[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.

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