Dilandu wrote:Henry Brown wrote:
No, Dilandu is right. The KHs are *WAY* more advanced than HMS Warrior or any of the other early historical armored ships. In fact, they are better than many of the real-world 1890s era ships.
If the KH's were a "Warrior"-type ironclad, or even "Admiral"-type battleship, i wouldn't be so furious about them. Both "Warrior" and "Admiral" are within the realistic Charisian capabilites - in case of "Admirals" they are on the very edge of their abilites, but they still have a realistic chance to build them, even if it took more that the decade just to prepare infrastructure for this.
I read the thread a while ago where you and RFC were debating the KHs. It was interesting and informative. Both of you are really knowledgeable about naval history and warship design. From that thread, it seemed to me that you were most upset by how advanced the KHs were.
I'm not as much of a naval historian as you or RFC are, but even I realized they were about 30 year jump compared to the real world development of ships. However, I don't have quite as much of a problem with the KHs as you do. Because thanks to Merlin and OWL, Charis has *LOTS* more information that England did when it built HMS Warrior.
Because, they know what works and what doesn't. So they can skip all the mistakes and the incremental stages of improvement and go straight to the finished product. And they have had this information for years now, so they have had time to plan this out. Within this context, the KHs don't seem that unrealistic.
Think about it this way: in the real world the British Empire launched HMS Warrior in 1860. Now imagine if they had been given all the information which Merlin and OWL have in 1856. With all that information and with several years to put it to use, what kind of ship could the British Empire have built by 1860? I'm not entirely sure, but I bet it would have been a hell of a lot better that Warrior. In fact, which that much information I bet the British Empire would have produced something closer to the KH than the Warrior.