The Navy hoped to finish the ship as quickly as possible and to keep costs to a minimum, and so requested permission from the Naval Inter-Allied Commission of Control to use steam turbines, boilers, and conning towers from scrapped vessels to complete "Ersatz Niobe". The NIACC rejected the request. The Navy also hoped to use an armament of four twin-gun turrets for the new ship. The NIACC rejected the twin-turret design, but allowed the use of guns from existing stocks of spare barrels. Nominally within the 6,000-ton limit of the Versailles Treaty, "Emden" in fact exceeded the restriction by almost fully loaded. In 1923, after work on "Emden" had already begun, the Germans proposed using the definition for standard displacement adopted in the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, which was significantly less than full-load displacement. The Allied powers approved of the change, and thus "Emden", which had a standard displacement of just under the 6,000-ton limit, was retroactively made legal.