Starship Categorization in Stellar Journey | World Anvil
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Starship Categorization

Disclaimer: Spaceships are commonly referred to as any combination of "star-", "space-", "void-", combined with "-ship, -craft,". They mean the same thing.   Space travel is obviously very important for the economy and culture of human space. While settlements and colonies could and do make do without any sort of contact with even other planets in their system, it's significantly more convenient to be able to get materials for cheaper or resources you just can't manufacture.   With that, there's three main categorizations based on operating range, and a two with several sub-classifications within them.
The three are these: Planetary, meaning around a planet and its orbit, sometimes within the planet's atmosphere. Interplanetary, between planets and other targets in the system, synonymous with in-system. And then interstellar, between stars.   The other two categories regard purpose. Military and civilian. Within them, military ships are divided between logistics and army vessels, and warships. Warships have their own classifications, which we won't talk about here. Civilian ships have less precise classifications, like tradeships, mining vessels, and so on.  

Civilian

Planetary

Within civilian craft, planetary ships are generally just inter-habitat shuttles and/or planetary landing and takeoff craft. Most personal vessels are also strictly orbit-bound.

Interplanetary

One of the most common interplanetary ships are so-called "cyclers". These cyclers travel, on a roughly elliptical path, regularily from a planet to another, and allow smaller ships to come with. This is the most common method of interplanetary travel, though by no means the only one. Mining ships often carry smaller craft to a section of an asteroid field, or a planetary ring, and have interplanetary travel capacity, often spending weeks or longer at their mining zones. There are some privately owned civilian ships that can do interplanetary travel, though they are expensive and often require an arduous amount of regulations and permissions.

Interstellar

These ships are generally very big, and almost always equipped with FTL travel drives, of course. Not always, but mostly. Tradecraft, colony ships, and large-scale transports. Interstellar tradeships go through a several-hundred-lightyear trip, trading and exchanging anything from advanced technology to raw materials, transporting people or even other craft along the way. Colony ships, of course, are intent on founding new settlements and colonies in often uninhabited systems. They're very big, often upwards of tens of kilometers, and are often converted to habitats at their destination. The largest tradeships get is around 50 or so kilometers, capable of transporting immense amounts of cargo, sometimes enough for an entire's solar system.  

Military

Effectively every military starship has interplanetary travel capacity, though only cruisers and up are often equipped with FTL drives. For that, larger, more mobile fleets employ Fleet-carrier ships, though any large ship can be used for such a purpose. The main category, the main craft of a fleet are warships, which do the actual combat, and have different classes like corvettes, cruiser, and battleships.   Logistics craft, which handle, well, logistics. Most fleets have a few agricultural craft, manufacturing vessels, storage, repair, and some even have antimatter manufacturing capable vessels, though those are mainly a stopgap, intended for a fleet with no access to proper antimatter production facilities.   Then you have the army transport craft. Not all fleets have these, and if they do, they often arrive alongside the logistics vessels, a time after the warfleet arrives. They can transport hundred of thousand of troops at highest, often in stasis, and are often in fleets of a few ten, though really big fleets can have thousands.

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