My Shipyard

- Samurai Class Battleship -

# Ship Version

As the war of the Sun Empire against the smaller nations around its territories progressed, the emperor Shinzai started to envision the next war plans, planning to go after the Dynasty Empire next and possibly to the colonies of the Monarch Empire to the South. As those nations weren't anything near weak compared to the smaller independent empires, and foreseeing the entrance of possible other enemies such as the Eagle Empire and Red Empire, the Imperial Sun Navy gave the go-ahead for the project of battleships and carriers, sometimes called "project I-10 14". As part of the plan, a battleship class with the heaviest guns ever used should be developed, the result of this being the Samurai class, with the battleships Samurai and Annaisha belonging to it. Katsu, the third of the class, was planned but ended being converted into an aircraft carrier.

In armaments, the class was armed with the promised heaviest guns used until then, the 52 cm guns placed in two twin mounts on the bow of the warship and another on the aft. With the additional research being done on these heavy guns, they outmatched the previous prototype of 46 cm guns in both range and dispersion, at the slight cost of turning and aiming speed, but the secondary guns, more specifically the two triple mounts of 20.3 cm guns, were quite capable to suppress this advantage with their faster turning and reload speed. The twelve twin mounts of 12.7 cm dual-purpose guns also supported the ship's firepower against vessels, but most of the time, they were used with ASW shells against submarines, or with shrapnel shells against aircraft. In number, there were 54 triple mounts of 25 mm AA guns to protect the warship against the one thing that became the biggest threat to the battleships in recent times: aircraft. After the success of the unguided AA rocket launcher on Yumi and Katsu, six of them were installed aboard Samurai to support the already AA defenses. 

The battleships were also fitted with two catapults installed on the aft to launch the seven seaplanes that could be stored on the hangar. Usually, there were five Umeyama seaplane fighters for even more AA protection, and two recon seaplanes for artillery spotting, mostly. Possessing the latest engines, which were larger, but smaller than the engines first intended to be used on the battleship, Samurai was able to have 30 knots of maximum speed with a simple armor design that, though it looked impressive in thickness, was laughable in the essential area's protection, leaving it exposed for high-caliber guns to penetrate it.

Annaisha, after thoughtful consideration and desire to focus on vessel-vs-vessel capabilities, was remodeled with a slightly differentiated armament. The second turret, on the bow, was a triple mount instead of a twin while six twin mounts of 12.7 cm guns and 20 triple mounts of the 25 mm AA guns were removed to give space for the two new twin mounts of 20.3 cm guns and four triple mounts of 15.5 cm guns installed, half on each side of the warship. One pair of the 12.7 cm guns was also replaced by a 10 cm dual-purpose gun, as well as new four twin mounts of the same 10 cm guns have been installed. 

Having a very patriot and unique appearance scheme, both ships were entirely covered with a deep pure black color. Samurai has a red line running through its freeboard, from aft to bow while in the midsection, over this red line, two circles were added, one on each side. The superstructure has four red stripes, two on each side and positioned diagonally while all the secondary guns have red circles on the upper armor. The 2nd and the 3rd turret for the main guns have red circles on the side armors while the upper armor has the kanji "侍" written in white and on both sides of the funnel, there are shields with the Sun Empire's symbol on them.

Annaisha, meanwhile, has all the red lines in blue, and the 2nd and 3rd turret only have red circles on the upper armor, without the red circles on the sides while the six of the 15.5 cm guns don't have circles on the side armor, but have kanjis on the top, two of them having the kanji "案", other two having the kanji "内" and the last two having the kanji "者", all of them written in white. All the colored and white details of both ships can be turned on to glow in the dark and make both ships even more attractive, despite that in night battles those details can make them be easy to spot, that's why they are turned off most of the time.