RE-Ship types names

> Naming of ship classes is a quirky matter. "Monitor" and "Dreadnought"
> were named after the first ship of that class. "Ships of the Line"
were
> those able to play a role in that formation. "Destroyers" were
> originally "Torpedo boat destroyers" designed to destroy torpedo
boats.

Very true. Torpedo Boat Destroyers (TBDs) were pretty small, too. Tiny
things, about the same size or a little bigger than a torpedo boat
(which,
itself, actually shrunk in size if you compare things like WWII Motor
Torpedo Boats and German e-boats to pre-WWI TBDs).

-Destroyers were designed as torpedo boat interceptors, and used
locomotive -boilers for high steeming performance with light weight,
while
torpedo boat	  -used IC engines and had a very limited range.

Dreadnoughts we think of as huge vessels, and they were the largest
battleships of the period. But the later WWII battleships dwarfed the
WWI
dreadnoughts. Even pocket battleships (battleships built, I think, on
battlecruiser hulls by the Germans to get around either the Treaty of
Verseilles or the Washington Naval Treaty, not sure which) were bigger
than
dreadnoughts.

> It helps acceptance if bears some resemblance to present usage,
> though.

-The WW1 deadnoughts were the largest vessels built, and the WW2 BB
were -properly SUPER dreadnought (the british navy I beleave used this
designation -when it started with the 13.5 inch main gun ships). The
pocket
battleships were -built as overguned heavy cruisers (and broke the
cruiser
treaty limit (10KT) at -the time (mass-12KT))

Definitely. The assumption since the beginning of space opera has been
that
space militaries would follow a naval scheme. I suspect, though, that
they
will follow some sort of air force scheme. Space is what's "up" and it
would
be hard for a nascent space force to follow a naval model. Space falls
under
the control right now of the air force, adn I don't see them giving that
up.
I suspect that nomenclature, ranks, and traditions will actually come
from
an air force background, not navy.

Navy makes sense for fiction, as it's the closest analogue we have. But
if I
were to bet money, I'd bet it evolves from the air force. Instead of
references to boats and ships, it will be... something else.

-The navy in space is logical when you consider the training and
logistic of
lond -missions out of contact or support, confined in a craped, enclosed
space (like -a nuclear sub, can`t think of any airforce that requires a
pilot to be on constant -duty for the same length of time.

I suspect we'd see a whole bunch of weird ship type names, probably in
some
form of acronym. I see the whole series of naming conventions following
not
a naval evolution but some other sort. An example of what could happen
is
the way that tanks got their names and designations. The name "tank"
came
from the code word for the British motorized artillery platform of WWI.
Eventually tanks fell into various types of tanks: light tanks, cruiser
tanks, medium tanks, heavy tanks. Later these even changed, to light
tanks,
main battle tanks, armoured fighting vehicles, armoured personnel
carriers,
etc.

You won't see cruisers, destroyers, battleships, etc. It would be
something
else. What? I haven't a clue. But it will be something far different, I
suspect.

But for a game, or for fiction, using naval terms has the immediate
advantage of acting as a metaphor. Since it's unlikely that in "reality"
we'll use naval parlance, we might as well stick to naval parlance as a
metaphor to be consistent.

-The names have the advantage of familaty, so you know when you
    -destroyer Vs heavy cruiser, you know whos out classed (or going to
    -shortly)

BIF`s replies with a -

BIF
"yorkshire born,yorkshire bred,
strong in arms, thick in head"