With the support of Archduke Ferdinand, in February 1903, the Reichstag finally approved the naval budget for four battleships of the "Emperor" class with a displacement of 12,000 tons, and asked to be equipped with 280 mm guns. Not the three in history, because the Hungarians said that since they bear thirty percent of the cost of building the ships, then there must be a battleship to be built in the Hungarian shipyards. The Admiralty divided the order for the construction of four warships among the only four large shipyards in the Empire: the Isleya Shipyard and the Royal Shipyard in Trieste, the Naval Shipyard in Bora and the Danube Shipyard in Fum.

The design of the warships was presided over by the Naval Technical Committee, headed by Admiral Poppel, and Hayton Lee served as the director of construction works for the four warships.

When determining the design plan, Hayton Lee proposed a new design idea.

"How about a design with an 'all-heavy main gun'?" Lehedon said he began to pitch to members of the Navy's Technical Committee the new ideas he had discussed many times with Admiral Popper and Colonel Rozner. This scheme was first proposed by the Italian naval designer Colonel Kunipoti in an article written in 1900 on the design concept of an armored cruiser, published in the German magazine Naval Lookout.

Colonel Kunipoti's plan was originally designed for the Argentine "Rivadavia", and as a competitor, Lehydon was the first to get this information, and he also discussed the issue with Rotzner, and later added General Popper.

One of the fatal flaws in Kunipoti's design was that he installed a main turret of the same caliber as the main gun on each side of the ship's amidships, which squeezed out the power compartment and weakened the ship's fortification defenses in important parts. So, when building armored cruisers of the Habsburg class with a displacement of 8900 tons for the Argentines and the Imperial Navy, Rotzner did not care about such a scheme.

In the course of the discussion, several people realized the advantages of having four twin-mounted main turrets, and even immediately thought of the idea of arranging two main turrets along the central axis, or arranging two main turrets along the central axis at the amidships, the advantages of which were obvious, the lateral fire of the battleship could reach eight, which required two warships of the same type to achieve such a firepower effect.

However, it is clear that a warship of only 12,000 tons will not be able to bear such a heavy burden unless a smaller main gun is installed.

"'All-heavy main gun'?" Admiral Spone, the Minister of the Admiralty, apparently hearing such a term for the first time, turned sideways with a slight confusion and looked at the chief designer of the Imperial Navy.

"Oh, it is to unify the caliber and double caliber of the main guns on the entire warship to replace the secondary main guns, which is conducive to the unified firing command of the whole ship." "This would increase the number of guns that could be fired on the side of the battleship to eight or more, which would be enough to form an overwhelming fire superiority over the enemy ships," Poppel explained to him and his colleagues in the room. ”

"Hmm...... How should it be arranged, the arrangement along the center line will affect the firing range of the rear turret, and the placement in the amidships will not increase the firepower much. Admiral Spone paused slightly, "Of course, there are some benefits. ”

Since there are some advantages, the next thing is the arrangement of these main guns, and at the moment the battleships of the world are almost always in the same pattern: one in front and one in the rear, of course, they will certainly be arranged on the central axis, except perhaps for the French, who once arranged three turrets in a zigzag pattern on the foredeck.

Now their discussion is focused on the third and fourth main turrets, and, of course, possibly more.

Admiral Spone's first reaction was to best match the aesthetics of later generations, arranging two main turrets on the fore and aft decks along the central axis. However, he didn't expect the knapsack scheme, the height of the two turrets is the same, just like the Gangut-class battleships of the Russians in the future, the problem is that it will affect the forward or backward firing range of the rear turrets.

"I am inclined to Admiral Spone's proposal of two main turrets on the fore and aft decks." Lechelton said, picking up a drawing pen and drawing on white paper, "but not horizontally, but in a high and low piggyback." In fact, the arrangement of knapsack main guns is not uncommon, and warships of many countries have used this method to install secondary main guns or secondary guns.

"Well, that makes sense." Admiral Poppel looked at it for a moment before he spoke, "Of course, this will cause the center of gravity of the whole ship to move upward, and additional displacement will need to be added to balance it. ”

"Of course, wouldn't an increase in displacement be worth building the same warship?" Heldon said with a smile, amazed at Poppel's keen instincts, and in just a few minutes he was able to point out the crux of the problem, which requires a lot of practice.

"It's definitely worth it, and you'll need to add about 1,000 to 1,500 tons to keep it balanced." Poppel also laughed, which cost less than one-twentieth of the cost of the entire ship.

"Oh, that's shocking, maybe we can usher in a whole new era of the navy!" Admiral Spone also became excited, and the prospect was encouraging enough.

The design of the new Emperor-class battleship was progressing slowly, and due to the fact that it was a completely new design, most parts of the hull structure needed to be rearranged and calculated, and even models needed to be built in some places to verify the feasibility of the scheme. There were hundreds of thousands of drawings for a warship, and even with all their efforts, nearly 260 designers completed the design of a new warship after five months.

It was almost May 1904.

Lehydon also received the bad news: the Argentines and Chileans finally couldn't stand the endless naval ship race, and both expressed their willingness to negotiate peace. With the mediation of the British, the two countries finally reached a border settlement, but the British demanded that both countries abandon the naval ships currently under construction.

The Argentine side refused to pay the remaining two final payments for the two Livadavia-class armored cruisers that were being outfitted, amounting to about £830,000.

In June 1904, the keels of the "Emperor Karl" and "Emperor Maximilian" were laid at the Royal Shipyard and the Isterian Shipyard, respectively, while the naval shipyard in Bora and the Danube shipyard in Fum were in the process of being renovated and expanded, and they did not yet have a large enough slipway to build the large battleship with a design displacement of 14,300 tons. The high-quality alloy structural steel needed for the warships came from the Austrian steel works in Linz at Helden Helton, the carburized armor steel for the armor came from the Carlsen steel works and the Krupp consortium-controlled Yudenburg steel works, and the weapons were mainly supplied by the Škoda arsenal.

The performance of the Skoda gun was even better than that of the products of the Krupp plant in Germany, and the firing range of the 240-mm naval gun reached 21 km, which exceeded the level of the Germans.

There is still a considerable gap between the Islaya Machine-Building Company and the Škoda factory in terms of artillery construction technology and technology, but to Lehydon's relief, all the power plants, electrical cables, and radio equipment on the warship are provided by his subordinate Islaya Power Company and the Imperial Standard Electric Company.

This was not really a battleship, and Lechelton had identified its problems at the beginning of its design, with its main guns far inferior in range and power to the soon-to-be-unveiled "Dreadnought", and its armor was not thick enough. The parliament's budget limited its displacement and cost, and it was impossible to build a battleship at a time when 23 million kroner was impossible. He could only move his ship closer to the cruiser side and work on the power system to make it fast enough.

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