How do I distinguish ship classes?

[Azilljorin]

I just started my first game and I have one big issue about UI. Is there a way to quickly check the class of the ships? When you build ship it tells you in tooltip what it's good use for but there isn't any info about the enemy vessels like what class they belong to.
For TEC, the ship names are rather self-describing and I can guess some other names like "Vesari Navigator" must be type of scout (since it also moves very fast) but do I have to learn all those names of different factions by heart? And how about pirates? They seem to have unique ship types so how do I know how to counter them?

I should also mention that I only have old vanilla version of retail SoSE so maybe it was fixed in one of the expansions?

[tomasoltis]

not really, and those pirate converted cargo ships are countered by ... I dont know. The rest are the same as tec ships but lack mitigation so theyre easy to kill.

[Lyren]

Practicly all ships are the same for all factions. The scout is always the first ship in the list and the colony capital ship is in the middle. Its an good way to understand what role a ship fullfils in your fleet, eventhough the abilitys can differ drasticly.
And for the pirates, the best way to counter is to not get hit by their raids, sounds simple but can be tricky. I for once allways spare some money just for when they are about to strike and redirect them. Otherwise a supported Capitalship should be more than enough to handle an early game raid.
Better yet, play TEC rebels and BE the pirate. Rush 4 Civic-Stations and research "Truce among rogues" in the diplomacy tree. You will be at peace with pirates, cant be raided, pruchase Pirate fleets and more. Try it out. I can do it before the first raid!
You will be behind in recourses but the pirates have you covered!

[Fulcrum]

you just need to look at them in combat,what they are doing,for example:
Javelis frigates are shooting missiles from long distance,so logicaly it means they are long-range assault craft (or any other name similiar to this in the game)
The Cielo command cruisers boost either accuracy,fire rate or just straight up damage to nearby ships (cant remember which of these exactly,i rarely ever use them) so it means they are support cruisers as well as Hoshiko cruisers taht repair your ships in combat

[Fulcrum]

and also what the person above me said is true,most of the ships are in the same exact place for all factions so if you figure out which ship is where (TEC are the best for it since they are basicaly us,humans,and build their ships how we would do it here on Earth) it will be easy to play other factions
The only hard thing is understanding the researches,because unlike the TEC that has everything sorted out and named normaly,the Advent and Vassari research options are kinda messed up