The design of the new battleship of the Imperial Navy, the designers of the Ship Administration Department, was actually designed for the Andrey of the Navy of the Kingdom of Krull.

The Andrei battleship, which was commissioned last year, can be said to be the most technologically advanced and most powerful battleship of the Blue Star.

The standard displacement of 11,000 tons gives the ship extremely strong firepower and protection, and it is not slow.

The ship had a central gun gallery design with four 450 mm front-loading rifled guns in the amidships, as well as a large number of medium-caliber front-loading rifled guns.

It also has the most powerful protective armor.

The speed of the ship is also very fast, capable of running 14.5 knots.

Although the layout of firepower is different from the front and rear turret layouts of the central axis promoted by the Daheng Imperial Navy in the past two years, it has to be said that the performance data of the battleship Andre in all aspects represent the pinnacle of the active warships of the navies of contemporary countries.

The designers of the Imperial Navy, when designing a new warship, naturally took out this battleship as a comparison.

In terms of firepower, it is necessary to have at least four large-caliber rear-loading rifled guns, and considering that the main large-caliber naval gun R&D manufacturer of the Imperial Navy, that is, the Nanzhou Machinery Bureau, has only just completed the 250-millimeter 25-fold rear-loading naval gun, ready to be installed on the Unification-class battleships.

As for the 300-mm 25-caliber naval gun, it is still under development, and if the development of the gun does not go well, then there will be a 250-mm 25-caliber breech-loading gun as an alternative.

However, the navy believes that the power of the 250 mm caliber is too small, and strongly demands that it be equipped with 300 mm caliber naval guns.

And larger caliber artillery also put forward higher requirements for the Nanzhou Machinery Bureau and related manufacturers.

In fact, the high requirements for firepower can be solved to some extent, after all, the strength of the Nanzhou Machinery Bureau is not blown out, although the technology in all aspects is still a little bit worse than that of the powerful countries, but there is no generation difference, it is nothing more than to make the quality worse, the performance is poorer.

Therefore, although it is very difficult for the Nanzhou Machinery Bureau to engage in a 300-millimeter long-barreled artillery, there are still some of them.

In terms of armor, it is barely enough, but the steam engine is relatively large, and if you want to make a battleship of tens of thousands of tons run more than 14 knots, you must also control the volume and weight of the power system, and flow out enough displacement to strengthen the armor and install artillery.

This is a very high technical difficulty for a modern empire.

After the navy's ship administration department came up with a rough design, Lin Ziran felt that it was not bad, at least the design route was in line with his own requirements for the navy.

In particular, in terms of firepower layout, it is necessary to unswervingly adopt the layout of the main turrets in front and rear of the central axis.

Now the firepower layout of the navies of various countries is really too chaotic, even if it is the navy of the Daheng Empire itself, it is a mess and there are all kinds of layouts, there are traditional shipside gun layouts, there are central gun gallery layouts, and there are also turret layouts in front and rear of the central axis, in short, there are all kinds of them.

But Lin Ziran, what is required for the new battleship is that the main gun must adopt the front and rear turret layout of the central axis.

When this firepower layout was determined, in fact, the design of the battleship with this firepower layout was very similar to that of the early pre-dreadnought battleships of the later generations.

The only thing that still has some flaws in Lin Ziran's opinion is that the estimated rate of fire of the 300-mm main gun is very slow, and the power of the 150-mm naval gun is slightly smaller.

I'm afraid it will be embarrassing to face some armored fast warships when the time comes!

Although the finished product has not yet been delivered, the feedback from the Nanzhou Machinery Bureau is that the rate of fire of the 300-millimeter caliber naval gun under development is expected to be about three to four minutes per shot.

The theoretical rate of fire takes a few minutes to shoot, and in an actual naval battle, I'm afraid it's even lower!

The 250 mm main guns of the previous Unification class battleships took 2.5 minutes to fire a rate of fire, which was already slow enough, and the current 300 mm caliber naval guns were even slower.

Lin Ziran felt the need to remind the navy!

After getting Lin Ziran's reminder, the admirals of the navy who have played with small broken ships all their lives pondered that this does not seem to be very reliable, the four main guns seem to be strong, but the slow rate of fire is useless to hit the enemy.

But don't and don't want to, the armor of the main battleship is thick these days, and the main guns of a small caliber cannot penetrate the armor of the enemy ship at all.

As for the problem of insufficient firepower in the face of partially armored cruisers, they proposed another solution, which was to increase the caliber of secondary guns.

Specifically, there are two schemes, one is to equip several more 200-mm second-stage guns, and the other is to equip 170-mm naval guns.

However, some admirals suggested that since the rate of fire of the 300-millimeter main gun is too slow, then we should simply unify the armament of the 250-millimeter caliber and build four twin turrets to equip eight 250-millimeter guns in one go.

The firepower is still strong.

After Lin Ziran knew about this idea, he felt that these naval generals really had a lot of ideas, if they really came up like this, wouldn't it be the firepower layout design of the dreadnoughts on the earth!

Lin Ziran basically didn't interfere much with the Navy's messy ideas, anyway, what is moving around now is the firepower layout, but in fact, with the current technology, the change in the firepower layout alone will not affect anything.

Even if it is really a battleship with four twin installations and eight unified caliber main guns, this is not a dreadnought battleship in the real sense, and its combat effectiveness is still limited, and it will also cause a series of problems such as weak protection due to the elongation of the hull and the need for more armor protection.

The new warships of the navy, Lin Ziran let them toss slowly, and he can grasp the general direction by himself.

However, although the final design of the new 10,000-ton battleship has not yet been completed, the specific shipbuilding plan has been determined.

Next year, construction will begin on a 10,000-ton ironclad ship and the construction of a coastal defense ironclad ship of about 5,000 tons, as well as two full-fledged dome cruisers and two unprotected cruisers.

If the domestic situation is relatively smooth next year, especially if the war for reunification has ended, then orders for a number of warships will be increased depending on the situation.

After approving the above-mentioned warship construction plan, Lin Ziran also put aside the affairs of the navy first, after all, the expansion of the navy is to deal with future threats, and it is a threat many years later, and there is no hurry or urgency now.

At present, the important thing for the empire is to agree to war.

Recently, the main military operations of the empire have been concentrated in the Pingnan region.

After the First Army Corps led by Liang Chenglei successfully captured Zhenbei City, under the cover of the Jinghe detachment of the navy, it continued to march along the Jinghe River to Pingnan Prefecture, and was not resisted by the enemy in the early stage, but after penetrating into the hinterland of Pingnan Prefecture, it was frequently resisted by the enemy, and the scattered small units and supply lines were frequently attacked by the enemy.

In particular, some unarmed inland river transport vessels that transported supplies for the army were frequently attacked by enemy army artillery in the Jing River and some tributary river sections, and suffered heavy losses.

In this case, Liang Chenglei knew that he had to change the tactics he had formulated before the war.