[GZG] Re: Ship Roles & Classes

A few quick suggestions on roles and names for ships. Definitely incomplete
and certainly biased. Michael

Armoured Cruiser – an older designation.

Attack Cruiser – No idea, sounds aggressive though. A synonym for strike
cruiser perhaps?

Battlecrusier – A big cruiser. Very fast and powerfully armed, even up to
battleship standards but not protected to the same standard. It is intended to
gobble up escorts – it can kill anything that can catch it and run away from
anything that can kill it. Useful but keep it away from the gun line in a
fleet action.

Battleship – big, heavily armed and strongly protected but not terribly fast.

Carrier – something that relies on fighters for attack and protection.
Generally quite large and fast.

Corvette – a small warship for escort or littoral
duties. Generally cheap and rather slow and low-end
technology wise. One step up from fast attack craft and torpedo boats for
aspiring navies.

Destroyer – historically a torpedo boat destroyer that evolved to steal the
TBs armament and role to produce a much more capable, seaworthy and dangerous
opponent. An escort to protect your own line of battle or to threaten theirs.
Travels in packs and dangerous in numbers but poorly protected, its only
protection is its high speed.

Destroyer Escort – basically a frigate.

Dreadnought – A bigger, better battleship.

Escort Cruiser – A smaller cruiser optimised for the escort role so a lot of
flak and lighter armament. Historically often an older obsolescent cruiser
rearmed and refitted.

Frigate – historically basically a cruiser but later a small escort.

Heavy Cruiser – historically a cruiser with 8" guns. Presumably larger and
more heavily armed than a light cruiser. Should be capable of gobbling up
light cruisers.

Light Cruiser - historically a cruiser with 6" guns.
Not always smaller than a heavy cruiser, one Japanese class made the change
from light to heavy by swapping 6" triple turrets for 8" twins. Otherwise
presumably smaller and lighter than a heavy. Much more common, your bog
standard show the flag or distant station workhorse. Likely to get toasted in
a fleet action but otherwise very useful.

Monitor – Historically a coastal and riverine warship, slow and unseaworthy.
In SF a warship for local defence so it lacks FTL drive. They can range
enormously in size from small to huge.

Protected Cruiser – another old class.

Strike Cruiser – I thought this might be largely an SF term though the US
navy seem to have played with the concept and might have created it. To the
USN a big cruiser with a heavy, mostly missile armament but some heavy guns
for shore bombardment suggesting a planetary attack role in SF.

Super Dreadnought - A bigger, better dreadnought.

Torpedo Boat – Small, fast, really annoying. Goes pop easily.

Thanks for the replies.

What's a strikeboat?

Originally, missle boat; think PT, or MTB, with high explosive or
nuclear-tippes missles.

Now, usually a small craft with one, big shot, say, submunitions pack.

The_ Beast

andy wrote on 05/16/2007 05:50:53 AM:

> Thanks for the replies.