* First of all, of course the range. Charisian major ships are forced to be capable of trans-ocean voyages, which means that they are forced to carry MUCH more fuel and supplies. While Harchong ships only need enough fuel to operate in the Gulf. The difference here is roughly like the difference between Royal Navy and Kaiserliche und Königliche Kriegsmarine.
* Secondly, the seakeeping. Charisian warships are forced to have a high freeboard and be stable enough to survive prolonged heavy seas. Harchongese ships do not need that. They would be perfectly fine with low freeboard & limited seakeeping ability.
* Thirdly, the question of auxilaries. Charisian Navy seems to be fully locked in paradigm "do not build anything that have no sea battle value". They used their costly cruisers for patrol missions. Which basically means, that in case of any conflict, they would have utter lack of auxiliaries, especially shallow-draft ships, capable of operating in coastal water - as well as lack of aviso, coastal units, patrol forces... basically of everything.
* Fourthly, the Harchong Navy would have ALL their major bases and facilities on the theater. Which means, that they would be able to perform all required maintenance in shortest possible order. While Charisian ships would be forced to traverse oceans for any serious repairs. I.e. Harchongese warship, damaged in combat, would return to service MUCH faster than Charisian (yeah, RFC would probably invent all kind of magical Charisian workers, to not allow such terrible inconvenience to exist...
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_e_biggrin.gif)
* Fifthly, the Charisian Navy would clearly took time to concentrate significant forces in one place. It is not exactly easy to move battleships on large distances; especially with the assumption that they might need to fight immediately after deployment. On the other hands, Charisian could not also afford to just remove their forces from the region and wait till reinforcements arrive; they need to protect their forward bases (otherwise their navy would have no forward support to rely on)
So... it's not like its all just gloom and doom for South Harchong) With some good thinking, they could easily demonstrate the mightiest navy on Safehold, how dangerous is to underestimate Japanese... sorry, Harchongese)
P.S. Of course, Merlin would probably immediately cheat to ensure, that his precious human toys... er, friends, would not have their ability to decide "what is good and what is bad" on world's scale be questioned.
![Twisted Evil :twisted:](./images/smilies/icon_twisted.gif)