Cable laying vessels are capital-intensive, long-lived assets whose required capabilities depend on uncertain future offshore wind developments. This thesis investigates how deep uncertainty can be addressed during the early-stage design of a cable laying vessel, focusing on mission-equipment choices such as cable-storage capacity, carousel arrangement, lay-line configuration, and tensioner capacity.

Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways is adapted as a design-support framework and combined with a parametric vessel-evaluation model. A library of 11,304 mission-equipment configurations is evaluated against synthetic offshore wind export-cable project portfolios. The scenarios explore increasingly demanding conditions related to cable length, distance from shore, high-voltage direct-current systems, water depth, and floating offshore wind. Performance is assessed using technical feasibility, campaign requirements, fuel consumption, equipment utilisation, and mission-equipment capital expenditure.

The results show that no single configuration performs best under all future conditions. Greater cable-storage capacity improves performance for longer and more remote projects, while higher tension capacity becomes increasingly important in deeper water. Two-line capability is particularly valuable for high-voltage direct-current projects. These insights are translated into adaptive design pathways that identify potential upgrades as future requirements develop. The resulting framework supports transparent comparison of under-specification, over-specification, and adaptability trade-offs before major design decisions are locked in.