Universal Reference Categorization System

[Chairman_Tiel]

I think it's potentially a problem mostly with the uncomplicated get-up-close-and-fire-all-the-cannons kind of warships, just because those can come in so many different sizes. I recognize the 'light' and 'heavy' variants, but to use the previous example again, how much more does Executor mass than a Victory? A couple of hundred times, maybe? I have no idea. But they fight in basically the same way. Putting them in the same category because they fight in the same way is fine, but 'cruiser' is a strange term to use for that given that that term generally does refer to size and not role. Something like 'ship of the line' might make that clearer.

Cruiser = ship of the line

I mean, maybe the problem here is you're thinking of it in terms of, well, the word we've been using - roles. But those are really only applicable to the modifiers. For the base names like cruiser and such it has more to do with their place in the order of battle than their individual strengths and weaknesses (what mods are for ).

A fleet of Strigiforme spaceboats have entered the planet's orbit.

Because that makes kriffing sense. It doesn't, ACH, and I worry for your writing career if you genuinely believe that's an entirely logical sentence.

Classification's not really that important as long as the relative combat abilities are accessible. Most of the time, needed information can be extrapolated from whatever name is given. It should also be less by role, more by relative size and/or firepower (from production).

Boats

Fighter: Small, one-pilot combat craft.

Pinnace: A few crew, multirole craft. Larger pinnaces can be self-operating.

Dropships

others.


Subcapital Line Ships

Corvette: Small military ship with or without FTL.

Frigate: Relatively small multirole ship with proportional firepower.

Destroyer: Designed purely for combat. Size comparable to or greater than a frigate, firepower equal to or exceeding that of a Cruiser

Cruiser: Multirole, The largest class of the sub-capital ships.


Capital Ship: The center of a battlegroup, task force, or fleet

Battleship: Designed to eradicate. Similar to a scaled-up destroyer.

Carrier: Large ship designed to house singleships.

Dreadnought: The largest ship class. Huge and powerful.

Unspecified: Ship-to-ship basis, really really ridiculously large and/or powerful.


Prefixes

Light: Subtract armor and firepower without meriting a shift to the former class.

Heavy: Add armor and firepower without meriting a shift to the next class up.

Planetary Assault: Extensively devoted to transporting things and delivering those things to a planet's surface.

Escort: Defenses

Strike: Anything that can get in, deliver payload, and get out, usually low armor.

Siege: Made for long-term sustained conflict, blockades, etc. High armor, low weaponry, lots of storage.

Et al


E:

Ground stuff

Mechs are large, usually bipedal vehicles of war. "Walker" often refers to things with more legs. Mechs have several advantages over tanks, as they are more maneuverable, have more space for weapons, are analogous to bipeds (allowing some neural control assistance), can transverse almost any terrain, etc. Not to be confused with exosuits, mech suits, or drones/droids/robots/whatever.

I honestly think you're overcomplicating things here. The main purpose for this system would be to put in wiki infoboxes - hence why mine is so short and sweet instead of hamfistedly trying to insert names like 'pinnace' into the mix that could easily be encompassed by corvette. If you want to call something a pinnace that's fine, but its role in the order of battle is undeniably that of a corvette.

I like your descriptions of the difference between frigates and destroyers better than mine, but as I've said on numerous occasions battleships are redundant. A battlecruiser's (cruiser subset's) name explicitly indicates a ship with the mobility of a cruiser and weaponry equivalent to a battleship, so having the term is just padding the name tree. Same goes for carrier. It's best to have it as a modifier because there's really nothing stopping a frigate from being a carrier save for combat effectiveness. Returning to battleships, though, IRL we don't even use them anymore, as I'm sure you're aware. That's because their role is effectively the same as, yet done better by, heavy cruisers, which have supplanted the specification. I prefer your descriptions on Light and Heavy as they're, again, better than mine, but the rest of the modifiers strike me as a step backward...I'm pretty sure there were more in the OP than that.

[҉]

Returning to battleships, though, IRL we don't even use them anymore, as I'm sure you're aware. That's because their role is effectively the same as, yet done better by, heavy cruisers, which have supplanted the specification.

I thought it was because people realized that dive bombers made conventional battleships pretty much the worst thing you could possibly be standing on during combat. That becomes way less of an issue once energy shielding is thrown into the mix. If we ever get that IRL, I would expect to see a resurgence of larger warships, because they'll be able to project stronger shields and more firepower than smaller ones.

[Chairman_Tiel]

Not necessarily. What makes cruisers superior is our emphasis is on speed nowadays. Speed to react quickly in combat; speed to deploy rapidly in the 'big picture'. The addition of energy shielding doesn't eliminate the strikecraft threat, nor does it negate the need for individual vessels to be able to travel when and where they're needed. The bigger a ship gets, the more it suffers in both of their areas, and the less effective it is as a result; something I think or at least hope will translate over to what we're doing here.

That aside, I still maintain that the cruiser classification gets you anything from need4speed star galleons to battleships, as in practice they all fill the same spot in the military doctrine we're probably going to end up sharing (I've yet to see anyone make their own, though I might in a little while). If you need something bigger, there's the dreadnaught classification. Bigger still? Experimental. But anything that fits this role of a ship of the line is pretty much a cruiser, even if it's not by name, and specific combat utilities/function can be conveyed by the modifier system.

[҉]

I'm OK with what you're saying, that any direct-combat general purpose kind of ship should be in the same category, and modifiers should be used to differentiate between an ImpStar and the Mantle's Approach. I just don't like 'cruiser' as the name of that category, because that's not really what the word 'cruiser' means.

[Professor Fenway]

Battleships are, unlike cruisers, Designed to soak up large amounts of firepower and dish out equally large amounts. With the advent of energy shielding, as said, they actually have a purpose. Prior to energy shielding, they were simply too big and vulnerable to be useful. But now with energy shielding, they have a very useful purpose.

They are large, expensive, and designed to be at front line combat. They generally boast EXTREMELY powerful shield generators in order to soak up excessive amounts of damage, and at the same time, they can dish out an equal amount of damage. This firepower and energy is concentrated into one large ship for several reasons.

1.) The logistics of one really big ship is easier to handle than a lot of little ships, despite them having the same firepower.

2.) It is very difficult to combine the shields of multiple ships into one bigger, more powerful shield. Generally, dedicated ships are used for this. This is important because of;
3.) When facing larger fleets, having a bunch of weaker, smaller ships with weaker shields would accrue UNACCEPTABLE losses, because ships would be destroyed individually and such. By having a battleship at the forefront of the fleet, it allows that ship to soak up damage and deal it out without being utterly annihilated, despite having the same firepower as those 50 cruisers.
4.) Battleships are generally command vessels, and therefore, have the admirals and leaders on board. Sure, you could have command cruisers, but they wouldn't be fighting, would they?

I think we should keep battleships.

[Error]

My thoughts:

Strike Craft are the same as Fen said, fighters/bombers/etc.

Subcapitals go from Corvette, Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser, Battlecruiser*.

Capitals are Battleships**, Carriers, Dreadnoughts, and Titans.

*To me, a Battlecruiser is a cruiser hull with battleship weapons. Traidtionally, at least. We can change stuff a bit.
**Not redundant. Cruisers are multirole ships, battleships are larger and dedicated bruisers and tanks.

[Ivan2006]

So far I agree with Fenway.
And Error, I don't see the difference between your idea and Fenway's.

[Chairman_Tiel]

Battleships are, unlike cruisers, Designed to soak up large amounts of firepower and dish out equally large amounts. With the advent of energy shielding, as said, they actually have a purpose. Prior to energy shielding, they were simply too big and vulnerable to be useful. But now with energy shielding, they have a very useful purpose.

Heavy cruiser.

They are large, expensive, and designed to be at front line combat. They generally boast EXTREMELY powerful shield generators in order to soak up excessive amounts of damage, and at the same time, they can dish out an equal amount of damage. This firepower and energy is concentrated into one large ship for several reasons.

Heavy cruiser.

1.) The logistics of one really big ship is easier to handle than a lot of little ships, despite them having the same firepower.

Heavy cruiser.

2.) It is very difficult to combine the shields of multiple ships into one bigger, more powerful shield. Generally, dedicated ships are used for this. This is important because of;

Heavy cruiser.

3.) When facing larger fleets, having a bunch of weaker, smaller ships with weaker shields would accrue UNACCEPTABLE losses, because ships would be destroyed individually and such. By having a battleship at the forefront of the fleet, it allows that ship to soak up damage and deal it out without being utterly annihilated, despite having the same firepower as those 50 cruisers.

Heavy cruiser.

4.) Battleships are generally command vessels, and therefore, have the admirals and leaders on board. Sure, you could have command cruisers, but they wouldn't be fighting, would they?

Heavy cruiser.

Again, I reiterate you that this thread is not to decide what everyone should call their ships. It's to figure out a universal system for the purposes of easy reference, the most prime example being the lexicon infobox. It thus goes without saying you're free to call your things battleships, pinnaces, whatever regardless of how this comes out.

My goal in this is to accurately describe every aspect of the order of battle and encompass the parts each class of ship can play under as few roofs as possible. Again this is for reference; it is by no means something that's going to be forced upon you when it comes to naming. If I wanted to do that I'd have just copy/pasted the one in my shipyards OP when making this thread.

Order of battle is as follows (These are 'roles'):

Strikecraft are a basic combat vessel. Corvettes are everything from oversized strikecraft to pocket frigates. Frigates are multirole ships that may or may not be good at destroying corvettes. Destroyers are the first mainline combat ship. Cruisers are an evolution of the Destroyer in role and abilities. An extension further still is the Dreadnought, which are comparatively rare because they offer a diminishing return.

If we were to have a Damocles class Battleship or some such, first off, in my mind it will still be called such. There's nothing at all preventing anyone from still utilizing it as a faction-specific class descriptor. But their 'absolute' class in this system would be either a destroyer or cruiser, depending on their size and how they compare to the faction's other ships.

Again, because people don't seem to understand this: I AM NOT PROPOSING ANY MANDATORY REVISION TO EVERYONE'S NAMING SCHEMES, merely a reference one primarily for the wiki.

[Error]

What is your personal vendetta against "Battleship" about, mate?

It's a common-as-dirt term, and either you hate it (please elaborate) or you have a love affair with "cruiser" (don't elaborate).

[Chairman_Tiel]

I let a bit of my own bias seep in, but the point I was tracking toward was that the role of a battleship would fall under something of a heavy or superheavy cruiser when you get down to it. As I said in the post before yours my goal in this was to keep the number of reference classes down to handful of universally recognized, easily understood terms for the purposes of making reference as easy as I want it to be.

Right now it's irrelevant and I would appreciate you staying on topic from this point forward.

[Error]

GMs, your thoughts?

[Professor Fenway]

Ok then. Let's name everything a cruiser

You have super-light 1 man fighter cruisers. And super-light 1 man bomber cruisers.

You have super-light escort cruisers. Super-light battleship cruisers. Light flak cruisers. Light corvette cruisers. Then we have Destroyer cruisers. Heavy destroyer cruisers. Frigate cruisers.

Superheavy battleship cruisers. Then titan cruisers. Dreadnought cruisers.

Do you see my point? Putting everything under few roofs (or one) does not make for a very diverse and comprehensive system. Under your classifications, we have three classes;

Strike craft, cruisers, and dreadnoughts. Everything else is a variation of the three. We have heavy and light strikecraft, heavy and light cruisers, heavy and light dreadnoughts. Simple and easy. We shall use this system.

[Ivan2006]

I am on the side of the GMs on this one.

[Chairman_Tiel]

GMs, your thoughts?

-.-

You and I both know the entire point of creating a thread instead of just shooting three people a PM is to create a discussion about the content in question. How I feel about battleships in naming schemes has nothing to do with a reference system, unless you want to tell me it's somehow more intuitive to have two overlapping, nearly redundant roles instead of just one.

Ok then. Let's name everything a cruiser

You have super-light 1 man fighter cruisers. And super-light 1 man bomber cruisers.

You have super-light escort cruisers. Super-light battleship cruisers. Light flak cruisers. Light corvette cruisers. Then we have Destroyer cruisers. Heavy destroyer cruisers. Frigate cruisers.

I'm not going to respond to whatever thoughts you're trying to present here on the basis that you're acting like a fucking five year old in the first three sentences. Go through elementary school a time or too, maybe pick up an inkling of maturity, and try again. I'll be here when you're ready to carry on a civilized conversation.

[Error]

Tiel. You're objecting to adding one more item to the list.

Your list:

-Strike Craft
-Corvette
-Frigate
-Destroyer
-Cruiser
-Dreadnought
-Stuff


As opposed to everyone else:

-Strike Craft
-Corvette
-Frigate
-Destroyer
-Cruiser
-Battleship
-Dreadnought
-Stuff

One more thing? Oh, noes, suddenly I'm confused and can't keep track!