[Spaceships] Ship sizes and other categories (cruiser, battleship etc.)?
 

Greetings, all!

Anybody got a consistent categorization of spaceships based on size and function? IMO a actual class names are a more appropriate way to refer to ships in-character than by linear measurement or SM.

Thanks in advance!

Re: [Spaceships] Ship sizes and other categories (cruiser, battleship etc.)?
 

I have this page on my site to answer this question. Hope it helps.

I originally cooked up the page to correct someone whose idea of space combat came from watching Star Trek: Nemesis. (Take from that what you will.)

Re: [Spaceships] Ship sizes and other categories (cruiser, battleship etc.)?
 

Note that, even in real life, ship size and "class" name are only tangentially linked. Also, ship "class" is relative to other ships of the time. So what qualifies as a "Destroyer" will depend on how large ships in your universe are. In some universes a 1000 foot ship may be a Destroyer, in others they may be 2 miles long.

Re: [Spaceships] Ship sizes and other categories (cruiser, battleship etc.)?
 

That's completely matter of author's gigantomania... errr... setting.

As ericbsmith said, your "cruiser" or "battleship" could be anything from SM+10 vessel to being off the GURPS Spaceships scale. For example, Earth Alliance in B5 has destroyers at SM+16 ("Omega-class"). And first USS Enterprise (a cruiser!) in Star Trek is "mere" SM+12.

Re: [Spaceships] Ship sizes and other categories (cruiser, battleship etc.)?
 

In the link in my previous post, you'll note I've left the actual size off; a lot of times, though, the sizes are relative; you can have mile-long destroyers with 11-mile-long battleships, if you wished; or the battleship can be a mile long and the others scaled down from there.

Re: [Spaceships] Ship sizes and other categories (cruiser, battleship etc.)?
 

Well, we know that SM+4 and +5 are fighters. Is it possible to work out the proportions from there?

Re: [Spaceships] Ship sizes and other categories (cruiser, battleship etc.)?
 

Of course there's also a TV Tropes link for that. Not really what was being asked, though.

As was said, it varies wildly from one universe to another. Terminology isn't so steady either.

The ship classes I made for my own universe go as follows: +4 - +6 are fighters, bombers, assault shuttles and such. +7 is missile and gunboats, +8 corvettes, +9 frigates, +10 destroyers, +11 cruisers, +12 heavy cruisers and over that are battleships and dreadnoughts. Probably more definite limits that would be realistic, but I like them clear-cut like that.

Re: [Spaceships] Ship sizes and other categories (cruiser, battleship etc.)?
 

No. What constitutes a "Ship of the line"/"battleship"/"super dreadnaught"/"capital ship" depends on how far the scale goes up to.

Other names tend to be arbitrary., What are now destroyers relative to capital vessels may have been light cruisers or vice-versa. Or they may have been frigates or corvettes or sloops of war depending on time and place.

This can change rapidly too. the original HMS Dreadnaught would only have been a cruiser 30 years later.

Then there's adjectives and other modifiers like "battlecruiser" or heavy or light or guided missile or air defense.

This is significantly worse than what's a "broadsword" or a "longsword". There's much less logic and universality involved.

You can borrow somebody else's nomenclature scheme or make up your own but even in respect to absolute or relative size there is no universal standard to adopt.

Re: [Spaceships] Ship sizes and other categories (cruiser, battleship etc.)?
 

Actually, now that I think of it, I scavenged this page a long while ago. On it the creator, Jeff Russell, has literally hundreds of ships from tens of sci-fi universes all drawn to scale. Of course, given the immense differences in scale, from fighters and shuttlecraft all the way up to Ringworld and Dyson Spheres, he provides several different pages with ships drawn at various scales.

Re: [Spaceships] Ship sizes and other categories (cruiser, battleship etc.)?
 

Me? I use such titles as Grade 10 Gunship, Grade 12 Reconnaissance Vessel, where the grade just happens to correspond to the ships SM. Yep, lazy. Of course, these are the international classifications. Somewhat important given that humanity is finding FTL again after a century without and the divergences that causes.