though on closer inspection I see that they have names...). Guess I'm the one jumping to conclusions.
I suppose that coverage does seem pretty in keeping with examples from the time. And "La vitesse est la cuirasse" has a pretty nice ring to it.
(Not sure how the opposition papers wrote, but if I were them I'd say our fleet was "standing bravely between the Austro-Hungarian Navy and the Royal Navy")
Ooh, that's a good idea. Does anyone have a suggestion for a paper name to use for the opposition? (I mostly picked Le Figaro because it was the first paper I could find that dated back this far.) And yeah, they're likely to be pretty scathing towards the British.
Based on some quick research, I think using Le Figaro as pro-Navy and Le Temps as anti-Navy is probably as accurate as we're going to get without going to the effort of switching it up based on who we're at war with.
Do we expect that the designs to our ships are available to other powers? If not, we might want to avoid letting the press hand over too much information. Since there's only about a four knot gap in speed between our existing battle fleet and the new cruiser killers, they are probably not significantly harder to hit, but they should be able to pick their fights (and hold the range open, if desired) so they'll probably prove tough in practice. On the subject of slow vessels, how long before all of our new ships can manage 23kts? Great Britain's QE's are over a decade away (historically) but will we be waiting that long?
First, nothing in the press reports has any effect on the game. I don't know exactly what details are available to the other powers, or how the AI will use that. Also, "speed is armor" is a Jackie Fisher quote, and not a reflection of in-game reality.
How long we wait for 23-kt battleships is up to you guys. I've got ship design research set for high in hopes of getting a dreadnought-enabling tech.
I suppose I don't need to worry about the censor slacking then Ü Is the technology we're looking for something along the lines of superfiring turrets? Or steam turbines?
Le Figaro is jumping to conclusions, but they're not wrong at the current tech level. Gunnery is kinda crappy right now and it takes a lot of pounding to sink even a cruiser, which is why so many battles have ended with moderate damage to both sides and no sinkings. Better to invest in speed, so you can avoid the battleships and pick off something more vulnerable, which is how things went at Sibenik.
A more careful journalist would have said something like "Without significant improvements in long-range naval guns, slow battleships will find that they are always too far away from the battle for their big guns to make a difference." That would admit for the possibility that some new technological advancement (coughdreadnoughtscough) would change the strategic picture and make it unsafe for cruisers to dance around the edges of a battleship's range.
@Alexander: Superfiring turrets is what we need, or something else that allows us to have three or more main gun turrets.
The tech we need is some combination of three centerline turrets and main-battery wing turrets. Superfiring is a separate tech, as is 4 and 5+ centerline turrets. (Check out the tech tree at the RTW2 wiki.) Ideal is 4 with superfiring, but that could take a while.
Those exist?
Just to be absolutely clear, the editorials are deliberately unreliable. They're my take on defense journalism, which hasn't changed a lot in the last 100 years.
On literally the last turn I was going to run, we got the tech for 3 centerline turrets. We still don't have superfiring, but we can at least get 6 heavy guns on a ship now. So get ready to design some dreadnoughts!
Can we put em all in the front to get a proto-Nelson?
Unfortunately, no. First, I can't do B turret, because I haven't unlocked it yet. Second, the weight-saving benefits of that arrangement are a separate tech that has to be unlocked. In which case you might as well make sure you have all-around fire.
Yep, this is the era where battleships start rapidly increasing in displacement:
So in 3-4 short years the broadside count has tripled, to say nothing about the individual guns.
A couple years after that comes early triple turrets and 5+ centreline turrets (practically up to 6 total turrets can be used). In theory this would allow some 18-gun abominations but unless you have been exceedingly unlucky with heavy gun development it's better to have 12 larger guns. IMX it's cruisers that tend to benefit more from turret farming. (But make sure you leave some room for armor, unlike this curious AI design.)
The one problem we face is that I've let the docks slide some. I have 14" and 15" designs that are good, but right up against the limit. We should probably start expansion right away. (Sorry. Got busy with the war and all.)