Dear Authors,

Thank you for your detailed and thoughtful responses to the reviewers. Reviewer 2 raises an important concern regarding the treatment of wind-direction dependence and layout optimization, particularly the absence of a local wind rose in the layout generation process. While the reviewers’ comments are well founded in the context of wind-farm design and AEP optimization studies, I recognize that your manuscript is aimed at a different class of problem.

Specifically, the value of the work appears to lie in portfolio-scale and system-level analysis of offshore wind deployment, rather than in site-specific wind-farm layout optimization or bankable energy assessment. In that context, simplified or synthetic layouts can be appropriate, provided the scope and intent of the analysis are clearly and consistently articulated.

To ensure that the manuscript’s contributions are not misinterpreted, I encourage you to explicitly reframe and constrain the scope of the study in a revised version. In particular, the manuscript would benefit from:

Clear scope definition early in the paper (e.g., in the Introduction), stating that the study focuses on relative, portfolio-level impacts and scenario exploration, not on optimizing individual wind-farm layouts or estimating bankable AEP.

Explicit limitations language, potentially in a dedicated “Scope and Limitations” subsection, clarifying that:

- Layouts are not wind-rose optimized,
- Directional wake effects are represented in an aggregated or approximate sense,
- Results should not be interpreted as guidance for wind-farm design, permitting, or operational optimization.
- Careful alignment of language throughout the manuscript (including the abstract, figures, and conclusions) to avoid terminology that may imply layout optimization or design-level fidelity.
- A brief explanation of why this level of abstraction is appropriate for this region, and how it enables insights that are not accessible through detailed farm-level modeling.

Making these clarifications explicit will significantly strengthen the manuscript by aligning its methodological choices with its intended scientific contribution and by resolving the apparent disconnect noted by the reviewers.

With these revisions, the manuscript can make a valuable contribution to the literature on offshore wind deployment and system-scale energy analysis.

I look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Thank you for your contribution to Wind Energy Science. The overall contribution regarding Italy’s offshore wind potential is important to inform policy and planning for floating offshore wind in moderate-resource regions like the Mediterranean. I appreciate that this last revision explicitly notes that "the focus of the work lies in portfolio-scale and system-level analysis of offshore wind deployment, rather than in site-specific wind-farm layout optimization or bankable energy assessment." Thank you for your patience with multiple revisions.

Thank you for your attention to the directions of the referees and the AE in modifying the paper and making sure the intended application is constrained to a specific topic and not general in its methods or applications. Thank you as well for working through the drafts needed to make this changes. I hope the final draft makes the impact for which it was intended. Thanks as well for choosing WES for your publication.
Paul