for better or worse, new chinese vls cell is bigger than mk41. there is simply no way for a ship of same tonnage to carry the same number of such larger vls cells without sacrificing something else.
so there is nothing wrong with new chinese ship to have the same tonnage as western ships but with less vls cells. or to have more tonnage but with the same number of vls cells.
while right now it may not seem like the extra size of vls cells offer anything more than mk41 system does, in the future there may come a point where it will pay off.
bigger cells may mean cruise missiles of better characteristics. Or if the current cruise missile tech is lacking, then with a larger missile one can match the performance of slightly smaller western cruise missiles.
Same could be said about long range SAMs. Matching performance today with potentially lacking tech and possibly better performance in 10-20 years. Already hhq9 offers a flight profile that sm-2 can't hope to reach. They're different classes of SAM missiles, even if their ranges are on paper similar. What's more, the design approach that hhq9 uses is followed by reworking of the standard family into sm-6 and next gen sm-3 missiles.
Again, bigger cells may mean quadpacking of small missiles that while lacking in tech can be equal in performance to essm. And in the near future, as tech levels with western world, even better perfomance may be achieved from those larger missiles.
Also, completely new classes of missiles may be stored in such larger vls cells. mk41 cells can't hope to handle some medium sized hypersonic antiship or cruise missile. Nor some sort of 500-1000 km ranged ballistic missile. Largest variant of chinse VLS may indeed be there partly because of such future class of missiles. We may not know about them today, but something like that could be in development as we speak. Also, various kinds of reconeissance drones launched by missiles could be packed inside a vls cell, and so on.
Bigger could be better. mk56 on zumwalt does feature larger diameter cells than mk41. It will be interesting to see if next gen flight III Burke will use mk56 as well.
edit: I attached an image of comparison between 052c and burke.
As one can see, gun on 052c is positioned ahead the gun on burke, even though burke is a wider ship. Then again, 052c has a smaller gun. 052d's gun would be a better comparison. has it been moved in comparison to 052c?
The bit of superstructure serving as foundation for frontal ciws begins more or less where burke's equivalent does. But burke's one is shorter. And burke's command bridge starts a bit closer to the bow. I always wondered why so much space was "wasted" on that bit of superstructure for ciws on 052c. I do hope that will be changed with new design as it obviously doesn't need as much space. Burke, even though its a wider ship and presumably has wider command bridge to shoot around, has less room around ciws.
Whole main superstructure with Phased arrays is smaller on burke. Meaning other stuff on the ship has more room. I guess engine placement is key here and everything else is really placed around it, so the small superstructure doesn't have to be key here.
four turbines versus 2 and diesel engines on 052 are too much of a difference to make a valid comparison here. But helopad seems quite similar on both ships, length wise. burke in this image does seem to be flight I, without hangars, so there may be added differences there as well...
