Northern Kingdom 1918 Cruiser Program "Wallace"

[Storadmiral av Konigswinger]

The Northern Kingdom is looking for advice regarding a new cruiser class. The class will be called the "Walter Wallace" Class after the late Storadmiral. The class will be named after great captains and leaders from the Northern Kingdom. The goal is to have a 6 ship class with 2 ships patrolling the most dangerous North Atlantic shipping routes with a goal of rescue during peacetime and operations against merchant raiders in times of war.

Here are the Key Features Desired

• High Efficient Cruising Speed (20-24kts?)
• Top of the line seakeeping (should make 10 knots against the waves in a high sea state
• Range Capable of Cruising from Scapa Flo---->Nova Scotia with at least 10% in reserve
• Sturdy structure to ensure durability sailing into waves in high sea state
• Capability to carry large life boats to perform rescue operations
• A crane amidships to aide in emergency rescue services.

Any advice or design concepts are welcome.

Lastly here are the 6 proposed ships

• Walter Wallace
• Leif Erikson
• William Wallace
• Harold Hardrada
• Harold Fairhair
• Victor av Oslo

[The Rock Doctor]

High cruising speed:  A cruiser capable of 30 or 32 knots can probably run at 20 knots or higher on half of its machinery.

Seakeeping:  1.20 seakeeping gets you a "Good Seaboat" rating; you'd want high freeboard at least forward, and probably want to avoid a "wet forward" warning.

Range:  Probably 4,000 nm or more at the cruising speed.  If this cruising speed is 20 - 24 knots, it'll work out to a lot of oil.  Note that certain forms of machinery provide bonuses to range so a diesel and/or electric drive might make sense for you.

Structure:  You'd probably want 1.00 composite hull strength.  Something higher will be sturdier but comes at the cost of speed, protection or firepower.  A number of the earlier Vilnius Union warships were designed to 1.01 composite hull strength but I stopped that.

Capability/cranes:  There's an assumption that default ship fittings will include some cranes and boats.  Additional capacity might cost you ~50-150 t max in miscellaneous weight at the main deck level.  Consider the layout of your boats and secondary/AA guns/torpedoes as you design the ship, since these may compete for deck space amidships.

[Kaiser Kirk]

Rocky's covered most of it.

Generally cruising speeds would be 12 to 14-15,  so 20 would be 'high' overall.

One hidden benifit of higher cruise speeds :
The fastest fleet subs are 17knots surfaced (Rules->Technology, chart), so cruising
faster than that makes it near impossible for the sub to get in position to take a shot.
However, those higher cruise speeds take a very large amount of fuel oil,
which means for the same "light tonnage" you may have less guns/armor/speed than another.
These are the "fun" tradeoffs :)

On Oil : Every player produces "enough" oil in their homeland for their military needs.
Now, transport from the homeland to elsewhere is not guaranteed safe..

The drive differences for weight and range are listed in the Rules-> Ship Design.

As Rocky said, all common ships fittings are assumed to be part of the springsharp.
It's when you want something more that you specify it in miscellaneous weight.
Fire Control is a notable 'add on', and most folks have a long list of things
they add to their ships.

Names : I know William Wallace, not familiar with Walter :)

[Storadmiral av Konigswinger]

Walter Wallace is me giving a last name to one of the previous players for the Northern Kingdom. The goal is a small ship class designed for services as a largely independent ship class capable of an valuable peace time service to the maritime community. In wartime it will be policing the seas for convoy raiders and coordinating rescue efforts of sunk merchant ships.