federation vessel sizes

posted on August 6th, 2009, 1:02 pm

i wnted to ask if it would be possible to have something like a mall battleship, or a large desroyer...

because: the exelsior 1 seems a bit large for being a small vessel^^
could it be possible to make it a medium size destroyer?

and the second one: the defiant.
it is right now a large battleship, but it was desingned to be small and compact, right?
if the size of the defiant would be lowered to medium or even msmall, it would be very effective to harass enemy mining in lategame. the pulses would slaughter tthe freighters with its pulses, after getting into the enemy base dodging some torpedoes^^

posted on August 6th, 2009, 1:11 pm

In regards to the Defiant, all Defiants have a basic torpedo avoidance of 20% (only 80% torps hit). If you are looking at this in the guide... I realized about 4 days ago that I made a mistake there--it has since been corrected 

I assume the Excelsior I has some nice ECM on it, and so is counted as a small... not to mention being old and thus being fragile (hence the destroyer classification as well). Not sure about the idea... I think having things as large, medium, and small work fine (b-ship, cruiser, and destroyer roughly speaking) at the moment... would anybody else like to comment?

posted on August 6th, 2009, 6:00 pm

I think that the classification of a vessel has much more to do with weapons payload and crew compliment rather than actual size. And I appreciate this.... I think the dev's understand this as well and that's why the defiant is classified as a battleship even though it is relatively tiny. As for the excelsior, she was considered a heavy cruiser in her day. So it makes sense that it is still a relatively big ship in terms of size but 'small' in terms of classification because she is old and lacks the advanced weaponry of her modern counterparts.

posted on August 26th, 2009, 11:22 pm

Instead of the Small Medium and large designators of ships Maybe rethink in the terms of primary  role of the ship.    Just use the  terms: Path finder, Assault craft, general purpose, picket , and  Support roles designators for the ships. Or weaponds load capacity Class Alpha  are you heavy hitters  with heavy weaponds loads .Class Bravo are you general purpose ships that have well rounded weaponds loads. Class C are you support ships with light weaponds  but are used to support the fleet..