Stephen, you are quite right that about using British as the benchmark, I was merely pointing out that there were significant differences in the battleship designs of the two major players in the naval game which I hoped would be reflected in the mechanics. A tech option seems the best solution.
However, the Kaiser and Konig were the two newest dreadnought designs in the High Seas Fleet laid down 1911(except baden & Bayern, which never saw action). They did use 12" but at that time Britain was laying down KGVs and Orions with 13.5". A year later they laid down the fast division with 15".
On the cruisers I completely agree. We cannot just ignore them like you say, and they did fight in a number of actions. They did, however, take a large portion of the casualties. Off the top of my head there is Hogue, Aboukir, Cressey, Black Prince, Warrior, defence, Monmouth, and the German Scharnhorst and Gneisenau . All sunk with heavy loss of life. They also had much larger crews than light cruisers, perhaps +1MP costs to make them even less useful? I do think they should have a very poor surface defence on account of thier poor record.
On the subject of the armoured cruisers, large numbers of them were not in commission when the war broke out, and head to be brought up to strength with reservists and cadets. Could we deploy them damaged, say 60-80% to account for the fact that they need time to train and be brought up to strength?
In fact, we could put all the ships at 95% for this reason on day one of the war?
