Funny you should mention that, as this was the original order:
[REDACTED] is glad to see that a storefront offers the chance of a customer to have a vessel built to there needs and requirements, rather than having to rely on designs that may not be up to the needs of the customer.
At the moment, the ONN has 21 battlehips afloat, and it is considered that it is there time for replacement, therefore we seek a battleship design that is able to outfight these vessels in all situations, and thus wwe wish the vessels to be armed with a minimum of 9 24' guns although 12 is preferable, in triple turrets. Be able to hold a large amount of SAMs and with extensive self-defensive systems. Operation of helicopters is also desired.
We would also require a escort carrier that is able to operate 24 S/VTOL aircraft. 30 of these vessels are sort after
Of which our reply to was as follows:
We regret to inform you on the subject of the battleship that we lack the capability to produce guns over 16". In this day and age, there is little call for such weapons, though for less advanced nations still using big guns, we keep a limited number of stock 12"/50 weapons in triple turrets, 14"/45 in either twin or quadruple turrets, and 16"/50 rifles in triple turrets. For customers desiring intermediate calibers, we reline the gun to that size. For example, for a customer desiring a 15" gun, we'd reline the barrels of a 16" weapon down to that size. (this would have a side effect of increasing the caliber of the new 15" gun, increasing velocity and range in the mixture, at the cost of weight--it still weighs the same as the 16" setup, which it really is)
Our studies have shown the 16" to be the largest practical weapon, as even at 18" one reaches a point of diminishing returns, ballistically speaking. While the technology is there to go larger, the time, and profit margin for us to retool our facilities is not worth the effort to do so. The time alone it would take to construct the turrets and special fittings for such a system would render the project impractical. We can produce historical type battleships in acceptable amounts of time, because we have the turrets and armor plate preorderd.
Much to our surprise, the order was amended to:
As for the battleship order, we wish for this to be scrapped due to political considerations and naval concerns. However we hope to replace this with a battlecruiser order. We still wish for this vessel to carry a big-gun arrnament, but we requrie only 4 guns in two twin-gun turrets to provide gunfire support for amphibious operations and possible anti-ship operations. We wish for these to be placed in the front end of the vessel rather than one to each end and to be of 14"/45 calibre. We would also like for the vessel to be able to carry a minimum on 12 harpoon anti-ship missiles and be able to carry at least 8 BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles for long-range land attack missions. As battlecruisers a high top speed is nesseary and requires at least 30 kts. Finally the ability to carry 2 MH-60R Seahawk. 15 of these vessels would be required
The initial plan was to offer a modifed Staadt Klasse BCG with twin 14"/45 turrets in place of the 12"/50 triples, and the aft turret removed and a hangar in place of that, but subsequent requests for 155mm for fire support and doubts about blast effects on the originally chosen mounts led me to redesign the entire vessel, merely keeping some parts from the Staadt. I used the Staadt/Alaska, Richelieu, and Dunkerque for the hull.