On: Ships - Classification and Types
When talking about ships, the usualy giant, usualy metal things that go throu the vacuum of space traveling our fleshling bodies so we can fuck up another perfect eco system. In my opinino, people often meld together what a ships type and classification are.
Firstly, a ships classification, usualy just referred in speech to the name of the classification itself, is the assumed physical size of the ship, but many can have differing classification to their sizes, since classification also takes into account the military purpose of the ship. For instance, even though a ship which should be labeled a dreadnought, but it's just a really large luxury yacht, will inevitably be called a cruiser, since dreadnoughts only carry military meaning.
Little bit of jargon explenation:
Capital Ship - Ships large enough to be considered movable houses.
Flagship - The ship which houses the chain of command in a fleet.
Passive Defences - shields, armor, or some other innate defence.... (check Shields and Shielding)
Active Defences - Point-Defence systems, meaning automated or manual turrets, flares, defence heat-seeking missiles...
Slugging - When two or more capital ships are stationary, or for all intents and purposes stationary, cos, nothing in space is stationary.
Effective Lenght - The distance between the two farthest points that can be easely be reached inside the ship.
Actual Lenght - The distance between the two farthest points of the hull.
(A) Slug - a volley, single shot, or a attack action from a ship.
Let's not beat around the bush, and go straight down to military classifications, since civilians are based of off these.
Fighters
There are in fact three types of fighters: regular fighters, which were desigfned as a all-purpose one-man craft, but it could be still be classified even with 5 people depending od the design, but has been... modified, to a balance between anti-capital ships and anti-fighters, but has been further modified, since about 1000 years, into in-orbit multi-purpose jets, bombers, close-air-support, anti-armor... with space-farring capabilities.
Since capital ships, military style capital ships, have been introduced, the first classification of fighters were not enough. Those first fighters couldn't be outfited with enough firepower to overcome or bypass ship's defences, passive mind you, let alone active. Thus, Bombers were created.
Bombers are, as it sound, these big, fat, slow, armed-to-the-teeth, usualy 2-man crafts, designed to destroy, incapacitate, or at least break the hull of capital ships. They are usualy weak against other fighters, but it's dependable upon the configuration: lighter bombers have a decent chance against other fighters but might only be a mid-power one-shot against capitals, whereas heavy-duty slow ones might outright destroy smaller capitals but have a one-shot thing against fighters. Bombers also can usualy double as in-atmosphere bombers. Whereas fighters can serve multiple roles, these bombers specialize, and as an example, where a fighter could drop one strategic bomb, a bomber would carpet bomb a settlement.
More as a inverse of the bomber rather than a anti-bomber, is a Interceptor. Fighters that are specialized against other fighter types. They never carry any anti-capital weaponry except when they do, but they are usualy small and highly maneuverable that a large gun would defeat their purpose. They can also be utilized to a limited extent as close-air-support in-orbit.
As we come full circle, a true Fighter would be a balance between a bomber and a interceptor, but couldn't outpower a bomber in anti-capital role, nor outperform a interceptor in dogfights, they are mostly restriceted to bomber escort and in-orbit roles; escort roles because of their balance and multipurpose, and in-orbit because whilst interceptors can be used in-orbit, their performances could be hazardous to the pilot, paticularly when doing high-G maneuvers.
FBI, an abreviation for "Fighters-Bombers-Interceptors", is used to note the specific ration of fighters that a capital ship has, for instance, a frigattes FBI would be 1 Fighter, per 1 Bomber, per 1 Interceptor, and it would maybe have 2 or 3 FBI's, with an interceptor spare, for a total of 3 Fighters, 3 Bombers and 4 Interceptors, whilst a cruiser might have a FBI of 2 Fighters, 1 Bomber and 3 Interceptors, and would have 3 FBI's, for a total of 6 fighters, 3 bombers and 9 interceptors. There can also be a case that the crew of a capital ship can have differing FBI's from a ship of the same class, size and production line.
Shuttles & Transports
Now, when talking about ship sizes/classifications, there is that intermediary space between one-man-attack-craft, aka fighters, and corvetes (explained more later), aka armed & armored trailers. Shuttles and transports take that place.
A shuttle is usualy defined as a low-armnament, high carry capacity craft, usualy capable of both space and in-orbit travel. In military terms those are usualy dropships or logistics support, and whilst they might be armored, and maybe have a one-man turret for troop support, various treaties and designs limit the use of weaponry.
Now, transports are a upscaled versions of shuttles, and many dropships are dubbed as transports, but a real classification of a transport is a hauling vessel: to move large quantities around. Sure they could transport troops, but it would be no more than as a bus-type ride. Now, transports, being a industrial-type, are so heavely treatitise that military institutions should not put any serious weaponry. There are of course a few designs that keep weaponry, but only as dedicated designs. Private owners or institutions could arm them as anti-pirate measures, with enough paperwork to not be able to lift into orbit, and the guns themselves would be unable to deal any real harm to dedicated war vessels. Keep in mind, paramilitary or private security forces still count as military institutions, so the only attack transports they might own are those few dedicated designs. Most of the civilian (use) vessels are used for mining, family vehnicles, freights and so on...
The largest of transports can be as large as frigattes but are not classified as such.
Corvettes
Now, this is the fun shit-- stuff.
Corvettes are the smallest military grade capital ship. They have none, if-at-all, slugging capacity. They are usually used as either for single unit temporary headquarters, escorts for larger ships, as well as taking down capitals when using pack tactics with other corvettes, transports and other such logistical roles. They are usualy around 100 m. Usualy because some have effective lenght and some have actual lenght of 100 m.
The reason why most ships are not classified as corvettes is because most are classified as civilian ships, and therefore, do not, and cannot, have armnaments on them. Well, you could register a transport as a corvette, without weapons, but the legal fees would highly outweight the benefits in the long run. Many who work in legal institutions and are in charge of ship licensing say that if you want your ship to be a corvette, the only thing it's gonna give you is the right to a few guns, and not even good one's, so it's just better/cheaper for it to be called a transport, freighter or some other thing.
Frigattes
Well, these are the actual thing.
Frigattes are the smallest ship that can be classified as flagships, and are usualy used as mobile headquarters for specific purpose units, The Razor being the most prominent one. They usualy have more firepower than what their size might suggest, and their defences can only effectively block corvette armnaments: bombers can deal significant damage if left unchecked and because frigattes are so small any hit registeres, and because other frigattes are also armed to punch higher than their weight, corvettes, fighters and interceptors are about the only space vessels that can be ignored. Thusly, corvettes are also dubbed Glass Canons, since they can dish out damage, but can't take it. This makes their slugging capacity very weak: they might get of one slug, but would also go down in a few.
Average frigatte lenght is 150 m, with 100 on the short end, and 500 m on the large end.
Some civilian vessels can be dubbed frigattes, even though they are the size of transports and don't have armnaments, but are used in merchant, research or explorational fleets.
Cruisers
Cruisers are also dubbed Space Tractors, because for a ship to be called a cruiser by legal standards, they need to pass numerous, rigorous tests, usualy with simulated breaches, reactor malfunctions, running on emergency powers, life-support malfunctions, and usualy a combination of some or all of the above mentioned. Similarly as interceptors are the inverse of bombers, cruisers are the inverse of frigattes, whereas they are armored to the gills with some armnaments. Interestingly, sruisers have a relatively high slugging capacity, since they can take a lot of hits.
There is actually a very awkward moment when two enemy cruisers meet, since, both are heavely armored, but minimaly to averagely armed, so they can't really hurt eachother unless they have a sortie of FBI's, and with very good pilots, plus that the commanders are crazy/skilled enough to close the distance to within visible range, since, yes, they can't hurt the cruiser, but they can damn well harm the fighters. The most known military cruisers are The Kingdom's Crusader class Cruisers, who have been recorded to function with life-support at half capacity, reactor leaking fuel, Shrapnel Shielding barely being able to stop a bolt of a repairman, multiple decks on fire and they still managed to limp back to the nearest port with repair abilities.
Many luxury liners are designated as cruisers due to their size, less so for their durability even though they still have to pass it. They are also only affordable to tychoons or very rich organizations, on the civilian side of things. They are also designed to go on without resupplying for months if not for an entire year, and have a very good fuel consumption despite their size.
Cruisers start from about where frigattes left off: 500 m on the shortest, to the wapping 1,5 km in effective lenght on the large end, officialy. In reality, many military-designed cruisers are larger than destroyers, and a select few can grasp carrier sizes.
Destroyers
Now.... the workhorse, the backbone, the thing that any large spacefarring military must have in ample supply if it is going to fight any other large spacefarring military...
Destroyers are well armed, well armored, relatively slow though, minimum 1 km actual lenght vessels, designed for one thing only: destroy. They are a definition of slugging capacity: corvettes only stand a chance in 3 vs one fight if they are on the large side and the destroyed is on the smaller side, so a 5v1 is considered a 40% chance of vistory. Frigattes hope they can get a critical shot in and then book it, using their superior speed to dogde and run. Cruisers sweat (and swear), since both their speeds are about the same, and whilst cruisers have about 15% better shielding and/or armor, destroyers have about 40% better armnaments. Only other, same-class destroyers can nullify destroyers, and only extremely skilled commanders can go 1v1 destroyers if the other doesn't have a single FBI and this one does, with very skilled pilots. When a smaller destroyer and a larger destroyer meet, the outcome is usualy set: if the larger one can hit the first slug, it's a most likely win. If the smaller gets to dogde, it might have a chance to escape. Inversly from cruisers, destroyers can only travel without resupplying for about a month, tops. And their fuel consumption is throu the roof. All of this means that when a destroyer is being fully crewed, and given a set date by when to return, anyone can bet that something, somewhere, out there in space, will go boom... By the same logic, if many, like, 5 or 6 are being fully crewed and stocked, war is coming. Destroyers start at 1 km at the shortest and can go up to 4 km of effective length.
There are no civilian destroyers, though some might serve a improvised role if they are like large-scale debree cleaners, so they might need a big(ger) gun.
Carriers
Whilst carriers might sound intimidating... they, really... aren't...
Carriers are only considered a battle/war ship due to tradition, but now that nearly every capital ship can have a FBI, a concept of carrier, which is a ship dedicated to carrying fighters, sacrificing armnaments and a large portion of shields & armor, for mosquitoes, is, well... useless... A few frigattes could hostage a carrier, their sluggin capacity is nearly zero, relying on fighters for attack.
So, carriers have a new meaning: they are now used as siege engines. You stock a carrier with troops, supplies, fuel, ammo, amybe even some vehnicles if you're planning planetside, but only a few models of carrier can, get a corvette, or, really, any other capital ship, and you can usualy keep a moon (our Lua/Luna) or even a Earth-sized planet if you have one of everything, under siege, meaning, no one can enter or exit the planet without, at least, the besiegers noticing, and at best, the besiegers can hold the planetary body hostage if they manage to get troops planetside, and have enough pew pew and brains to use both the body and themselves in the best position to repell any relief efforts.
Carriers mostly pick up after destroyers, starting at 4,5 km on the short end, and reaching all the way up to 7 or, the largest one ever recorded, 10 km (The "Cobblers Shoulders").
Dreadnoughts
...
Do I really need to explain what these are, if you have reached this far down and are interested in sci-fi... well... I'm gonna do it anyway. By explaining what dreadnought means:
Dreadnought was originaly a name of a british destroyer that revolutionized the way of ship warfrare. Don't know the exact way, but from it's introduction forward, ships were classified as pre-dreadnought and post-dreadnought, until there were so few pre's that the name has fallen out of use...
It means "Know no fear" - "Dread", fear, "Nought", none. And at some point, someone decided to make a very big spaceship and call it a dreadnought. Fine by me.
And so, dreadnoughts are ships that are, literaly, ridicoluosly huge. The smallest one's, by definition, pick up after carriers, at 4,5 km, but only real ones start at 5, and even those are considered short. They are armed and armored to the teeth, and on average it is calculated that a single dreadnought can take on 5 destroyers just by shear slugging capacity, not counting fighters. If we did, destroyers have a slight advantage, but even that is discousionable, since the active defences and fighters of the dread' can take them down.
A class, not to be confused with a classification, represents the specific modifications in common with other ships, which might not be the same type. Example, a Crusader class Cruiser. List and examples of ship classes:
Crusader - Exclusively kept for the Kingdom's Crusader class Cruiser, the distinguishing feature is the Retaliative shielding which proves paticularly nasty against fighters, so only capitals can fight it, and even then, having such a large reactor makes their shields even more durable.
Excalibur - Exclusively kept for the Kingdom's Excalibur class dreadnought, was designed to keep a Earth-sized planet under siege. Not indvade it, just contrl the comings and goins of a planet, and also, when streched thin, they could surveil a Sol-type solar system, but could not act in any meaningful way. They are also one of the only known vessels that have Slipspace technology (see FTL) as their main source of faster-than-light travel.there are 5 known: "The Primarch", the first, used in the Crusade, "The Exile", currently traversing and patroling the borders of the Kingdom, the "Tempest" and "Torment", built nearly at the same time. They were designed to work together for large-scale shock-assaults (blitzkrieg), but the few times they were used, their commanders were so ferocious, that the concept of working together had to be scraped, and the two ships now works seperately, still doing their original purpose of supressing rebelions planet-side, but they now do it on their own rather than together. And the fithf, whos name and location is known only to a few, "The Arc of Greater Reclamation". It sits in the Kingdoms capital, and in the highly unlikely event that the capital is occupied, the emediate leaders, including the king, are to board it and leave, using it as a base of operations until the capital is reclaimed. Raza - Adopted as a peacetime stealth class by the Earths Territories, the Raza class has specialy designed Black Boxes that allow them to store almost all of the heat that the ship produces. Granted, specificaly designed sensors can discern Razas, but they are only used when war has been declared or on specificaly important worlds, hence, peactime. Spearbreak - A prototypal class of ships, of which only corvettes have been made. The concept was to have the shields run on minimum power, and when they take a hit, the reactor jumps into overdrive and stops incoming damage. Good concept, but since it was the first of it's kind, the power fluctuations were so great, many ships reactors were overloaded within the first few hits. The name has since been used as a phrase of warning "Don't be a spearbreak(er)", meaning something between "Are you sure?" and "Check your facts". A good thinf to come out of Spearbreakers however, is the beginings of Cyclonic shields.
Hydra - Consisting of fighters (fighters, bombers and interceptors), corvettes and frigattes, but there are a few cruisers, these ships have sacrificed their light armnaments, the various Point Defence Cannons, gaining more space, and filling that space with as many rockets as they can fit. They are seen as one-shot or one-kill-per-ammo type ships, and are thus always escorted and protected. Some were decided to keep their light armnaments, in the shape of cannons firing shells, shaped charges, and they have found their purpose is smaller fleets where frigattes are the flag ships, but even then, against a large, organised force they are protected.
Consider these two not canon, yet:
Kermeros - A predecesor of the Raza class, these were the true stealth ships, capable of hiding all of their heat, literaly making a void on the sensors, but since the sensors are scanning space, such a blip will go unnoticed... unless you know what to look for. They were used as deep-behind-enemy-lines type, sending and receving as little information as possible to avoid detection. Their hulls were also made to withstand more hazardous enviroments, making them even more stealthy. As with Hydra, only frigattes-down were made as Kermeros.
Vilcor - Mostly destroyers, but there were also everything under destroyers, were designed easy-use, having thick armor, actually incorporating granite plating, giving them their distinct brown color, strong shields and only a few strong weapons to attack. They were used for simple guns-blazing strategies, where they quickly close in and start hammering on the enemy. Their armor however, has made them a tad bit more sluggish, which is paticularly noticable when interacting with fighters.
Firstly, a ships classification, usualy just referred in speech to the name of the classification itself, is the assumed physical size of the ship, but many can have differing classification to their sizes, since classification also takes into account the military purpose of the ship. For instance, even though a ship which should be labeled a dreadnought, but it's just a really large luxury yacht, will inevitably be called a cruiser, since dreadnoughts only carry military meaning.
Little bit of jargon explenation:
Capital Ship - Ships large enough to be considered movable houses.
Flagship - The ship which houses the chain of command in a fleet.
Passive Defences - shields, armor, or some other innate defence.... (check Shields and Shielding)
Active Defences - Point-Defence systems, meaning automated or manual turrets, flares, defence heat-seeking missiles...
Slugging - When two or more capital ships are stationary, or for all intents and purposes stationary, cos, nothing in space is stationary.
Effective Lenght - The distance between the two farthest points that can be easely be reached inside the ship.
Actual Lenght - The distance between the two farthest points of the hull.
(A) Slug - a volley, single shot, or a attack action from a ship.
Let's not beat around the bush, and go straight down to military classifications, since civilians are based of off these.
Fighters
There are in fact three types of fighters: regular fighters, which were desigfned as a all-purpose one-man craft, but it could be still be classified even with 5 people depending od the design, but has been... modified, to a balance between anti-capital ships and anti-fighters, but has been further modified, since about 1000 years, into in-orbit multi-purpose jets, bombers, close-air-support, anti-armor... with space-farring capabilities.
Since capital ships, military style capital ships, have been introduced, the first classification of fighters were not enough. Those first fighters couldn't be outfited with enough firepower to overcome or bypass ship's defences, passive mind you, let alone active. Thus, Bombers were created.
Bombers are, as it sound, these big, fat, slow, armed-to-the-teeth, usualy 2-man crafts, designed to destroy, incapacitate, or at least break the hull of capital ships. They are usualy weak against other fighters, but it's dependable upon the configuration: lighter bombers have a decent chance against other fighters but might only be a mid-power one-shot against capitals, whereas heavy-duty slow ones might outright destroy smaller capitals but have a one-shot thing against fighters. Bombers also can usualy double as in-atmosphere bombers. Whereas fighters can serve multiple roles, these bombers specialize, and as an example, where a fighter could drop one strategic bomb, a bomber would carpet bomb a settlement.
More as a inverse of the bomber rather than a anti-bomber, is a Interceptor. Fighters that are specialized against other fighter types. They never carry any anti-capital weaponry except when they do, but they are usualy small and highly maneuverable that a large gun would defeat their purpose. They can also be utilized to a limited extent as close-air-support in-orbit.
As we come full circle, a true Fighter would be a balance between a bomber and a interceptor, but couldn't outpower a bomber in anti-capital role, nor outperform a interceptor in dogfights, they are mostly restriceted to bomber escort and in-orbit roles; escort roles because of their balance and multipurpose, and in-orbit because whilst interceptors can be used in-orbit, their performances could be hazardous to the pilot, paticularly when doing high-G maneuvers.
FBI, an abreviation for "Fighters-Bombers-Interceptors", is used to note the specific ration of fighters that a capital ship has, for instance, a frigattes FBI would be 1 Fighter, per 1 Bomber, per 1 Interceptor, and it would maybe have 2 or 3 FBI's, with an interceptor spare, for a total of 3 Fighters, 3 Bombers and 4 Interceptors, whilst a cruiser might have a FBI of 2 Fighters, 1 Bomber and 3 Interceptors, and would have 3 FBI's, for a total of 6 fighters, 3 bombers and 9 interceptors. There can also be a case that the crew of a capital ship can have differing FBI's from a ship of the same class, size and production line.
Shuttles & Transports
Now, when talking about ship sizes/classifications, there is that intermediary space between one-man-attack-craft, aka fighters, and corvetes (explained more later), aka armed & armored trailers. Shuttles and transports take that place.
A shuttle is usualy defined as a low-armnament, high carry capacity craft, usualy capable of both space and in-orbit travel. In military terms those are usualy dropships or logistics support, and whilst they might be armored, and maybe have a one-man turret for troop support, various treaties and designs limit the use of weaponry.
Now, transports are a upscaled versions of shuttles, and many dropships are dubbed as transports, but a real classification of a transport is a hauling vessel: to move large quantities around. Sure they could transport troops, but it would be no more than as a bus-type ride. Now, transports, being a industrial-type, are so heavely treatitise that military institutions should not put any serious weaponry. There are of course a few designs that keep weaponry, but only as dedicated designs. Private owners or institutions could arm them as anti-pirate measures, with enough paperwork to not be able to lift into orbit, and the guns themselves would be unable to deal any real harm to dedicated war vessels. Keep in mind, paramilitary or private security forces still count as military institutions, so the only attack transports they might own are those few dedicated designs. Most of the civilian (use) vessels are used for mining, family vehnicles, freights and so on...
The largest of transports can be as large as frigattes but are not classified as such.
Corvettes
Now, this is the fun shit-- stuff.
Corvettes are the smallest military grade capital ship. They have none, if-at-all, slugging capacity. They are usually used as either for single unit temporary headquarters, escorts for larger ships, as well as taking down capitals when using pack tactics with other corvettes, transports and other such logistical roles. They are usualy around 100 m. Usualy because some have effective lenght and some have actual lenght of 100 m.
The reason why most ships are not classified as corvettes is because most are classified as civilian ships, and therefore, do not, and cannot, have armnaments on them. Well, you could register a transport as a corvette, without weapons, but the legal fees would highly outweight the benefits in the long run. Many who work in legal institutions and are in charge of ship licensing say that if you want your ship to be a corvette, the only thing it's gonna give you is the right to a few guns, and not even good one's, so it's just better/cheaper for it to be called a transport, freighter or some other thing.
Frigattes
Well, these are the actual thing.
Frigattes are the smallest ship that can be classified as flagships, and are usualy used as mobile headquarters for specific purpose units, The Razor being the most prominent one. They usualy have more firepower than what their size might suggest, and their defences can only effectively block corvette armnaments: bombers can deal significant damage if left unchecked and because frigattes are so small any hit registeres, and because other frigattes are also armed to punch higher than their weight, corvettes, fighters and interceptors are about the only space vessels that can be ignored. Thusly, corvettes are also dubbed Glass Canons, since they can dish out damage, but can't take it. This makes their slugging capacity very weak: they might get of one slug, but would also go down in a few.
Average frigatte lenght is 150 m, with 100 on the short end, and 500 m on the large end.
Some civilian vessels can be dubbed frigattes, even though they are the size of transports and don't have armnaments, but are used in merchant, research or explorational fleets.
Cruisers
Cruisers are also dubbed Space Tractors, because for a ship to be called a cruiser by legal standards, they need to pass numerous, rigorous tests, usualy with simulated breaches, reactor malfunctions, running on emergency powers, life-support malfunctions, and usualy a combination of some or all of the above mentioned. Similarly as interceptors are the inverse of bombers, cruisers are the inverse of frigattes, whereas they are armored to the gills with some armnaments. Interestingly, sruisers have a relatively high slugging capacity, since they can take a lot of hits.
There is actually a very awkward moment when two enemy cruisers meet, since, both are heavely armored, but minimaly to averagely armed, so they can't really hurt eachother unless they have a sortie of FBI's, and with very good pilots, plus that the commanders are crazy/skilled enough to close the distance to within visible range, since, yes, they can't hurt the cruiser, but they can damn well harm the fighters. The most known military cruisers are The Kingdom's Crusader class Cruisers, who have been recorded to function with life-support at half capacity, reactor leaking fuel, Shrapnel Shielding barely being able to stop a bolt of a repairman, multiple decks on fire and they still managed to limp back to the nearest port with repair abilities.
Many luxury liners are designated as cruisers due to their size, less so for their durability even though they still have to pass it. They are also only affordable to tychoons or very rich organizations, on the civilian side of things. They are also designed to go on without resupplying for months if not for an entire year, and have a very good fuel consumption despite their size.
Cruisers start from about where frigattes left off: 500 m on the shortest, to the wapping 1,5 km in effective lenght on the large end, officialy. In reality, many military-designed cruisers are larger than destroyers, and a select few can grasp carrier sizes.
Destroyers
Now.... the workhorse, the backbone, the thing that any large spacefarring military must have in ample supply if it is going to fight any other large spacefarring military...
Destroyers are well armed, well armored, relatively slow though, minimum 1 km actual lenght vessels, designed for one thing only: destroy. They are a definition of slugging capacity: corvettes only stand a chance in 3 vs one fight if they are on the large side and the destroyed is on the smaller side, so a 5v1 is considered a 40% chance of vistory. Frigattes hope they can get a critical shot in and then book it, using their superior speed to dogde and run. Cruisers sweat (and swear), since both their speeds are about the same, and whilst cruisers have about 15% better shielding and/or armor, destroyers have about 40% better armnaments. Only other, same-class destroyers can nullify destroyers, and only extremely skilled commanders can go 1v1 destroyers if the other doesn't have a single FBI and this one does, with very skilled pilots. When a smaller destroyer and a larger destroyer meet, the outcome is usualy set: if the larger one can hit the first slug, it's a most likely win. If the smaller gets to dogde, it might have a chance to escape. Inversly from cruisers, destroyers can only travel without resupplying for about a month, tops. And their fuel consumption is throu the roof. All of this means that when a destroyer is being fully crewed, and given a set date by when to return, anyone can bet that something, somewhere, out there in space, will go boom... By the same logic, if many, like, 5 or 6 are being fully crewed and stocked, war is coming. Destroyers start at 1 km at the shortest and can go up to 4 km of effective length.
There are no civilian destroyers, though some might serve a improvised role if they are like large-scale debree cleaners, so they might need a big(ger) gun.
Carriers
Whilst carriers might sound intimidating... they, really... aren't...
Carriers are only considered a battle/war ship due to tradition, but now that nearly every capital ship can have a FBI, a concept of carrier, which is a ship dedicated to carrying fighters, sacrificing armnaments and a large portion of shields & armor, for mosquitoes, is, well... useless... A few frigattes could hostage a carrier, their sluggin capacity is nearly zero, relying on fighters for attack.
So, carriers have a new meaning: they are now used as siege engines. You stock a carrier with troops, supplies, fuel, ammo, amybe even some vehnicles if you're planning planetside, but only a few models of carrier can, get a corvette, or, really, any other capital ship, and you can usualy keep a moon (our Lua/Luna) or even a Earth-sized planet if you have one of everything, under siege, meaning, no one can enter or exit the planet without, at least, the besiegers noticing, and at best, the besiegers can hold the planetary body hostage if they manage to get troops planetside, and have enough pew pew and brains to use both the body and themselves in the best position to repell any relief efforts.
Carriers mostly pick up after destroyers, starting at 4,5 km on the short end, and reaching all the way up to 7 or, the largest one ever recorded, 10 km (The "Cobblers Shoulders").
Dreadnoughts
...
Do I really need to explain what these are, if you have reached this far down and are interested in sci-fi... well... I'm gonna do it anyway. By explaining what dreadnought means:
Dreadnought was originaly a name of a british destroyer that revolutionized the way of ship warfrare. Don't know the exact way, but from it's introduction forward, ships were classified as pre-dreadnought and post-dreadnought, until there were so few pre's that the name has fallen out of use...
It means "Know no fear" - "Dread", fear, "Nought", none. And at some point, someone decided to make a very big spaceship and call it a dreadnought. Fine by me.
And so, dreadnoughts are ships that are, literaly, ridicoluosly huge. The smallest one's, by definition, pick up after carriers, at 4,5 km, but only real ones start at 5, and even those are considered short. They are armed and armored to the teeth, and on average it is calculated that a single dreadnought can take on 5 destroyers just by shear slugging capacity, not counting fighters. If we did, destroyers have a slight advantage, but even that is discousionable, since the active defences and fighters of the dread' can take them down.
A class, not to be confused with a classification, represents the specific modifications in common with other ships, which might not be the same type. Example, a Crusader class Cruiser. List and examples of ship classes:
Crusader - Exclusively kept for the Kingdom's Crusader class Cruiser, the distinguishing feature is the Retaliative shielding which proves paticularly nasty against fighters, so only capitals can fight it, and even then, having such a large reactor makes their shields even more durable.
Excalibur - Exclusively kept for the Kingdom's Excalibur class dreadnought, was designed to keep a Earth-sized planet under siege. Not indvade it, just contrl the comings and goins of a planet, and also, when streched thin, they could surveil a Sol-type solar system, but could not act in any meaningful way. They are also one of the only known vessels that have Slipspace technology (see FTL) as their main source of faster-than-light travel.there are 5 known: "The Primarch", the first, used in the Crusade, "The Exile", currently traversing and patroling the borders of the Kingdom, the "Tempest" and "Torment", built nearly at the same time. They were designed to work together for large-scale shock-assaults (blitzkrieg), but the few times they were used, their commanders were so ferocious, that the concept of working together had to be scraped, and the two ships now works seperately, still doing their original purpose of supressing rebelions planet-side, but they now do it on their own rather than together. And the fithf, whos name and location is known only to a few, "The Arc of Greater Reclamation". It sits in the Kingdoms capital, and in the highly unlikely event that the capital is occupied, the emediate leaders, including the king, are to board it and leave, using it as a base of operations until the capital is reclaimed. Raza - Adopted as a peacetime stealth class by the Earths Territories, the Raza class has specialy designed Black Boxes that allow them to store almost all of the heat that the ship produces. Granted, specificaly designed sensors can discern Razas, but they are only used when war has been declared or on specificaly important worlds, hence, peactime. Spearbreak - A prototypal class of ships, of which only corvettes have been made. The concept was to have the shields run on minimum power, and when they take a hit, the reactor jumps into overdrive and stops incoming damage. Good concept, but since it was the first of it's kind, the power fluctuations were so great, many ships reactors were overloaded within the first few hits. The name has since been used as a phrase of warning "Don't be a spearbreak(er)", meaning something between "Are you sure?" and "Check your facts". A good thinf to come out of Spearbreakers however, is the beginings of Cyclonic shields.
Hydra - Consisting of fighters (fighters, bombers and interceptors), corvettes and frigattes, but there are a few cruisers, these ships have sacrificed their light armnaments, the various Point Defence Cannons, gaining more space, and filling that space with as many rockets as they can fit. They are seen as one-shot or one-kill-per-ammo type ships, and are thus always escorted and protected. Some were decided to keep their light armnaments, in the shape of cannons firing shells, shaped charges, and they have found their purpose is smaller fleets where frigattes are the flag ships, but even then, against a large, organised force they are protected.
Consider these two not canon, yet:
Kermeros - A predecesor of the Raza class, these were the true stealth ships, capable of hiding all of their heat, literaly making a void on the sensors, but since the sensors are scanning space, such a blip will go unnoticed... unless you know what to look for. They were used as deep-behind-enemy-lines type, sending and receving as little information as possible to avoid detection. Their hulls were also made to withstand more hazardous enviroments, making them even more stealthy. As with Hydra, only frigattes-down were made as Kermeros.
Vilcor - Mostly destroyers, but there were also everything under destroyers, were designed easy-use, having thick armor, actually incorporating granite plating, giving them their distinct brown color, strong shields and only a few strong weapons to attack. They were used for simple guns-blazing strategies, where they quickly close in and start hammering on the enemy. Their armor however, has made them a tad bit more sluggish, which is paticularly noticable when interacting with fighters.
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