[darkdaej]

Follow me on this one, it actually works within canon. 

During the first command briefing, Loukakis identifies himself as a Captain, but once on the Aquitaine, he's a mere Lieutenant.  Now a one-rank demotion might be explained through any misconduct or incompetence, but we're talking THREE ranks here...Might as well just give the guy a Bad Conduct discharge or something...So  I think there's a much simpler solution.

Alpha 1 is not on the Aquitaine during that first CB.  He may be on another warship...or maybe a transport craft. 

Maybe this transport craft is commanded by Loukakis, which WOULD effectively give him the rank of Captain aboard his vessel according to Navy tradition.

There ya go - the first and biggest canon inconsistency in FS2 neatly fixed

[darkdaej]

I'm dumb, forget I said anything, it's the other way around, guy gets promoted 3 ranks....

How could I have such an obvious brain fart?

[Nightmare]

Well you could ask how GTA/GTVA came to there ship class designations - smallest ship is a cruiser, biggest a destroyer...

[darkdaej]

There IS that.  For the longest time - not knowing anything about the Navy - I thought cruisers<corvette<destroyer

[starlord]

I actually believe that the name destroyer in freespace stems more from cruiser destroyer than the traditional torpedo boat destroyer everyone knows.

[darkdaej]

Still, The Orion strikes me as a Battleship (heck, it even has a beam cannon broadside in FS2) more than a destroyer though.

And the Hecate is definitely a carrier...

[Mongoose]

"Destroyer" sounds like a more badass name than "cruiser" anyway.

[0rph3u5]

Maybe this transport craft is commanded by Loukakis, which WOULD effectively give him the rank of Captain aboard his vessel according to Navy tradition.

That's not how that works. The naval tradition to refer to the officer in command of ship as Captain is pragmatically one of clear communication*. It terms of military etiquette you still use the rank you actually have in an introduction.

However, while out of use in modern militaries, there is such a thing a "limited commission" historically - by which a person would recieve an officer's rank for limited ammount of time via royal perogative, with the rank and priviledge expiring with commission.


* A lot of Naval Traditions have their roots in a time when communication on a ship meant shouting over each other; hence also the prominence of whistles and bells.

[Novachen]

For the longest time - not knowing anything about the Navy - I thought cruisers<corvette<destroyer

Actually, that still makes much more sense to me.

Because Destroyers are there to destroy things. Never had an idea what a real destroyer is actually able to destroy, because it is mostly used as an escort ship for carriers or cruisers nowadays.

And escort ships are cruising around their main ships... and the word cruiser have 'cruise' already in it...
But as how actual cruisers are used, they should be named 'crusader' or something like that.

[0rph3u5]

The terms frigate and corvette actually have their roots in specific kinds of ship building, not size or what they would actually do.

Modern terms like "carrier", "cruiser" and "destroyer" are rooted in their mission profiles, with the older terms added into that retroactively; note that due to the historical developments the terms are inconstiently applied or defined.

To but it humorously: Pre-modern navies asked for their ships to be "this big", modern navies ask for their ship to "do these things".

[Nightmare]

Probably if the meaning of "carrier", "cruiser" and "destroyer" changed that quick it certainly can do again over the next couple centuries.

[starlord]

As I said previously novachen, a destroyer in contemporary navy was designed to hunt and destroy torpedo boats, hence the term. It defines a fast ship typically putting the emphasis on speed at the expense of armor. Notice that the term is used somewhat interchangeably with frigates in many navies. The french term for destroyer is "contre torpilleur" which pretty much stands for "counter to torpedo boats".

A cruiser, by comparison, designates an armored ship of the line of medium tonnage.

It is also true that today ships are pretty much classified depending on their role more than their size. An example to this is the russian kirov, classified as a missile cruiser but greater in tonnage than most WW2 battleships.

[BengalTiger]

Well you could ask how GTA/GTVA came to there ship class designations - smallest ship is a cruiser, biggest a destroyer...

It's possible they have changed over time. The Fenris seems to be of a totally different school of shipbuilding compared to the Orion.
I don't recall any mission dialog saying which class is older, but perhaps the GTC's were around much longer than the GTD and the new destroyer simply dwarfed the old cruiser...

Here's a cruiser, 4,762 t:



And here's a destroyer of 50 years or so later, 7,800 tons:

I actually believe that the name destroyer in freespace stems more from cruiser destroyer than the traditional torpedo boat destroyer everyone knows.

This is also possible, or it could be an everything destroyer, like in Star Wars... 

As I said previously novachen, a destroyer in contemporary navy was designed to hunt and destroy torpedo boats, hence the term. It defines a fast ship typically putting the emphasis on speed at the expense of armor. Notice that the term is used somewhat interchangeably with frigates in many navies. The french term for destroyer is "contre torpilleur" which pretty much stands for "counter to torpedo boats".

A cruiser, by comparison, designates an armored ship of the line of medium tonnage.

It is also true that today ships are pretty much classified depending on their role more than their size. An example to this is the russian kirov, classified as a missile cruiser but greater in tonnage than most WW2 battleships.

A cruiser that is used in the line of battle is a battlecruiser. Regular cruisers were warships with a long range (as in they could travel far, not necessarily be able to shoot far away targets).
According to wiki, the role of a cruiser could be performed by a sloop or frigate during the age of sail to make things funnier, so the name of this class was a bit hazy and based off function rather than size since the beginning of time.

[Nightmare]

It's possible they have changed over time. The Fenris seems to be of a totally different school of shipbuilding compared to the Orion.
I don't recall any mission dialog saying which class is older, but perhaps the GTC's were around much longer than the GTD and the new destroyer simply dwarfed the old cruiser...

Actually, according to FS1 Fenris description the Fenris existed *before* the beginning of the T-V war:

It was later decided that a second line of cruisers would be produced, for defensive purposes, once it became apparent that the V-T war wouldn't be over in a few months.

The FS2 descs say the Leviathan was built after the beginning of the Great War...

Regarding the purposes and designation of the classes... everything goes

[BengalTiger]

It's possible they have changed over time. The Fenris seems to be of a totally different school of shipbuilding compared to the Orion.
I don't recall any mission dialog saying which class is older, but perhaps the GTC's were around much longer than the GTD and the new destroyer simply dwarfed the old cruiser...

Actually, according to FS1 Fenris description the Fenris existed *before* the beginning of the T-V war:

It was later decided that a second line of cruisers would be produced, for defensive purposes, once it became apparent that the V-T war wouldn't be over in a few months.

The FS2 descs say the Leviathan was built after the beginning of the Great War...

Regarding the purposes and designation of the classes... everything goes

They could have simply had a production line going y'know...
Sometimes it's a matter of not wanting to have any disruption in the supply of new units to the front line - and the Fenris was available and could be made with thicker armor with very little adjusting to create the Leviathan. Note they probably just kept the same engines which made it way more clumsy than the original.

Therefore the Levi could be newer than the Orion, while Fenris may have been much older.

As a historical precedence of this happening:
The Panzer IV was in production since before WW II, and was, after mods, manufactured all the way till the end of WW II.
Germany could not afford the downtime for retooling the factories to make Panthers instead, so they had to keep going with what they had.

[Nightmare]

Hmmm... but I don't see the purpose for something like an Orion before going to war with the Zods; but AFAIK there's no canon evidence of whether Levi or Orion is older.

[Cyborg17]

They probably needed a strike craft Carrier.  Remember strike craft don't have intersystem jump drives until the end of FS1.

[Nightmare]

Probably they had a different class to do that. Orion is still big by FS2 and since they didn't most likely didn't had any subspace drives they needed one since minimum 2321.