How Would You Define Ship Classes?

[｢ThundeiiBot｣]

From Corvettes, to Destroyers and Cruisers, to Dreadnaughts and beyond. From freighters to miners and everything in between. What classifications would you use and at what boundaries would ships have to meet in order to be considered as such? (e.i. higher omicron plus bigger volume = larger ship classifications) I'm just asking because of extreme OCD to have things organized and named appropriately. I don't want what the AI follows, but what YOU guys think would be decent classifications

[Astasia]

IMO size doesn't really have anything to do with it, it's all about functionality. If you have a lightly armored ship with like 100m/s/s thrust and brake, and over 1 rad/s, that's like a corvette. If it's like 5m/s/s thrust and brake, and like 0.05 rad/s, but super heavy armor, that's a dreadnaught or titan or something. In other games size has a lot more meaning, a lot more impact on performance, but in this game you can pretty much just scale everything up and maintain the same functionality. If you take a fighter and make it 100 times as large, but it still moves and handles like a fighter, it's still a fighter, right? Just a really strong one.

[｢ThundeiiBot｣]

I'm trying to go for a real world feel to it. In the real world, a ship is first classified by size (and in the military, firepower). However, functionality usually plays into the role of subclasses. (I.E. a corvette could be a VIP transport ship or surveillance craft) I wouldn't want to build a ship who's size makes no sense for it's speed and firepower unless I'm just farming or dealing with some annoying pirates/aliens.

[Astasia]

Sure, I'm just saying it doesn't translate well in a game like this where size is so... abstract, I guess you could say. You adjust a slider and the same ship is now the size of the entire sector and still flies like a fighter.

That said there is sort of a built in classification system based on certain volume breakpoints (each tier up unlocks a new ship module slot). I don't know if it lables each tier, but you could use that for a guideline.

[SkollUlfr]

a lot of the designations you will find are military only. and this game(due to bug or not) requires total seperation between armed and 'unarmed' ships. about the best you can do at the moment would be (displacment)+(function) eg 4500m^3 transport

even when you limit the discussion to military only there is plenty of overlap between size vs displacment vs function.

some calculation of volume / tonnage x power could give a general guide. since that would give a clue as to how armoured a ship is and how dangerous a ship is. it wont usually have high armour and power signatures for no reason.

to apply that to a game, i could class the players ship stats as 1.
volume, tonnage, manouverability, top speed, armament, hit points, power signature
then when you target a ship you get easlity read details of (for example);
volume 2.4
tonnage 0.8
manouverability 0.3
top speed 1.8
armament 0.1
hit points 1.1
power signature 1.1

in this example, a a big fat hauler thing with no armour or guns but will out-run you in a streight line

it could even be displayed as a graph and it gives the player instant feedback about the ship they are targetting compared to their own.

also, i hate it when games use dreadnaught as a designation. it sounds 'cool' but is utter and complete nonsense to the point that you might as well define a ship class as daffy duck.
its treated like 'dreadnaught' indicates some massive super ship, when in reality, its just a badly armed & armoured ship thats indistinctly between a larger cruiser class and smaller battleship class while being terrible compared to either.

[｢ThundeiiBot｣]

Dreadnaught never was a proper classification. It was a class of ship used by the British navy some time during the Victorian era, but it isn't a proper universal class. It's obsolete

[Shouravik]

Originally posted by ThunderLuck9889:

Dreadnaught never was a proper classification. It was a class of ship used by the British navy some time during the Victorian era, but it isn't a proper universal class. It's obsolete

Dreadnought was a proper classification of naval vessel, this is why you have something called a pre-dreadnought of which the USS Texas was one of. It's a primitive battleship.

[Nozerone]

Why not label the ships based off how many ship modules the ship has? There is a max of 15 modules, unless you use the tech core (or what ever it's called) that can increase that number.

Going by how many modules a ship has access to would mean you don't have to worry about a certain size threshold. The game will handle that for you. You also wouldn't have to worry about whether or not the ship is being used for military purpose, or mining purposes, or some space between the two.

[SkollUlfr]

Originally posted by fantasydragon:

Going by how many modules a ship has access to would mean you don't have to worry about a certain size threshold.

this is good too. just having numbered classes based on this seems pretty streight forward.

[｢ThundeiiBot｣]

I like to be creative in classifying things. So, a number system would go against myself. But, if it works for you, then it's not a bad idea

[ZobrAZ]

Why not use existing navy classification, based on ships function and/or capabilities?

[Hoki]

first off you could classify them by their volume splitting them into different ranks. then you can apply further classification depending on their performance.

E-rank ships for example could be pure iron ships up to 3 modules. as its made of pure iron it cant even have generators and could only be called explorers/startingships.

D-ranks would be up to naonite and a reasonble modulecount for that time (i guess somewhere around 6-7). there we can additionally apply ship categories such as frigates, corvettes etc. depending on their performance and weapon count.

C-ranks -> trinium/xanion

B-ranks -> avorion/ogonite

A- and S-ranks wont get a material restriction but a minimum size and module count.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by ThunderLuck9889:

I like to be creative in classifying things. So, a number system would go against myself. But, if it works for you, then it's not a bad idea

Take the numbered system and apply labels to them.

1 slot is fighter
2 slots is corvette
3 slots is frigate

So on and so forth.