In fact, let alone a 274mm caliber, even if it is 240mm, it is very reluctant to engage in a twin + armored turret, so Li Hui can only choose the third-ranked "German 1898 Type 210mm rapid-fire gun".

This caliber is much easier to arrange, not only can you put a twin main turret in the front and rear, but even the diamond-shaped layout with the main turret on both sides seems to have enough margin.

This discovery suddenly made Li Hui overjoyed, after the Japanese army frantically purchased ships, the hard power has once again surpassed the Beiyang Naval Division, so it is best for the new ship to participate in the main decisive battle to increase the chance of victory, anyway, the patrol is much more durable than the defensive patrol, and it is now the era of invincible surface hardened armor, even if it is injured, it will only be the damage to the superstructure, and the speed will not drop too much to affect the pursuit ability.

The firepower of the diamond-shaped layout is the most balanced, and the firepower of the three main turrets can be exerted under most enemy angles, which can not only cooperate with the five ships of Dingzhen Jinglaiping that are designed to be designed by the bow against the enemy, but also be able to play with ease after the Beiyang Naval Division switches to column tactics in the future.

Although judging from the trend of warship development, the diamond-shaped layout will eventually be eliminated by the layout of the whole central axis, but Li Hui's purpose in designing this ship type is mainly for emergency response, so he can't take care of it so much, and this is not necessarily a bad thing, maybe it can also mislead the warship design ideas of the great powers and make them take more detours

Generally speaking, the main guns on both sides of the main guns are single-mounted, and the mouth diameter is often smaller than the main gun, but Li Hui relied on the convenience of system optimization to boldly set the main turrets on both sides to be exactly the same as the front and rear main turrets.

This is also the biggest advantage of system optimization, the real ship design must leave a certain margin, because the actual construction will inevitably have some places that do not meet the design requirements, and the design itself on paper can not be perfect, if the design does not leave a margin, the final warship will not be able to use at all, and then change the cost is too great.

The system optimization can obtain accurate and detailed performance parameters during simulation, and if there is a serious problem, it will prompt "the scheme needs to be modified", and at the same time, the system product will not have any quality problems, so Li Hui has no need to keep the margin at all, and can maximize the use of the tonnage of the warship.

In fact, this point is not limited to the optimization of warships, as long as it is a composite weapon, this advantage can be said to be widespread

Li Hui regretted that the main gun could not use the French model with better performance, but fortunately, the performance of the "1898 Type 210mm rapid-fire gun" was also excellent, which can be called one of the few classic models in German artillery.

Historically, the 203mm main gun used by the famous Admiral Hipper-class heavy cruisers of Nazi Germany was improved on the basis of this "1898 Type 210mm rapid-fire gun", and if only in terms of design, there is actually no major improvement, which shows how good the latter is.

The advantages of the "Type 1898 210mm rapid-fire gun" are mainly focused on its incredible and terrifying rate of fire, which has a maximum rate of fire of an astonishing 4-5 rounds per minute, and this caliber can be used for large armored cruisers.

Therefore, even if this gun uses a light bullet weighing only 108 kilograms, even if the impact of a single explosion of the shell on the damage ability is also calculated, its firepower is far stronger than the prototype of the Garibaldi class.

Moreover, Li Hui also adopted a perfect armored turret, so that the amazing advantage of the rate of fire of the "Type 1898 210mm rapid-fire gun" can also be maximized in actual combat, and the gap is even greater

Although the prototype was already excellent, as a perfectionist, Li Hui still referred to the advanced design of some French naval guns to implement optimization, so that the performance of the "Type 1898 210mm rapid-fire gun" has been further improved, the weight of the shell has increased from 108 kg to 138 kg (Note 1), and the rate of fire of the naval gun has not decreased significantly, which alone has increased the overall performance of this gun by more than 50%, which does not count the increase in accuracy, range and reliability.

However, strictly speaking, what really makes this naval gun a generation of magic guns in the history of the world's navies in this time and space is a performance stage that is very different from history

Historically, although the "1898 Type 210mm rapid-fire gun" was finalized very early, it did not begin to be used in actual combat until more than ten years later during World War I.

Due to the perfection, maturity and wide application of warship ranging and fire control technology in the past ten years, the main combat distance of the naval guns at that time was already far away from 10,000 meters, in such long-distance artillery bombardment, because the fire control system needs to repeatedly correct the data, the naval guns can only shoot the actual rate of fire in tens of seconds at the earliest, and the advantage of the gun's own extremely fast rate of fire is difficult to play, and its bullet weight is only 108 kilograms, and the weakness of its storage speed ability is poor (which will lead to the accuracy and depth of long-distance attacks) has been significantly magnified. Coupled with the fact that rapid-fire guns of the same caliber developed by other powers at this time also reached a fairly high level, the advantage of the gun's performance was far less than when it first came out, and the result was that it was not able to show shocking power in several naval battles.

It was only during the First Sino-Japanese War, and the fire control system had not yet been applied to warships, and the main combat distance was only two or three thousand meters, and the rapid-fire guns on the warships purchased by Japan were all earlier models, so the advantage of the gun's extremely high rate of fire could be brought into full play.

At the same time, because the cap-piercing shell has not yet been invented, the ordinary armor-piercing blasting projectile has a very poor effect on the new type of case-hardened armor, and the blasting shell has become the most effective attack method for naval guns, and the rate of fire of large-caliber naval guns has not yet made a qualitative leap, at most only 1 round in 2 minutes.

In this case, the superiority in firepower of the "Type 1898 210mm rapid-fire gun" was incomparable, and even the main guns of battleships could not be compared.

Considering that most of the former dreadnought battleships in the world at present had only two main guns in the front and rear, and they could only exert half of their firepower when facing the enemy head to tail, in fact, they were far inferior to the "Type 1898 210mm rapid-fire gun" that could fire a salvo of six guns in a diamond-shaped layout, and the firepower of the main guns of the new ships could be imagined

Note 1: The weight of the prototype 108 kg is much lighter than the 203mm shells used in other countries at that time, which is no longer a light bullet in the normal range, but a sacrifice made in pursuit of other performance under the premise of insufficient overall design level. Because of this, after Li Hui managed to increase the weight of the shell, the power of the gun increased significantly, no matter what type of ammunition was used.