With the commissioning of the Roma, the scent of gunpowder across the world suddenly grew much stronger. Relations between the two behemoths, the Holy Roman Empire and Britain, became tense, and every nation trembled with fear, terrified of being inadvertently dragged in and ground to pieces.
Then something interesting happened. After the Vienna Government and the London Government announced their shipbuilding plans, drawing back the curtain on a naval arms race, the nations of the world collectively turned a deaf ear.
Forget following suit and building "super battleships"—few countries even launched projects for conventional warships. It was as if everyone had made up their minds to resist this "arms race" through sheer indifference.
Thinking about it, that made sense. The advantages of the Holy Roman Empire and Britain had long since been established. Either one's navy was stronger than the combined fleets of the countries ranked third, fourth, fifth, and sixth behind them.
With such a vast disparity, struggling was pointless. They might as well accept their fate. Since there was no way to turn the tables anyway, why rush in and make themselves miserable?
More importantly, even if they wanted to follow the trend, they had no way to do so. Britain and the Holy Roman Empire possessed powerful industries and could build super battleships, but that did not mean other countries could do the same.
Leaving aside everything else, they could not solve the problem of propulsion systems alone.
Just because the Roma's propulsion system had reached 23,000 horsepower did not mean propulsion technology was already highly advanced. In reality, the propulsion systems used by the vast majority of warships did not even reach 10,000 horsepower.
In the original timeline, the South Carolina-class battleships built by the Americans were equipped with triple-expansion steam engines producing only 16,500 horsepower.