Warrior888,
You can’t go so strictly by actual scale with these pieces. That kind of exactness has to go to more involved games like A&A Miniatures War At Sea. These pieces are meant for the A&A Board games and it is a representative issue. Basically, you need a ship that represents an early war battleship for each nation. Early war battleships were generally smaller, had less powerful guns and thinner armor than battleships created later. Therefore, the actual piece needs to be smaller than the later, heavier battleships and all of the nations’ pieces need to be about the same size (e.g. USS Nevada, Schleswig-Holstein, IJN Fuso) even though you are correct that in real life, the Fuso was over 100 ft. longer than the Schleswig-Holstein and about 80 ft. longer than the USS Nevada. This way anyone can look at the board and immediately recognize “Ah, there is an early war battleship”.
WOTC/Avalon Hill did the same thing with the OOB units. All OOB battleships are 60 mm long. The US battleship, USS Iowa, is 887 ft. long. The Russian battleship, the Gangut, is 594 ft. 6 in. long. That’s a difference of 292.5 ft.! However, on the game board, they are both simply battleships with the same attack and defense factors, same movement and cost, same bombardment and 2 hit capabilities. This is what Coach is doing with his pieces. Each type of unit for each nation will be the same physical size so anyone will know that it is that type of unit.
It may be a little off-putting to those who really get into the realism and exactness but it may also be a little easier to follow for the newbies to the game. Realism aside, you got to admit if you have 2 ship sculpts, one early war and one late war but they are the same size, it could get a little confusing, particularly if you give different values to early and late war ships.
