Originally Posted by
warty goblin
The weird part about ships is that, absent gunpowder, it seems entirely possible to build an essentially unsinkable warship. You wouldn't even need the ridiculous levels of belt armor seen on actual late 19th/early 20th century warships for this purpose; I have a hard time figuring you could use a torsion engine to shoot a projectile capable of punching through, say, 2 inches of Krupp cemented armor. Plus no explosives means no torpedoes, which is even more weight savings. So you could get a ship whose hull was completely resistant to literally every projectile weapon known to mankind.