Originally posted by AdmKuznetsov
As for affording fuel costs, Russia is particularly blessed in that regard. Oil seeps out of the ground at Baku,.... And supplying the Far East are major deposits on the northern end of Sakhalin Island
The latter have been in the news of late. OTL I believe the Sakhalin fields exported to Japan in this period, though my recollection could be off.
You are absolutely correct that a country with the manpower and resource base of Russia can indulge in frills. Likewise, you are free to run your equipment at full power.
I would hazard though, that a cruise ship that spends four days between major ports is likely to have better servicing facilities than a warship making high speed runs. By placing the planned cruise speed at 30-34 knots, that is what you are declaring.
While we get to praise good design aspects or comment on perceived flaws, these are really risk/reward decisions for your Admiralty. Indeed, you can even choose to make "mistakes"- I have- because that's what people did.
However it pokes a pet peeve regarding high cruise speed- and 30+ is extreme- as being without problems. While Russia does indeed have copious oil, planning all high speed runs places a heavy burden on your logistics chain in addition to your maintenance crews.
For example, take "Ship A" which needs 1,000 tons of oil to go 5,340nm at 15 knots. At 24 knots the same vessel needs 2.7 times the fuel. At 32 knots she needs 5.7 times the fuel and at 34 knots she needs 6.7 times the fuel. Though there should be a benefit from optimizing your engines for that speed, so let's call it 6 times.
That means to keep each one of these ships running at peak takes 6 times the oil production, 6 times the refining. Then you have to transport it to those bases and store it, requiring more rolling stock or more tankers.
In peacetime, everything should run on schedule. In wartime, what happens if the rail link is bombed, or the tank farms damaged? Rely on the tankers from Sakhalin? Oh you can go slower, but your engines will not be optimized for that and presumably not be as efficient.
Roughing out a tanker, sufficient fuel for one of these vessels would take around a 13,500 ton tanker. If your war time presumption is to operate at high speed, that could theoretically mean a full tanker per ship every 4.2 days.
Then add in the "inventory investment". It would take roughly 10 days for 1 tanker to make the 5000nm round trip across the pole and back. Which means if you really want to exploit that high speed cruise, you need 2-3 tankers/vessel. That's expensive.
One or two vessels may be doable, but high speed ops on a fleet or squadron basis has the potential to shackle you to your supply lines.