Although the strength of the Daheng Imperial Navy is weak now, the most effective one is the Pingbo ironclad ship with a cannon layout next to the ship, and several dome cruisers with only more than 2,000 tons are carrying the burden of the capital ships of the Imperial Navy.

Several unprotected cruisers of one or two thousand tons have become important warships for reconnaissance and patrol missions in the Empire.

As for the large number of old cruisers and ironclad ships that have long been outdated, they seem to be quite numerous, but the reason why they have not been decommissioned now is purely because the new ships have not yet been commissioned, and they are still required to maintain the size of the fleet, maintain the security of the coastline and train naval officers and soldiers.

However, the weak Daheng Navy is ambitious!

Because behind them stands an empire with great war potential!

The Daheng Empire has completed the unification, and the follow-up naval construction plan is to go directly to the Krull Kingdom to grab the first navy.

Although the time span will be relatively long, it will take more than ten or twenty years to complete, to say the least.

Even if you want to make the Great Heng Empire a regional naval power, it will take more than four or five years.

However, this did not stop the huge ambitions of the Great Heng Empire's navy!

From the very beginning, they were running to the offensive navy of the globe, the first navy of the globe to develop a plan for the development of the navy.

This is also a direct reflection of the Navy's series of shipbuilding plans and other ancillary facilities and personnel training.

The two unification-class battleships built before were just testing the waters, and these two battleships with a standard displacement of more than 7,000 tons and a full load displacement of more than 8,000 tons were not bad, but they were already in great demand from the Imperial Navy, so this was the plan for the Yonglin-class battleships.

The initial design was a standard displacement of more than 9,000 tons, with a full load displacement of more than 10,000 tons.

Now, because of the advent of the combined rangefinder and the opening of the scheduled naval battle distance, the Yonglin-class battleship that is still on the slipway has directly made design changes, preparing to directly equip the main gun with 300 mm and 30 times the caliber, so it does not hesitate to risk the cost of prolonging the construction time, prolonging the service time, and rising cost.

This is to prevent the warship, which costs millions of constant dollars, from facing an embarrassing and outdated situation when it is built.

However, this is also fortunate because of the two Yonglin-class battleships, and the first ship, the Yonglin, has only been under construction for less than three months, and is still in the early stage of hull construction.

As for the second ship, the Yong'an, it has just been laid keel, and it is easier to change.

This also enables the two Yonglin-class battleships to make design changes, otherwise it will be difficult to make too many design changes when the hull engineering of the two Unification class battleships has been completed for the most part, at most it is to reserve a certain amount of space for the gun mount for the subsequent installation of longer barrels.

And the same is true for the construction plans of other types of warships!

The Daheng Navy has made targeted improvements to all ships under construction and scheduled to be built, regardless of whether they are cruisers or auxiliary ships.

One of the most common improvements was the increase in the elevation angle of the gun, which allowed for long-range shelling with the aid of a combined rangefinder.

At the same time, some warships that have not been under construction for a long time, or are preparing for construction, directly changed their design and prepared to be equipped with naval guns with longer barrels.

And those that have already been constructed to the middle and late stages are also required to reserve space for the replacement of long-barreled naval guns of the same caliber.

The large caliber should be maintained, but the body barrel should be longer, so that it can still maintain sufficient accuracy and power after the distance of future naval battles increases.

Even the 4,000-ton shore defense ironclad ship Fengyang, which was preparing to start construction next month, was directly canceled from its construction plan.

Last year, when the Navy drew up its shipbuilding plan, although the construction plan of the ocean-going fleet was certainly the focus, it also chose to build a limited number of coastal defense ironclad ships, small-tonnage shallow water heavy gunboats, and coastal patrol ships to carry out coastal defense tasks.

The original intention was to allow the Imperial Navy to have a certain defensive force before the ocean-going fleet, especially a large number of battleships, was built and put into service.

But now, a few months later, the Navy itself has rejected the need to continue building a large-scale fleet of shore-defence ironclads.

The Navy believed that even though a certain amount of defensive strength was needed in the early transitional period, after several months of discussion within the Navy, it was believed that those shallow-water heavy gunboats of several hundred tons, at most more than 1,000 tons, could be promoted to the task of defending ports and estuaries.

There is no need to build a medium- and large-scale coastal defense ironclad ship of three or four thousand tons, after all, these four thousand ton coastal defense ironclad ships are not cheap, and a shore defense ironclad ship of three or four thousand tons will cost more than one million constant yuan no matter how much it is, after all, even if it is a coastal defense ironclad ship, if it wants to play a role, it must also use new large-caliber naval guns, new steam engines and armor.

But in today's warships, the cost of the three major components of armor, guns, and power almost accounts for most of the cost of the entire battleship.

Using expensive steam engines, large-caliber naval guns, and armor to build a slow, low-endurance, low-freeboard, incapable of ocean voyages, only protection and firepower, the Daheng Imperial Navy believes that this does not meet the needs of the Imperial Navy.

With this money, why don't we build a couple more large cruisers or even battleships?

Shore defense ironclads or similarly positioned ironclads with heavy firepower and high protection and low speed are not bad, but they are not suitable for the Daheng Imperial Navy.

Relatively speaking, people have a soft spot for this type of warship in the Orr Kingdom, not only the Orr Kingdom, but also many other countries, and even the navy of the Orissa Empire are full of this kind of warships that emphasize firepower and protection, and despise speed and endurance, and seaworthiness.

Because their navy's strategic task is to defend the coastline and resist enemy invasion from the sea, even if they have some overseas interests to maintain, they generally tend to use small and medium-tonnage ironclads or cruisers to carry out overseas missions.

But this is not the case with the Great Heng Imperial Navy!

The Great Heng Imperial Navy has never regarded itself as a regional defensive navy!

What the Daheng Imperial Navy needs is not a defensive warship, but an offensive main warship, which can attack the city slightly for Daheng's industrial and commercial commodities in the follow-up, and can seize the endless strait for Daheng's ocean-going main warship.

As for the transition period in the previous years, the admirals of the Great Heng Empire did not think that any country would declare war on the empire, even if a certain king's brain was burned out, but his subjects probably would not make a collective mistake!

It is not a question of whether the Navy can fight or not, but a serious asymmetry in terms of pay and benefits.

Your navy is strong, and you sent it to slap the Daheng navy to death, and then, it's gone......

Is it possible that you still want to land?

Give them 10,000 guts, and they won't dare to send army troops to land on the mainland of Daheng!

As for the shelling of coastal cities, the people of Daheng are not good at the navy, which does not mean that they have fewer coastal defense artillery!

There are more large-caliber guns in the coastal defense battery, and if you dare to go to a coastal city like Luohai City, or even go deep into the Luo River or the Jing River, even the navy of the Krull Kingdom has to weigh whether its battleships can do more than the shore defense batteries of the Heng people.

The rest, then, is only the blockade of the coastline

However, the import and export trade of the Daheng people is very small, and they do not rely much on sea routes, and the only thing is also grain exports and arms trade.

As for grain exports, this doesn't matter, anyway, it won't make a lot of money, and it just so happens that the Daheng Empire can take the opportunity to carry out agricultural structural reform.

The export trade of the Daheng Empire, which sells weapons in one hand and grain in the other, is a very painful export trade structure, and when the time comes, that country is really going to blockade the Daheng coastline, I am afraid that the countries of those grain-importing countries will send their own ships to transport grain.

Otherwise, many countries will rejoice in rising food prices and the famine that will follow.

Once the world's No. 1 grain export share disappears in the international market, it is enough to make the grain market on the Blue Star fluctuate hugely!

Therefore, the blockade of trade is also a kind of taking off their pants and farting, and if this is a big move, maybe the people of Daheng are drinking wine and laughing on the shore to see that the naval officers and men who carry out the blockade mission are stupid.

The most important thing is that the people of Daheng also want to be faced, and their attitude towards the outside world has always been extremely tough, they will not sit back and watch the enemy army drift in their own coastal waters without fighting back.

And the scale of their defense industry is there, and the performance of the warships they build is even a little worse, but as long as they are given a few years, they can hold back a large number of warships.

Will you follow up or not?

In short, for many countries, it is certain that they hate Daheng, but if you want to declare war on Daheng, unless there is a violent conflict of interests between the two sides, it is extremely unlikely that there will be a violent conflict of interest.

Based on the strong confidence in the Daheng Empire itself, the Daheng Imperial Navy did not think that the transition period in the previous years would be too big, and even if there was any accident, the Imperial Navy did not think that a few shore defense ironclad ships would be able to change the predicament faced by the Imperial Navy.

On the contrary, if the funds are freed up for the construction of other cutting-edge new warships, the effect will be better.

Anyway, the Imperial Navy decided that in the next two or three years, it would rely on two Unification-class battleships, the Unification-class battleships, the Luohe, and the Pingbo battleships, and then three Luohai-class dome cruisers and the Ansu-class dome cruisers under construction.

As a result, a shore defense ironclad ship that was ready to start construction next month was cancelled.

The ship's funding was transferred to the large cruiser project, and according to the changes in technology and the new needs of the navy, it was decided to strengthen the defense and firepower of the large cruiser, and build a stronger and larger armored cruiser with the same model as the battleship, but with slightly weaker armor and firepower.

The Navy has this kind of plan, or because of the prompting of His Majesty Lin Ziran, after Lin Ziran learned about the current troubles faced by the Navy and the cancellation of the shore defense ironclad ship plan, he mentioned a point, let the Navy try to build a cruiser with a similar battleship protection mode and firepower mode.

Well, Lin Ziran just mentioned it, but the navy was very interested, and soon came up with a design plan.

The Navy hopes that in addition to undertaking the inherent reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance tasks, the Navy also requires the new armored cruiser to assist the capital ship in a line duel as a support force in the event of a decisive battle between the fleet, or to undertake the main line duel task on the secondary battlefield on its own.

Finally, if necessary, it is possible to attack the merchant ships of the enemy fleet alone or with a few cruisers deep into the ocean, anyway, relying on high speed and strong firepower, it is easy to pack up the cruiser, and it is enough to meet the first-class battleship guns.

Because the Daheng Imperial Navy did not have a plan to build a second-class battleship of seven or eight thousand tons, nor did it have a plan to build a first-class cruiser of seven or eight thousand tons, the navy hoped to strengthen the Daxin cruiser to complete the above tasks at the same time.

The armored cruiser program of the Daheng Imperial Navy has actually been separated from the category of cruisers, and should be classified more as capital ships, which is a combination of second-class battleships and first-class cruisers.

After the construction of this armored cruiser, although it was expected that the main combat opponents would be second-class battleships and large-tonnage cruisers in other countries, they were very different from each other.

And this also put forward higher requirements for such a battleship, which is a lot higher than the previous large cruiser program.

The tonnage is afraid to skyrocket, and the cost will also skyrocket!

The original large cruiser program was just a pure cruiser, at most a larger tonnage.

This is the flagship of the cruiser fleet in the reconnaissance cruiser in the second phase of the naval development plan, leading the cruiser formation to carry out reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance missions.

The task is simple and clear!

According to the requirements of such a mission, a large cruiser needs to have a high speed that is not weaker than an ordinary cruiser, and has stronger protection and firepower than a cruiser, in order to suppress the reconnaissance cruisers in the enemy fleet, to put it bluntly, a slightly larger cruiser.

To this end, the Ministry of Military Affairs has enlarged the Ansu-class dome cruiser and designed a 4,000-ton Zhenbei dome cruiser, which was officially constructed in April.

The ship continued to adopt a perfect dome armor layout, and the layout of the ship's guns followed the layout of the main turrets in the front and rear of the central axis of the capital ship, with a twin 200-mm 30-fold naval gun in the front and rear, and a total of four 200-mm and 30-fold naval guns were deployed.

In addition, the secondary artillery firepower was also very good, with a bunch of 150mm secondary guns and a bunch of machine guns deployed.

This machine gun is specially used against other countries that have begun to be widely equipped, but although there are also anti-war torpedo ships on the side of the Daheng Empire, the development is not going well.

It's also annoying to say, the Daheng Empire can now even build a 10,000-ton battleship, but even a small torpedo can't be solved, although some samples were obtained through abnormal technical means, but the torpedo performance obtained after imitation is extremely poor, although there is a problem solved, but it is not very easy to use, there are many failures, and the performance is also poor.