>>34308300I supposed it's never been clearly written as any lore and there are contradictions but at least for me, as of ~1132, /who/ only has: 2 Wooden hulled, steam driven propeller frigates with a central armored belt, a small fleet of steam paddle riverine boats and steam tug boats. Only the last 2 are metal hulled.
The iron clad largely came from very early timeloops with /inf/. Since they quite expressly see us as enemies/rivals the rep wrote it into the lore. The "tech tree" for /who/wasn't that defined then especially since he worked with the assumption that the Republic is less than a century old.
Also regarding the "non-naval focused" nation thing. The steam frigates above all else, do three things: prove of concept for a propeller driven ship, testing various new techniques of ship building and as a counter against /inf/, so for both national pride and counter balance. I'll try to flesh out the research/innovation of the Republic more but marine steam engines and novel propulsion technology have more than military purposes.
