Step 1: Main Battery Location

Siting the main guns is arguably the most crucial step of the build process, you cannot afford to make a mistake here. Doing so could cost you many minutes or even hours of your time as there is no way to physically move an entire subassembly in FtD without feeling like you're compromising the entire hull.To be fair, minor subassemblies are easily handled by the Prefabs interface, but not when we're talking about a 2 to 3 storey high gun system that in reality weighs nearly a thousand tons!For historical warships, I typically look up model builders' plans or illustrations showing the deck plan of the vessel. Since the ship's length and breadth should be well known to you (especially for a known, well documented historical type), it is elementary to estimate the exact position, and size of the main gun turrets, of which there are only two on most pre-dreadnought designs.Tsesarevich's extreme tumblehome hull design means there is very little deck space. Lay down the big gun mounts, and the rest of the ship's layout should easily come together.For this design, the size of the gun turret is also well known as the same French derived turret design was used in many Russian battleships of the period. However, it needs to be scaled to FtD's block size and other considerations, like game balancing (more on barrel lengths and gun system performance later).For locating the crucial center point of the gun system, reference was made to the ship's bow detailing including the two large cutouts that served the warship as anchor shelves.Once located on deck, a hole has to be punched all the way down to the lowermost deck of the ship. For structural integrity, the main guns have to be anchored directly to the keel. Doing this also means the turret can only be dislodged when the entire ship is cut in half!Next, you may create an (optional) support structure for the gun system on the bottom deck (to spread out floor loading over a wider area, and add yet more protection to the turret rotation block). This 'cross formation' template is very useful to enable visualization on how wide the gun system is, so you may plan for additional clearance needed for smooth rotation of the whole structure later.If you don't want the support structure you may simply remove or plate over it once the gun system assembly is completed. Once the turret rotation block (One Axis Turret) is placed, start planting metal beams on it vertically until the assembly sticks up on deck like this:Note I built the same 'cross template' to visualize the size of the turret itself.At this stage, the first task of siting the gun system is complete, and you may continue to build up the system around it.