[Iain Baker]

We could do with a video like this for FS. 

https://youtu.be/w7ZXTX6f230

The video is great, but a bit long. If you want to see all the ships side by side skip to about 52:40

PS - is there an easy way to compare ship sizes in FS? I seam to remember doing that with the FRED editor back in 2000ish. It was through that that I found out that in FS land corvettes are larger than cruisers instead of the other way around as it is in real life.

[Firesteel]

FS's ship sizes have no relation to naval classifications. Destroyers are the largest (and combo aircraft carrier and battleship), cruisers are the smallest, and corvettes are somewhere in between.

FRED should let you do that (and now it's easier than ever to add in the community ships)

[Iain Baker]

FS's ship sizes have no relation to naval classifications. Destroyers are the largest (and combo aircraft carrier and battleship), cruisers are the smallest, and corvettes are somewhere in between.

I suspect this was an oversight on the original devs part. It happens when people who do not know much about the military/navy/airforce etc try to classify things, such as the difference between squad, platoon, division, regiment etc.

This video does a very good job of explaining how sci-fi cap ships should be designated :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHbxdbiMopg

[HLD_Prophecy]

Well, to be honest... my opinion was always that it was ok for FS and any other sci-fi universe to do what they want with ships names, more or less. To my mind ship classifications mostly only have relevance in relation to the nation/navy that uses them. Also I thought it was cool how FS sets itself apart from other settings with variance in class designations.

I mean who's to say that the concept of a destroyer won't change with time? They used to be torpedo boat destroyers, then ASW craft and picket vessels, now they actually make up the bulk of many surface navies, not counting carriers and the fact that some larger navies utilize cruisers for guided missile and/or AA work. Destroyers are much larger and tougher than they used to be.

I mean if you were to use the term "battleship" for a little patrol craft with a couple of light turrets, that's too far... but calling an Orion a "battleship" or a "destroyer" I see no problem with either.

The Spacedock video is good but ultimately I just see that as their opinion, telling other people that they should stick to such conventions doesn't hold much weight in my book.

[General Battuta]

FS's ship sizes have no relation to naval classifications. Destroyers are the largest (and combo aircraft carrier and battleship), cruisers are the smallest, and corvettes are somewhere in between.

FRED should let you do that (and now it's easier than ever to add in the community ships)

Everything about FS ship classification maps perfectly to real life naval classification, except cruisers. It reads like pre-FS1 'cruisers' were the largest practical warship, perhaps called cruisers because they went on long patrol cruises, and then somebody built a 'cruiser destroyer' and it all escalated from there.

[Novachen]

Well, there were many FS1 fan missions back then, who tried to reconned this... for example they talked about a GTC Bastion and a Fenris called GTD.

But it was never able, that it got established in the community.

Even without experience i would also say, that a destroyer should be bigger than a cruiser, because destroyers are destroying things and cruisers only cruise around 

[General Battuta]

Cruising around on a long term patrol takes a bigger ship than destroying torpedo boats, though. Originally 'cruisers' were just specific types of frigates and sloops that would act independently. So there is a weird historical precedent for cruisers being small ships...if not for them being smaller than corvettes. Corvettes should've been called frigates!

[Iain Baker]

Having just looked this up, it does appear that the terms Cruiser, Destroyer and Frigate have been used somewhat interchangeably, especially when different navies decide to change their classifications.

In modern usage - say post WW2 - corvettes are always smaller than any of them, as they are designed more for speed than for than hull strength or firepower. So technically a Fenris should be a corvette, and a Deimos should be a Cruiser.

When I first played FS2 back in the day I assumed that the cruisers were larger than the corvettes, and I wondered why a Deimos would roflstomp a Fenris so easily. When I went into FRED and saw that a Deimos is almost twice as large as a Fenris, it all made sense, gameplay wise, even if the nomenclature didn't 

[Trivial Psychic]

FS isn't the only Sci-Fi with non-standard warship classifications.  Just look at Babylon 5.  The Hyperion is a cruiser, but the larger Omega class is a Destroyer.

[Admiral Nelson]

America has non standard warship classifications now with the 14,000 ton "destroyer" Zumwalt being considerably larger than the ~10,000 ton Ticonderoga class "cruiser"... 

[0rph3u5]

Considering much of the current naval designations owe their meaning mostly to the switch from Ships-of-the-Line to Ironclads, and the associated changes in naval strategy, I wouldn't worry to much about how applicable the terms would be in a sci-fi setting...

I mean the strict designations of post-Ironclad ships have a lot to do with the fact that with the advent of Protected Cruisers (the ugly buckets) rigging became obsolete as identifying feature; a frigate used to be fully-rigged sailing ship regardless of purpose, for example.

As long as there is a logic to it, doesn't matter if the system lines up with historical precedent.

[DefCynodont119]

https://www.deviantart.com/dirkloechel/art/Size-Comparison-Science-Fiction-Spaceships-398790051

Freespace is in the upper middle.



PS: According to this, Spaceball One is about 2.1 Sath's long.  .  . 

[Novachen]

Would be interesting to see all these ships in one mod .

[Kiloku]

At least the EVE Online ones can't really happen because CCP is very strict on external content using their IP.

They've killed a mod in this very forum once. It's a shame, really. 
They also made a space battle movie that someone was making on youtube remove or modify all scenes that had EVE ships.

[BengalTiger]

So, the Fenris is a Frigate and not a cruiser.
The Leviathan would be like an ocean going Monitor, using the same hull.

The Aeolus becomes probably an AA Cruiser, although since it is smaller than a corvette this doesn't fit...
Corvettes, yes, those would be like Destroyers and Destroyers become carriers. On the other hand most Destroyers defeat most Corvettes (maybe except for some sort of Sobek vs Hecate matchup where the smaller ship outmaneuvers and orbits the other)...

Then if we compare destroyers, the Hatshepsut is more a battleship (a dreadnought at that, with a uniform all big beam primary battery), while the Hecate is more of a carrier with big teeth like the Kiev class.
The Orion would be a pre-dreadnought, with its mix of heavy direct fire beams and slashers.

It seems the only denominator by which ships get classified in FreeSpace is their size. All cruisers are small capital ships, all destroyers are pretty darn big. Corvettes are the stage in between, which appears when the GTVA's industrial capacity allows to build a large fleet of large cruisers (yes, this is also a historical designation, see the USS Alaska).

Now if we go to the real world, things are also very fuzzy. The Spruance Class Destroyer uses the same hull as the Ticonderoga Class Cruiser for instance, and the cruisers differ mainly by having the Aegis system.
The Arleigh Burke Class Destroyer does have the Aegis system, but it's a Destroyer nonetheless. It's also similar size to the Tico, being 8000+ tons while the cruiser is 9000+ tons.

Someone mentioned the Zumwalt - that Destroyer is nearly twice the size of a Tico, so we have precedence in reality that cruisers are smaller than destroyers... Whaddayaknow...