Universal Reference Categorization System

[cats]

Not WH40K standards.

[҉]

A carrier is a capital ship.

Depends. Think about SoaSE—you could have a pretty small ship that carried only a squadron or so of fighters, or a kilometer-long behemoth that could unload hundreds of strike craft. The second one is clearly a capital ship, but the first probably isn't.

[Chairman_Tiel]

First, please don't get defensive. No-one here is attacking you, not even Ivan. (This also isn't supposed to be condescending or anything, and I'm sorry if it sounds like it is. I just want the discussion to remain useful.)

I think you'd be compelled to be just a bit defensive when so far this entire discussion has just been one guy versus a bandwagon. Feel like Iv

Second, I don't think anyone here is under the impression that you're trying to make everyone name their ships the same way. You've gotten that point across.
All we're suggesting is the addition of a tier to the system, because we feel that there is enough room between the categories of 'cruiser' and 'dreadnaught' to justify it. Now, part of the reason we're saying that is that the names you've chosen for the categories are ones traditionally associated with size and not role. Most of us are used to thinking of frigates being just small cruisers being just small battleships. I think this would make more sense if we used exactly the categories you wanted but named them 'harrier' (or something similar) instead of corvette, 'escort' instead of frigate, 'ship of the line' instead of cruiser, etc. Then it would be more evident that the categories refer exclusively to the role the ship performs instead of to its size or power. That still has the problem, of course, that it doesn't really help compare things between fleets.

I would not mind that, as my argument here has basically rested on the fact that I see cruiser as synonymous with 'ship of the line' and battleship would fall into the larger/heavily armed spectrum of that specification. My only concern with it is the idea that this is supposed to be a quick reference; using confusing names might be counter-intuitive.

I think a system that takes size as a main category and puts specific roles in prefixes is more efficient for comparing ships of different fleets, as different sizes attributed to the same class name usually are the primary difficulty in comparison anyway.

Not really. The whole idea of this is to have people be able to have the most freedom in naming their own classes while still loosely reigning it in with universal classifications.

[cats]

A carrier is a capital ship.

Depends. Think about SoaSE—you could have a pretty small ship that carried only a squadron or so of fighters, or a kilometer-long behemoth that could unload hundreds of strike craft. The second one is clearly a capital ship, but the first probably isn't.

A carrier meant for battle always requires escorts. If it only carries a few fighters, you might as well just send the squadron by itself or put them in a larger, more combat ready ship.

[Chairman_Tiel]

I've seen frigates in many media that effectively deploy fighters into battle.

[҉]

In Star Wars they even launch TIEs off of Corellian Corvettes sometimes. It would be more efficient to send a squadron without a ship, but TIEs can't FTL so that's not an option.

[Chairman_Tiel]

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.

I was not being immature, Tiel, and frankly, i'm not a fan of your insults.

Pointless belittlement of someone else's points without actually addressing them, in blatant circumvention of any vestige of common sense, isn't immature? Yes, it's sarcasm, but that hardly makes it OK. Your behavior and premise in that post were exceptionally childish, and I called it as such. If you don't want that to happen, I think the solution is pretty obvious. Good to know you didn't respond in turn, at least we're getting somewhere.

A frigate is more similar to a cruiser than a cruiser is to a battleship; a dreadnought is more similar to a battleship than a battleship is to a cruiser.

I disagree. A frigate is a multi-role utility ship and a cruiser is by definition a line capital ship. There's a pretty big difference there. I'm not entirely sure what's so hard to understand here - if something's too big to fit in the cruiser category it's probably big enough for dreadnaught, etc. If it's not, then your argument falls flat on its face to begin with, because at the end of the day what's a battleship but a bulked up cruiser?

Again, when I read these posts I get the distinct impression that the belief is this is a class naming scheme. It helps to think of them as categories instead.

So to improve readability and accessibility, we make THREE classes of ships (Strike class, Cruiser class, Dreadnought class) that form up every navy, and every ship is a subdivision of each class.

This is what I'm talking about. You're not helping anyone here.

[cats]

A cruiser is not a capital ship.

A cruiser is not a capital ship.

A battleship is a capital ship.

A cruiser is not a capital ship.

A battleship is a capital ship.

A battleship is a capital ship.

[҉]

A cruiser is not a capital ship.

Urrr. I disagree. A really small cruiser might not be, I suppose, but something like a Battle Dragon or an Interdictor certainly is.

[cats]

By definition, a cruiser is not a capital ship. If it is a capital ship, then its not a cruiser.

[Chairman_Tiel]

That's wrong.

[҉]

By definition, a cruiser is not a capital ship. If it is a capital ship, then its not a cruiser.

I don't know what dictionary you have, but mine says that a capital ship is "A large warship" and a cruiser is "a relatively fast warship larger than a destroyer and smaller than a battleship".

[Error]

"Capital ships" either refers to full-size starships of any type or ships larger than (X).

[Ivan2006]

I agree withCatsonmeth on the definition of a cruiser stating that it not be a capship.
In order to solve the what-is-a-carrier issue, how about making 'carrier' a dedicated carrier ship (that, as a result would lack in anti-line/capital ship weaponry), while adding the prefix "flight-deck" to ships that are not dedicated carriers, but still carry a large enough ammount of fighters for them to have an impact on the tactical usage of said ship.

[Chairman_Tiel]

Merriam Webster defines 'capital ship' as "a warship of the first rank in size and armament : a major surface ship (as a battleship, cruiser, aircraft carrier)".

I could list an innumerable amount of instances in popular sci fi media this has held true, but I think you get the idea.

And again, as I've said way too often, the term battlecruiser implies something with the strengths of both. The reason I picked 'cruiser' instead of a 'battleship' for the initial post was because all battleships are potentially heavy cruisers in function, while not all cruisers are battleships in their respective roles. Hence, the former. There's a ton of overlap and I'd much rather see it in one class, but I wouldn't be completely opposed to either Jedi's idea or just adding a role called 'Battlecruiser' for this instance if the distinction is really necessitated by the majority.

And there's a reason for carrier being a modifier instead of an actual standard...it's completely feasible to have carriers as small as corvettes, and that's really what this system is supposed to describe.