 Rather than mounting the main guns in a pair of large, open barbettes as in the "Sachsen" class, the new design for placed four guns in two rotating barbettes towards the front of each ship.The two ships of the class, and , were built at a cost of around 6.2 million German gold marks, the equivalent of around 1 million Chinese silver taels.The ships of the "Dingyuan" class were long between perpendiculars and long overall.