Thanks for your input hood, much appreciated that you took the time to watch and comment!
However, I must disagree with what you said on adjusting the lengths of the fore and aft decks.
Hood wrote: * | May 11th, 2018, 11:34 am |
Adjusting the forecastle and quarterdeck lengths seems an inefficient way to alter the belt length and it will monkey with the seakeeping.
In pretty much every case I can think of, the protected area of a ship will rarely extend far past the fore and aft barbettes (For mags and machinery spaces); In which case it would be more sensible to have the fore and aft decks, thus the protected space, just be barely long enough to cover these areas.
I personally wouldn't agree with having belts, and thus the protected area, 150m long while the fore and aft decks are 200m long, for example. This is because in my opinion this just means the vessel is unnecessarily long, and can be reduced by 50m in length and save on tonnage, for this example.
Also for flush deck designs this method allows in general for a higher average freeboard, if the forecastle and quarter deck remain the same length that is, as reducing the fore and aft deck length creates a larger triangle for the forecastle or quarter deck, and thus more freeboard.
If your protected area extends past your main belts, and you cannot make it any longer due to it already being the length of your fore and aft decks, then you can use ends armour, forecastle and quarter deck deck armour to 'extend' your protected area.
Hope this helps!