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You mean to say it isn't already that? A ship needs to be a certain size to fulfill the role(s) a category demands of them in the order of battle, the reason there aren't any arbitrary lengths etc is because what mission a vessel fulfills is all very much relative to a faction's lineup. Error's destroyer, for example, may be my frigate when considering size. Jedi's Iego corvette is at least someone else's cruiser. And so on and so forth. The idea is to have it so Error could maybe call his ship a Heavy Lancer in terms of not size, but function within his fleet so I and everyone else can recognize it as such and treat it appropriately. Yet that still necessitates his destroyer of category lancer to be bigger than, say, one of his frigates in order to be the combat vessel it'd need to be to fulfill the criterion.

You could make the sizes relative to each other if you want it on a faction-by-faction basis, but I thought the point of this system was to make a universal standard for all factions.

That would be the antithesis of what I'm trying to do here.

The point of this system is not to establish a standard set of classifications, but a set of categories into which ships of potentially vastly different classification systems could be shifted and thus more easily compared to one another at a glance. My goal with this was always to have it exist alongside as a reference point rather than forcibly replace; something I've said at least twenty times in this thread.

Ok. On one side, I suggest Tiel's classifications for ship ROLES, and on the other, perhaps some sort of weight or size classification system.

These two systems have little bearing on each other. It just gives a frame of reference.

One system. Weight and size classification is left to end-factions. It looks like length and mass are already going to be in the infobox so that doesn't really mandata one.

You still have to have a standard by which to measure each ship for comparison, right?

Not really, no. As it's been pointed out a few times, size isn't everything. It's not all that unfeasible to have what would be considered a frigate for one side have the mass and equipment of a cruiser for the other. Again, with different roles come the need for a certain size relative to the rest of the faction's lineup, and that's what the goal is to normalize between all of them. If you want size you have length to rely on.

How could you compare ships if there's nothing to measure them? I don't really see the point if it varies from faction to faction and the only standard is a set of roles.

Because, again, said roles require a certain size unto themselves on a per-faction basis. It is presumed that ships in the same category would be similar in terms of capability; that is where the comparison function comes into play. Objective size is something that's proven to be inaccurate at best when gauging strength time and time again.

It occurs to me that some of the terms used in the Culture series might be useful here. Culture ships are massive, but the roles are still valid. They use terms like General Offensive Unit to describe main-line warships, Rapid Offensive Unit for really fast hit and run type things, Limited Offensive Unit for smaller warships, General Systems Vehicle for multipurpose massive things, stuff like that.

....you know, that actually sounds pretty freaking cool. If not copying the system wholesale than at least coming up with our own spiffy technical names.