One decision we made was to use "oil fuel only"

When we decided on the ground rules for our naval race game in 1971, we opted for oil fuel only, even though in 1905, it was only starting to be adopted, and the first ships, outside of the Black Sea, with oil fuel only were generally destroyers. I suspect that the decision was in part due to our desire to "push the limits" on what could be done with warship design. Remember that in 1971, we preceded the widespread use of calculators, and all our design work needed to be calculated by hand, with pencil on paper. We lived with my copies of the Jane's Fighting Ships reprints from Arco for 1906-7, 1914, and 1919. Considering what we had to work with, we did pretty well in usually coming within 10% on power to reach a speed for ships in the normal ranges.