I am interested in some ways that the modern Battleship (From Predreadnoughts to the Yamato) could have developed differently .POD needs to be before 1890 but you can drag on the scenario for as long as you want .
It could be argued that Battleships peaked early, After WW2 and the advent of the Aircraft carrier, Battleships were essentially floating targets that said shoot me. Technically Battleships could have gotten a second wind with the advent of missile technology those vulcan intercept guns, but its a little too late and its hard to justify the costs of battleships
Thats quite late .I am wondering what could have happened in say the 1870`s to early 90`s .
My thought is that perhaps naval architects choose to follow up on the central Battery ship concept rather than the turret/barbette ships that were IOTL followed .
But the problem is, that once it is practically possible to build turrets on barbettes - central batteries are a very inefficient solution.
Turrets/barbettes are a consequence of a general technological development, so hard to avoid.
But what about somebody taking the ram-tactics a step or two further?
It is realised that a ship can be much more effectively protected if the armour is concentrated at the front of the ship and only one main turret is carried - at the front - but with two very heavy guns. The tactic is to close on the enemy head on, and to achieve this the design has a few extra knots of speed. After an article in the press the ships are often called "Bullships" instead of battleships.
The first designs are in service with the Imperial Russian Navy and show their worth at Tushima in 1905. The more ordinary Russian ships take heavy losses, but a handful of Bullships smash the Japanese navy crossing their T.
This old tactic, which so far had been a certain way to win a battle, was now obsolete and all navies started building Bullships. The race not only went into armour and guns but as much in speed, as superior speed was instrumental if you were to utilise the Bullships.
When carrier borne attack planes became practical, the new arm of course was called "Toreadors".
Or what about a "ram" ship but the ram isn't physical but made up of a large number of torpedo tubes
The difficulty with the ram and the torpedo is their relatively short range. By WW1 engagements at around 15000 yards were not uncommon and the closing time for a "ram" would be 20-30 minutes for a 21+ kn vessel. It's unlikely that in a fleet action the "ram" ships would survive the approach.
With much longer range torpedoes than WW1 - say 8-10,000 yards rather than 3-4,000 yds then a massed torpedo attack might be effective
Germany was, at the time, one of the most advanced in the field of optics. If they developed a better fire control system, and also made all six of SMS Brandenburg's guns the same length, they could have introduced the Dreadnought type battleship earlier, and in an evolutionary rather than revolutionary manner.