Compilation of Ship Classifications to date

[GROOV3ST3R]

Since Ship Classification has gone a bit haywire and literally everyone makes up their own set of rules, I thought that I will compile links to all of them in one thread and in time, work my way through to see whether any patterns are emerging.



Here goes:

Ship Classifications:

http://star-made.org/content/fsu-ship-catigorization

http://star-made.org/content/different-approach-ship-classifications

http://star-made.org/content/my-ship-class-guide

http://star-made.org/content/nameless-guide-ship-classifications

http://star-made.org/content/dmans-ship-classifications

http://star-made.org/content/blitzwings-guideline-ship-classifications

http://star-made.org/content/vfw-standardized-fleet-doctrine-and-ship-classification

http://starmade.wikia.com/wiki/Ship_Classification

http://star-made.org/content/ship-classifications-general-guide

http://star-made.org/content/mistervecs-general-purpose-ship-classification-system

http://star-made.org/content/ship-classification-system-makes-sense

http://star-made.org/content/flexible-vessel-classification-method

http://star-made.org/content/icarthian-docking-classification-system

 

[Evilchicken]

At some point the community will need to pick one, or schema to release an official classification. I\'d wait until the game has been balanced (Which may some time away) before making a decision.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

Good job, I had no idea there were so many of these

 

[z1967]

That is quite a few...

btw, Icarthian docking system may need an update because docking has been changed.

 

[MisterVec]

The VFW Standardized scheme isn\'t a classification scheme so much as a bitter man\'s recounting of his days piloting VFW ships.

 

[MrFURB]

The origional classification system (Blitzwings, and I guess by now Nameless\' (Which is more popular) and Calbiri\'s complexity both count as first generation ones as well) were made because at the time everyone had conflicting opinions on what size was small, what size was big, and what differing sizes meant to the pilot.

I origionally made the Blitzwing classification system to solve those problems and provide new and older people alike a view at the average size of ships at the time and what they can imagine to accomplish in a ship with about that much mass. It was never meant to be a \'Hey, this is what your ship is called\' system.

 

[Morhe]

I\'ve been waiting for the latest docking revisions to go \"final\" before I get back into Starmade to do docking area experiments and then update that post. Seems like every three days the patch notes mention something about docking being changed; when they settle down, I\'ll fix the Icarthian Docking Classification system.

To be honest, I\'m not sure if the IDC system should even be in this list, since it\'s meant to solve a different problem than warship classification (namely, assigning foreign ships to compatible docks on a public merchant station), but I don\'t mind the visibility either.

Either way, it\'s meant to be prefixed to whatever mass-and-purpose driven classification system you prefer, and isn\'t designed to replace them.

Personally, I feel that the mass-and-purpose systems are premature, in the sense that the game doesn\'t have enough mixed-fleet battles on record for specialized ship classes to emerge. My suspicion is that this is the reason there are so many classification systems out there, and so little adoption.

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

Then recombine them and work out our own standarized class system to present to Schema and the community.



I\'d like to point out that these are only up to page 17 on forums, I\'ll look through the rest of them to see if I hadn\'t missed any when I get back ^^

 

[Wade]

I like and have always used the wiki classification http://starmade.wikia.com/wiki/Ship_Classification

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

and keeping them from spamming new ship classification guides, I\'d like to keep this thread roughly on the 1st page if possible.



As a side note, I\'m going to start collating everything into a spreadsheet ^^ That is if I get my hands on some Excel... Otherwise it would be a gigantic boring essay.

 

[FlyingDebris]

.

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

Blitzwing and NAmeless are fairly common with established factions and players that have been around for a while - or long enough to actually bother to research this issue.



At first glance it looks like most people have very similar ideas about classifications - just not the sizes and other citeria.

 

[Calbiri]

i didnt even make the list?

im sad panda now, gonna go eat icecream, bai gais

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

Can you please give me a link? I\'ll correct my mistake ^^

 

[Energy]

Funny. There\'s not a single classification that take \"volume\" into account (how many blocks/module/docks you can put inside of it).

 

[Mortig]

I generally use my own system (unpublished mind you, but I may be persuaded to compile it to an understandable format) which classifies ships based on their size-armament ratios. Which works well enough up to a frigate, then I have to toss in shields and turret numbers/sizes/\'oomph\'. But alas, my system would likely be useless since I am a lone wolf builder/player, as many of my builds reach massive proportions.

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

blocks used in a ship. Mass is essentially the amount of blocks used divided by 10. Hence a ship of 100,000 mass has 1 million blocks including systems onboard.

If you mean \'\'total volume\'\' - ALL space INSIDE of the ship whether it\'s taken up by systems or free for docking etc - then no.



Mortig has got the right idea here ^^ Ships need to be classified by their armanent to mass ratio. Length of the ship doesn\'t have much effect since I can make a ship 1km long using 1000 blocks and it won\'t really be anything useful. Antennas and miscellaneous decoration on a ship also increases it\'s relative size without adding much usefulness to the overall design.

However the power of your cannons DOES determine the class your ship falls into. Carriers and freighters generally have crap armanent compared to destroyers which are just flying turrets.



I am sort of halfway through compiling a table and working my way through most of these systems and already I am beginning to see some interesting patterns developing. Such as - people tend to use the same class names for ships and put them in roughly similar mass brackets as a result.

Stay tuned for more ^^

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

I have concluded that nearly everyone calls their ships \'\'Cruisers\'\', \'\'corvettes\'\', \'\'frigates\'\' and \'\'battleships\'\' and calculated average values for ships in each class. A draft of the compiled standarized system is in the first post - I would like your opinions on it.



Bear in mind, I based it on the AVERAGE mass values of ships in each category. I believe these reflect the actual ships in the game as well as anything.

 

[Energy]

Sorry. My reply was short because I was leaving.


Mortig has got the right idea here ^^ Ships need to be classified by their armanent to mass ratio. Length of the ship doesn\'t have much effect since I can make a ship 1km long using 1000 blocks and it won\'t really be anything useful.


This is exactly what I meant by \"volume\". What I should had said is \"available volume\" for building ships systems. So, a ship classification with that in mind will not count all the decorative blocks, even the \"skin\" ship, and only account for the available space to build shields, weapons, docks, etc...

And this is really hard to do, because:
- first you\'ll need the game to give you the total volume of the ship
- second, you\'ll need to build your ship\'s skin first to understand how much space you have for systems, and this is not how everyone build their ships.
- third, there are so many variables to account for, it would be impossible to classify.

BUT, the problem with any classification ships to date is that the same \"ship skin\" could be classified diferrently according to the way you build it\'s internal systems, and that makes no sense, since it\'s the same ship!

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

This isn\'t EVE. We can make nearly infinite combinations of ships but, at the end of the day, the size of the ship and the size of it\'s gun is really all that classifies it.



Think about it:

- I\'ll make a docking ship with 200000 blocks. It will be 500 meters long and largely empty inside with no real armanent as such. It\'s mostly for docking other ships inside. It\'s a carrier or a transport ship.

- I can then take the same ship, fill it up with systems and weapons, bump the volume up to 1000000 blocks and it becomes a Dreadnought.

- Cut it in half and it\'s a Battleship

- Cut it in half again and it\'s a Battlecruiser

- Now I remove all weapons from it and it becomes a Civillian transport vessel.



What classes this ship is it\'s mass (primary criterion) and it\'s weaponry (secondary criterion). You CAN class almost all ships this way. Some ships will overlap because they will be smaller and more powerful or bigger and less powerful and thus fall between two different categories. But only a little overlap is needed to accomodate the difference between each design.



When I say \'\'mass of the ship\'\' I mean the raw mass of the entire ship i.e. all systems, hulls, weaponry etc. I will update the system to accomodate turrets into the overall mass of the ship for the most accurate classification. Hulls do make a difference because I could make a ship with 5 or 10 layers of hardened hull covering it, which could bump the overall amss by anything between 5 and 95% - potentially putting it into a completely different class.

Take tanks as an example: they used to be classified by their weight. Light tanks wouldn\'t go far beyond 10 tonnes while heavy tanks stretched as far as 80. It\'s their weight that classed them as what they were. The fact that they had heavier guns and stronger armor plating.

Ships aren\'t really much different. In the real world the power of a battleship is dictated mainly by it\'s weaponry. But more (and more powerful) weaponry requires more space. And more space means heavier ships. There would be no reason to build an extremely heavy and large ship if it only had one small turret on it - the ship would end up much smaller because that would be all that was required of it. Similarly, you can\'t make a Destroyer more powerful than a battleship simply beacue it would not be able to have all the firepower.



Simple matter of fact is that all the blocks used to make a ship and it\'s potential power firmly put it within the boundaries of this system. Length, size or empty space inside don\'t really matter as far as the system is concerned. ass is the most accurate way to classify a ship.





Much like you said, it is what lies under the skin that matters but that doesn\'t mean you can disregard the skin itself ^^ I see your point, but at the end of the day, size is superficial to the game. It\'s a by-product. Make a carrier and fill it up and it will become something else and that\'s okay in my opinion ^



_____________________________________________________________________

About variety:

Variety of the ships and roles they are intended to are purely superficial.

These categories take into account the mass of the vessel and it\'s power. How the owner of the ship decides to use that power is up to him. He cannot call a Destroyer a Battleship because he intends it for that purpose - it simply isn\'t powerful enough. He CAN call it a Stealth Destroyer or maybe an Interceptor Destroyer or something but it will be a Destroyer.

Bombers are one class that I found through research to be completely superficial. They are Fighter or Corvette sized ships which simply have a different purpose. Their mass and power classes them firmly as either a Fighter or a Corvette and the \'\'Bomber\'\' title is purely superficial and doesn\'t reflect any special capabilities as far as I know. You CAN make a ship which docks Disintegrator modules and drops them on planets or other ships but at the end of the day, it\'s still a Fighter or a Corvette with the \'\'Bomber\'\' title added to the name, not replacing the class of the ship.