Ship Classification

[madman Captain]

For starters, Alpha Damage and DPS (damage per shot, damage per second is another; but that really relates only to automatic weapons and is inapplicable to most warship weaponry in both SM and other sci-fi) are identical statistics. Second, where are the cruisers? I like the name, FYI, and it is, in most every fleet designations system, an important class to battle plans. Also I like the name.

Seems rather barebones; and where the heck are the other numbers?!?!?!?!?! M5, M4, M3, M8 WHAT? M6 what on EARTH? M7 now it's in REVERSE????!!!!!! M2 NOOOOO!!!!! M1, ok, M0, why not just bump them all up to have an M1 final class? OR GO THE OTHER WAY!!!! AAGH! OCD!!!!

Ok I now the problem. The classification came from the X-games (X-BtF, X-T, X2 The Threat, X3 Reunion, X3 Terran Conflict, X3Albion Prelude, X Rebirth).
M0-M5 from the first two games, M6 (Corvettes) are implementet with X2, and M7 (Frigates)/M8 (Bombers) with X3 Terran Conflict.

And the Subvariants are mostly counts for fighters: Raider (higher top speed, larger weapon batterie) for first strikes, and Vanguards (better manuverbility, better weapon recharge) for dockfights.

 

[Lonnehart]

It's really hard to pinpoint a ship class over time. Those things change. For instance, in its time the U.S.S. Enterprise was classed as a heavy cruiser back in its day. In this day and age it's more a light cruiser compared to the more recent Enterprise F (from Star Trek Online).

 

[Brokengauge]

It's really hard to pinpoint a ship class over time. Those things change. For instance, in its time the U.S.S. Enterprise was classed as a heavy cruiser back in its day. In this day and age it's more a light cruiser compared to the more recent Enterprise F (from Star Trek Online).

This happens IRL as well. Today's destroyers are bigger than heavy cruisers years ago, and the cruisers are larger than a lot of battleships. as tech progresses, and we add capabilities to ships, they just get bigger.

 

[Hugoba]

Fighter/heavy fighter
The task is to deal with small/medium ships. In large numbers support bigger ships and serve as turret fodder.

Bomber/heavy bomber
Deal with bigger ships and adding more firepower, sacrificing other aspects.

Destroyer
For me always when U build a ship, which is designed to match bigger ships (or stations) in firepower and sacrifice armour and other aspects of ship construction. And it is bigger than pure bomber. Generally firepower is ship mounted and turrets have only minor defensive purpose.

Cruiser
More universal ship which major part of firepower is placed in turrets. Cruisers are better against smaller ships and are not so prone to outmanuevering like destroyers.

Carrier
It is obvious.

They could be divided into:

Fast
Sacrificed protection, prioritized manueverability

Heavy
Protection is priority over mobility.

Multipurpose
Sacrifice firepower, mobility and protection to fit in different roles (mobile base, military/mining vessel, scouting)

Battlecruiser/battleship/titan, etc.
Not very well turning big sticks, generally dependable on turret defense. Ship mounted guns are mainly used when fighting other such a behemont or station/planet.

 

[kikaha]

I believe that with the new power system and the chambers effects ship classification will change drastically. You will most likely have classes like scout, bombers, fighters, workers (slavage and ressources carriers), missile boats (long range) beam corvettes/frigates (short range) stealth assassins and so on.

The entities (ship and stations) are going to be a lot more specialized in their roles.

 

[Brokengauge]

Bah! Call them whatever lol. Identifiable roles should be a thing (attack, defend, cargo, miner, recon, stealth), but IRL ship classifications are in part a political label to slap on your warship so your neighbors don't get too upset at you having it.

A destroyer today has more in common with cruisers of ww2, and a cruiser was actually ANY vessel capable of long journeys back in the age of sail (and were often frigates!).

I don't know why I keep piping in. In some ways it would be super convenient for comparison's sake to have a standardized class system. But on the other hand, with a game like starmade, you can't really make that mold fit everyone. For example: the frigates from HALO are at least 4x the size of the largest ship I would even want to build. On the other hand, the "frigates" I do build are roughly the size of the battleship Texas.

Any sort of recognized class system, imo, is going to have to be up to each server, and it's occupants.

As far as a class list though, I really like ww1 and 2 naval history, so I do tend to build (or at least plan) ships that would fill the roles seen in those conflicts.