“Okay, here is something I don’t get. You divided total battleships by 10 to get roughly what should be in the game setup, yet you divided the total cruisers by 15. Why the different numbers for the two types of ship?”
Well, mostly to keep it close to OOB, and because of the limited number of playing pieces included with the game. You could just as well divide by 10 instead of 15 if you want. For cruisers, you’d come up with:
Britain: 10.2 (10)
Germany: 4.7 (5)
France: 2.4 (2)
Austria: 1.1 (1)
Italy: 0.8 (1)
Russia: 1.4 (1)
USA: 3.3 (3)
Turkey: 0.4 (rounded up to 1 by tossing in their single DN and 4 PDNs)
Assuming you have enough playing pieces, there is some benefit, IMO, to increasing the raw numbers, while keeping the ratios between nations the same. For one thing, it allows tactical flexibility. You can split off task forces to cover more threats, instead of having to keep all your eggs in one basket. Also, if you end up with a grand Jutland-style slugfest, having more ships present means rolling more dice. The more dice that are rolled, the closer the results will be to the statistical average. Games are less fun (to me, at least) if they are largely decided by a few lucky dice rolls, as opposed to deliberate strategy and tactics.
