Steel isn't magically immune to fire, and wood isn't magically vulnerable to it. You can treat and structure wood to be resistant to fire, and holding thin steel foil over a naked flame is a good way to lose steel foil. Long story short, the substance of the deck doesn'r much matter, it is the surface, and a surface of replaceable tiles, that was somehow also firm enough to never slip even the slightest little bit, or some sort of repaintable surface, would be ideal, and would completely negate the disadvantage of lacking armour...
It is worth noting that what we need really isn't a larger capacity for aircraft. Being so numerous, our wasp's nests can actualyl transport a lot of craft, they just have difficulty launching them quickly and in a coordinated fashion, along with difficulties of launching all our current craft.
I feel that the gun is a good proposal for a pocket battleship. The gun is useful by itself, it would be a big bonus against enemy landings which would reduce the pressure a good deal, and it would ease us into a medium-ship with a heavy gun. The downside is that big guns are not our way, we need rockets instead, this gun nonsense is insulting. We ought to be building coastal 320mm rocket bunkers and putting all our efforts into loading mechanisms*drools*. Then we can dump the idea of a big target like a pocket battleship and instead make little 30 metre ships with 320mmm rockets that are too small and agile to hit with torpedoes or bombs and too murderdeath to attack with a small gun and too expedible to attack with a big gun... But the coastal gun is a good way to go about starting a conventional navy, and carriers alone are definitely not enough, they need escorts.
The carrier proposals are a bit too much. We should start with just the hull. Our carrier is going to be huge, we don't have any huge ships, and we need more transport capacity anyway. The carrier SHOULD be two design actions. We want to do it right so we should do it well.
"Salad Shake" class heavy transport
This is a massive transport designed to be converted into a carrier at a later date. It has an open deck with no obstructions, a sophisticated internal command centre for coordinating nearby vessels, its dimentions are focused towards providing a square/triangular deck and its cargo handling is designed to quickly move aircraft-sized objects from two hangar-styled under-decks, along with being long enough to launch anything that we would care to with a little extra spare. We have, obviously, reviewed the engines and incorporated the best engine for the role incorporating what we could from the Haast's engine into a massive diesel design with the obvious periscope-style intake and exhausts... It features two rudders with independent mechanisms and four redesigned propellors from applying what we know of aerodynamics to hydrodynamics and a current-tunnel to deal with the deep displacement... Our final touch is to add an extendible overhang to the front with floats and a simple electrically-driven hook. This can be extended out the front to rapidly disembark vast numbers of amphibioust vehicles. Armaments iinclude five bumblebees and 20 AC-18s sticking out from under either side of the deck, and four Sarukhs at the front.
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17 (16%)
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Topic: Intercontinental Arms Race: Finale (Read 603930 times)