[TopAce]

I don't know how many posts there will be in this thread, but I think this article is worth to mention:

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military

Go down to navy ranks and start reading from Ensign. Familiar?

[aldo_14]

Shockeroony!

[Flipside]

Pity they screwed up the ship descriptors

[TopAce]

Cruiser/Corvette/Destroyer you mean?

[Flipside]

Yep, the correct Naval Terms should really have been

Destoyer - currently cruisers. Mainly anti-fighter or equal sized vessels.

Light Cruiser - Currently Corvettes. Anti-shipping based, but still strong anti-fighter defences.

Carrier - Currently Destroyer. Carries fighters (though the FS2 destroyers are armed like Heavy Cruisers so they are sort of a mixture of the 2, a real carrier relies on fleet protection)

I'd even venture far enough to say that it should be Escort, Destroyer, Cruiser, where it not for the ship carrying abilities of the FS2 Destroyers.

[redsniper]

I've always found it odd that the little pansy ships (boats) are called DESTROYERS.

[Flipside]

LOL I wondered that too, I think it was because when Destroyers were first created, they were the biggest ships around, larger than Galleons etc, and the name sort of stuck

Actually, those little ships did far more total damage during both wars than any of the bigger ones. Destroyers mainly formed into Submarine hunting packs, though a pack of Destroyers could harry a Battleship for hours. In many cases, Destroyers and Escorts were the same ships, depending on what role they were performing.

[StratComm]

In regards to the Freespace naming convention, I still stand by the re-shuffling of the naming conventions as a logical progression, not a screwed-up mistake.  We already know it was intentional.  Anyway, if you actually look at the dimensions, a FS cruiser is actually larger than its real-world counterpart.  The Fenris comes in at about 250 meters; a Nimitz-class Aircraft Carrier is only 335 meters long.  A typical cruiser hull is less than 200 meters.  So the logic would be that early in the days of the Terran space navy, the Cruiser designation fell on the then largest ships of the fleet, those measuring about the same dimensions as wet naval cruisers.  When the Orion (or whatever the first FS destroyer class was, depending on whose history you use) gets built, and is so much bigger than anything else that it gets a different name.  A Naval destroyer-sized ship may never have existed in the space-faring navy of Sol, and so the name was applied to the much larger Orions.  Corvette was applied similarly because there was nothing to fill the gap.

[Flipside]

But then, why choose Corvette, which is currenty a small 'Gunboat' sized vessel to represent the Deimos?

You are probably right about the naming, it's more or less what happened with Destroyers, but you would have thought 'Heavy Cruiser' or 'BattleCruiser' would have been a more accurate description?

Edit : Though you are, admittedly, talking to someone who thinks that Destroyers are too damn big, from both a real life and a gameplay point of view

[Night Hammer]

haha yay another ship arguing thread:p

[aldo_14]

Offhand, there's a post from either Adam Pletcher or Dave Baranec in the bowels of the FS mailing list, which says they basically chose real life naval terms and assigned the coolest ones to the coolest ships.

i.e. Destroyer sounds bigger than Cruiser - FS destroyer is bigger than cruiser.

It's that simply.... I mean, unless you know naval terminology and think it should be applied to space, why care?  Hell, I never noticed before I came here.........

[Flipside]

Hehe Who said it bothered me? I just like being pedantic about it

Edit : prawemit gnikcuf

[achtung]

I just look at it like this:

corvette-  light, fast vessels used for protecting shipping

Destroyer- Nothing but a gun with engines (so as you can guess very lightly armored)

Cruisers- used mainly as flagships and also protecting important targets and used as a base of operations for small scouting forces.

[NGTM-1R]

Originally posted by redsniper
I've always found it odd that the little pansy ships (boats) are called DESTROYERS.

There's a story to this.

The destroyer class was first concieved of shortly after the torpedo became a reliable weapon. Everybody and their cousin suddenly had swarms of small, fast craft meant to torpedo enemy ships. These were called "battleship destroyers".

Though battleships and cruisers soon grew secondary batteries to combat this meance, another class of ships was also constructed, concieved of as a fast, highly manuverable, relatively small, and relatively cheap escort craft for the cruisers and battleships. Mounting battleship and cruiser secondary armament for their main battery, they were meant to hunt and kill the new "battleship destroyers", and were referred to as "torpedo-boat destroyers".

Eventually, someone came up with the bright idea of combining the two functions into one ship, which they named using the only common part of its two ancestor's names: "destroyer".

I think the FS destroyer acquired its name in much the same way. Cruisers came first, because they were roughly analogous in size and function. Then someone built a ship meant to blow your cruiser group to Kingdom Come, and called it a "cruiser destroyer". Eventually, it was shortened to just "destroyer".

[Akalabeth Angel]

Current naming-schemes are in my view irrelevant to the game of Freespace. The game is set hundreds of years into the future, why would they still use the same ranking system? The GTVA don't need a copy of Jane's Fighting Ships to come up with class names for their navy.

[WMCoolmon]

But do they tell you that"...we think you cheated." when you reach Admiralcy?

[Nuclear1]

No. They just send you out on some inspection or ceremony or something.

[Hellbender]

If one dislikes the non-traditional naming conventions used in FS, then  just make your own space fleet and political units. Arguing won't change FS canon, but modding can give you some measure of satisfaction for your own desires. The point is, there is no changing the existing FS storyline, but nothing preventing something from scratch being made to satisfy personal tastes.

[Taristin]

I prefer FS's designations, personally. Destroyer sounds bigger than cruiser. And corvette... well, a corvette is a car, to me, but it works as a gunboat, too.

[Pnakotus]

They call Orions destroyers because GTB looks like a bomber and GTC was a cruiser.  Their lettered designations just weren't up to the task.  They realised this themselves, as FS2 has many 4 letter designations, as the 3 letter system was too restrictive.  It all makes sense, regardless of how stupid it is.

EDIT - 'Battleship destroyers'?  Are you on crack?

'Destroyers' are an evolution of pre-WWI 'torpedo boat destroyers' used for escort, armed with smaller, quick firing weapons to kill - you guessed it - 'torpedo boats', which were small, fast torpedo armed ships.  Battleships of the time could not engage them, as they were armed exclusively with large, slow firing weapons.  Basically, the battleships were threatened by the cheap and nasty Torpedo Boat Swarm (TM), so they were protected by screens of Torpedo Boat Destroyers.

Later DDs gained more roles (ASW, AA area defence, etc) and they were simply termed 'destroyers'.  The term comes down to us from a far simpler age.