I don't see any italian shipyard applications yet, but I figured it might be fun to have some foreign competition too. Here's a submission for a legacy fleet B.
----------
'Short, balding, stout and middle-aged. Alexander Mason, despite appearances, was both a competent engineer and salesman. Negotiating a couple of successful deals with foreign powers, utilizing his silver tongue and his knowledge of the internal workings of the ships, to deliver a good sales pitch.
This time around, Vickers had put him in charge of trying to sell a battleship design to the Italians. Not exactly their most regular of customers. And it felt to Alexander that he had to start the negotiations with one hand tied behind his back... Because this design had some...
issues.He glanced over the blueprint again and again,
how was he going to spin this? Vickers had invested heavily in developing these large 13 inch guns (A feat that only the French had managed to match them in, so far), and they were eager to recoup the costs of this investment. Upon testing, however, The quality of these rifles had revealed them to be... how do we put this nicely...
Not great. The larger bursting charge of the 13 inch HE shell is powerful, but at 13''/35, these guns are acting more like large howitzers rather than proper naval guns. Firing AP shells out of them has little chance of defeating any kind of decent belt armor.
The design has other glaring issues, the crew quarters are cramped and poorly ventilated, stability in heavy weather is dicey at best and the armored belt, while thick, had to be narrowed somewhat to accomendate the torpedo tubes. Speaking of which, the entire design seemed designed mostly to wade into the Habsburg fleet and slug it out at pointblank, torpedo, range.
While the Italians do have a reputation to be a bit hotheaded at times, they would need to find a brave captain indeed to make this ship design shine in combat.
Alexander wiped the sweat off his brow with a handkerchief, his boat to Italy departs tomorrow, he would be as ready as he could be.'