Empire Conquest
Chapter 386 - 382: Costly but Pointless

Chapter 386: Chapter 382: Costly but Pointless

Moored at the pier being fitted out were two Fast Battleships.

Yes, these were the "Muddy Sea" class Fast Battleships built concurrently with the first batch of the "Province" class.

Although Battleships were no longer the primary capital ships, in terms of cost, the "Muddy Sea" class, which evolved from the "Xu Sea" class, was almost twice that of the "Province" class.

Because they were so expensive, the second batch of construction plans for the "Muddy Sea" class was axed before the outbreak of the great war.

It could be said that precisely because Fast Battleships were so prohibitively expensive, the Imperial Navy began looking for alternatives, leading to the emergence of Long-range Cruisers and Large Cruisers, as well as the modernization of Treaty Type Heavy Cruisers by adding High-altitude Guns to enhance anti-aircraft combat capabilities.

As for combat power, actually, there’s not much more to say.

The "Muddy Sea" class itself was an upgraded version of the "Xu Sea" class.

After attempting to build two "Xu Sea" class ships, the Imperial Navy discovered the speed specifications were set too low to accompany the fleet carriers throughout operations. Especially when under bombardment, the carriers’ speed often exceeded 30 knots, necessitating the Fast Battleships to have a minimum speed of 32 knots.

In order to reach this speed, all four of the upgraded Fast Battleships increased their propulsion power by 15% by raising the temperature of the boilers during their first major refits.

The "Xu Sea" class was still under construction on the slipway at the time, and their hulls were mostly constructed. To ensure timely delivery, they underwent few significant modifications.

As for other aspects, the Imperial Navy was quite satisfied.

It was for this reason that the Imperial Navy canceled the orders for the latter two "Xu Sea" classes and started early on the design and construction of the "Muddy Sea" class.

The most notable change was the requirement for a minimum speed of 32 knots, but ideally reaching 33 knots.

This was also the most obvious improvement of the "Muddy Sea" class compared to the "Xu Sea" class.

Although there were other improvements, such as increasing the angle of inclination of the Main Armor Belt to enhance effective protection without adding thickness to the armor, and adopting a deep V hull form to address the issue of the bow rising severely at high speeds, overall, the combat power of the "Muddy Sea" class didn’t see an essential increase, with the main performance indicators being similar to those of the "Xu Sea" class.

In fact, it was because the "Muddy Sea" class extensively borrowed from and adopted the base design of the "Xu Sea" class that it could be built concurrently with the "Province" class.

Had there been a complete redesign, the "Muddy Sea" class’s construction start would have been delayed by at least a year, and it would not have been possible to be commissioned concurrently with the "Province" class.

According to the pre-war arrangements, if there were no "Muddy Sea" class, then four more "Xu Sea" class ships would have had to be built.

Because it was predicted that the great war would break out in year 100 of the New Calendar, during the post-treaty period, starting from year 97 of the New Calendar, the Imperial Navy, when planning battleship construction, didn’t overly consider cost issues. The primary objective was to complete the construction planning determined by strategic planning.

Zhao Yu took this opportunity to briefly introduce the situation of the shipyard.

After entering wartime conditions, the shipyard underwent a complete transformation, not only was construction carried out day and night, but even the sequence of battleship construction was adjusted.

In peacetime, to shorten construction time and improve quality—actually, it was mainly to reduce construction costs—construction efforts needed to be completed as much as possible on the slipway.

The reasoning was simple: the slipway is a stable platform, and the construction environment is much better than that of the pier.

For this reason, the Empire’s shipyards developed a "pre-fitting" construction process.

However, this significantly extended the construction cycle on the slipway.

In peacetime, especially when building large battleships, the issue wasn’t too significant. After all, the large battleships built in peacetime weren’t too numerous, and the slipways used to construct large battleships were those over 20,000 tons, while civilian vessels generally required smaller slipways of less than 10,000 tons.

Moreover, almost all major shipyards were controlled by shareholding from the Navy, and shipyards bearing the "Navy" name primarily focused on battleship construction.

To put it simply, in peacetime there were more monks than porridge, so occupying the slipway for a little longer was not a problem.

In wartime, the situation reversed to there being more porridge than monks, and this method wouldn’t work anymore.

To shorten the shipbuilding cycle on the slipway and improve the utilization efficiency of the slipway, the construction process had been reversed, with any work that could be done during fitting-out now not to be done on the slipway.

This move had actually reduced labor efficiency.

Fortunately, during times of war, labor efficiency was a secondary concern, and there were many ways to compensate for the resulting problems, such as non-stop construction 24 hours a day, recruiting more workers, or even increasing construction scale to improve the efficiency of spare parts production.

In summary, the number of slipways was limited, while there were far more fitting-out piers.

The second batch of "province"-class and the first kind of large cruisers were constructed in this manner, aiming to shorten the slipway cycle as much as possible.

As for construction costs, they became even less of an issue during wartime.

To say there were "costs" in wartime battleship construction was practically a non-starter; the Navy provided shipyards with wartime quota contracts. Any cost-related items were supplied by the Navy, such as purchasing steel plates and equipment, and even personnel salaries were paid by the Navy according to allocations.

After the war ended, the shipyards would settle with the Navy for equipment depreciation and other costs at a fixed profit rate.

During the last major war, the related expenses for the Empire Navy’s battleship purchases were finally settled by the end of New Calendar year 95.

Because the large cruisers began construction first, they occupied two slipways.

As a result, of the four "province"-class ships that Puzhou Shipyard had undertaken to build in the second batch, only two were started on time, and the other two were still waiting for a slipway.

In Zhao Yu’s words, those two slipways could not be vacated until the middle of next year at the earliest.

Because key components had been procured in advance, and even steel plates had been cut, the construction speed of the other two ships would be much faster.

As long as there were no accidents, they could be completed at the same time as the first two.

And here lay the problem.

Up until now, the Navy headquarters had not approved the purchase contract for the third batch of "province"-class ships, claiming the "province"-class had performance defects.

For this, Zhao Yu was very speechless.

The third batch of "province"-class had already been modified, even the dimensions had been properly adjusted, and many issues that arose during construction had been resolved.

Of course, he was making modifications to the third batch of "province"-class based on the suggestions from the Navy headquarters.

Bai Zhizhan had made a suggestion.

Do not use the name "province"-class; change it to something else, even if it’s "province 2" or "New Province"-class.

Anyway, submit it under the guise of a newly redesigned carrier.

Zhao Yu, having heard Bai Zhizhan’s opinion, merely felt that such a move was unlikely to deceive anyone.

According to Zhao Yu, since there was no plan for carrier construction after the second batch of "province"-class ships, the 50,000-ton slipways would be used to build fast battleships or large cruisers.

This was the crux of the matter.

He Yongxing was holding back approval for the new large carriers in order to force Zhao Yu to compromise and submit the designs for the "Nanzhu Sea"-class fast battleship as soon as possible.

If things didn’t go well, the "Nanzhu Sea"-class might even start construction ahead of the third batch of "province"-class ships.

Because fast battleships were exceedingly expensive to build, there was also the chance they’d proceed alongside a batch of large cruisers.

When it came to these matters, Zhao Yu’s mood was very low.

Bai Zhizhan felt regret, yet he didn’t know what to do, after all, he didn’t have much say when it came to designing and building battleships.

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