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Author Topic: functional ship class definitions  (Read 11746 times)

Nafensoriel

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Re: functional ship class definitions
« Reply #15 on: April 16, 2020, 09:05:01 AM »

I made an account to post this since there is still some bad history here.

The nomenclature and classification of ships at sea have been dependant upon the nation, time period, and culture and as such, there is no defined "this does this" or "this is x tonnage displacement" definition for any classification of ship ever. It must all be taken into the perspective of the time period and group using the classification.

The commonality seen is due to the origins of the words...

"Frigate" has no firm origin. This is one of the most debated words you can find for determining meaning.
It is generally accepted by all parties to have a meaning of "ship that fires" or "Fire ship". Considering the first "frigate" was a boat that had people who threw firebombs it seems appropriate.

Corvette is simply a "small ship".

Destroyers were named aptly because their profile is to destroy something. Be that a modern destroyer capable of shelling shore and ship targets or an old destroyer meant to hunt and kill a specific type of target. /edit It should be noted that a destroyer does not and did not require seaworthiness. It simply required that a ship was built for a purpose of destruction. This is somewhat blurred today with the Arleigh Burk class which is effectively a cruiser in its own right considering its multimission nature.

Cruisers were named such because they "cruise". Generally, all navies and all periods of time classify these as ships that transition from one place to another frequently. Appending a "light", "heavy", or "battle"  is just a descriptor of purpose and not indicative of any sort of standardization in gun size, armor, or displacement. The general historical rule is a cruiser is capable of being in motion at all times and all doctrine associated with them has been to keep them in motion.

"Battleships" are directly named for their intended purpose. "to battle". In all points in history, any ship exclusively designed for combat above all other considerations was considered a "battleship". Ironclads were a great example of the shift between "cruise" and "battle" terms as one could not and did not move an ironclad lightly or without purpose. One would have never used an ironclad as an escort across the Atlantic.

"Dreadnoughts" is actually one we know exactly where it came from and thus we can classify any ship "dreadnought" if it meets the classifications of its own name. "To Fear Nothing"
Interesting to note all current historical references to "dreadnoughts" are actually, in point of fact, battleships. The term never actually applied to a ship beyond common usage.


In scifi the terms become associated by size due to the nature of no mass limitations in space. (which is absurd there are most certainly mass limitations on structures in space)
It's weird but functional. It prevents situations where you might have a moon-sized ship with one big gun being called a destroyer while a 2km ship is called a battleship.
In reality, almost every single ship in space would be a cruiser or destroyer. Battleships are outdated by the concept of a mobile weapons platform when considering space defense.
« Last Edit: April 16, 2020, 09:09:38 AM by Nafensoriel »
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Scorpixel

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Re: functional ship class definitions
« Reply #16 on: April 16, 2020, 09:32:27 AM »

"Battleships" are directly named for their intended purpose. "to battle". In all points in history, any ship exclusively designed for combat above all other considerations was considered a "battleship". Ironclads were a great example of the shift between "cruise" and "battle" terms as one could not and did not move an ironclad lightly or without purpose. One would have never used an ironclad as an escort across the Atlantic.
Since it seems that here's a lot of people invested in the subject, i'll ask something that has been on my mind for quite some time.

The english language call this class "battleship", however in french (a long time major power with the UK, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands) they are called "cuirassé" as in "cuirasse", meaning breastplate.
Why is that? The most plausible idea i got would be because battleships and metal hulls arrived in roughly the same period, but i wouldn't want to make false assumptions.

mobile weapons platform
Would you happen to spend time in a certain dock in space?^^
I don't know if we're allowed to mention certain channels, that would be nice to see if there's stuff i missed.
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pedro1_1

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Re: functional ship class definitions
« Reply #17 on: April 16, 2020, 09:45:55 AM »

"Battleships" are directly named for their intended purpose. "to battle". In all points in history, any ship exclusively designed for combat above all other considerations was considered a "battleship". Ironclads were a great example of the shift between "cruise" and "battle" terms as one could not and did not move an ironclad lightly or without purpose. One would have never used an ironclad as an escort across the Atlantic.
Since it seems that here's a lot of people invested in the subject, i'll ask something that has been on my mind for quite some time.

The english language call this class "battleship", however in french (a long time major power with the UK, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands) they are called "cuirassé" as in "cuirasse", meaning breastplate.
Why is that? The most plausible idea i got would be because battleships and metal hulls arrived in roughly the same period, but i wouldn't want to make false assumptions.

Each languade their own, in Portuguese it's "Couraçado" and "Encouraçado", and it comes from the armor made out of Lether which is "Couraça", "Encouraçado" is for ships that place metal armor in a wodden hull, like the Ironclads and "Couraçado" is for hulls completely made out of metal, the adition of a "Super" before both is used to reffer to Dreadnoughts.
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SafariJohn

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Re: functional ship class definitions
« Reply #18 on: April 16, 2020, 10:44:40 AM »

Battleship is a contraction/evolution of Ship of the Line (of Battle), sailing ships that were designed to line up and blast at the enemy line of ships. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_the_line
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Nafensoriel

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Re: functional ship class definitions
« Reply #19 on: April 16, 2020, 10:46:17 AM »

The english language call this class "battleship", however in french (a long time major power with the UK, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands) they are called "cuirassé" as in "cuirasse", meaning breastplate.
Why is that? The most plausible idea I got would be because battleships and metal hulls arrived in roughly the same period, but i wouldn't want to make false assumptions.
Oh boy, this is a fun one :D. I answered the topic from an English perspective simply because the moment you start adding in cultures and languages things go from weird to quantum physics really quickly.

In this case, its because different functional ethos is expressed from different collective word usage. It would take a year to answer this adequately and would be valid grounds for a research paper all its own. It's easier to say that while word origins seem similar and the cultural usage is identical the origin of the term are different. IE While the french call it a "crust of armor" it is still the same functional expression of "a ship of battle" just viewed from a different history and different cultural expression of said history.

A good example is "Tank". Originally a codeword or project name(can't remember) the British coined the phrase because their prototypes looked like oil or cistern tanks(again can't remember which). The Germans on the other hand just went typical german and called it an armored wagon. It's collectively known by all parties today as  "tank" for the purposes of defining what the object is and does(from the English POV) but they both have different origins.

Quote
mobile weapons platform
Would you happen to spend time in a certain dock in space?^^
I don't know if we're allowed to mention certain channels, that would be nice to see if there's stuff i missed.
Not where I was going but not a bad example. I was more pointing out that wet navy tactics have terrain features and weather that restrict what the ship can or can't do at any given time. In space, while there is such a thing as terrain and arguably weather the distances are so vast that functionally tactics get split into two categories. Those who can get away and those who cant.
Making a "larger" ship for the purposes of defense or weapons count would tend to the absurd because there is no way in hades you are going to ever force an engagement beyond area denial.
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Igncom1

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Re: functional ship class definitions
« Reply #20 on: April 16, 2020, 11:04:26 AM »

Yeah to be fair with how SS plays, space is more of a themed ocean. So 'realistic' depictions of space warfare won't apply.

Which is like.... missile spam? Until we get functional lasers or something like that? Just massive swarms of interplanetary missiles and defence missiles. Something like that. Missile command stuff.
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Amoebka

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Re: functional ship class definitions
« Reply #21 on: April 16, 2020, 11:44:08 AM »

Actually, since this thread is off meds anyway...  ;D

Can military history people explain why modern ships even have guns? Aren't missiles just better for everything? Is it simple cost efficiency?

If yes, then space combat might also use some railguns/guns to cut costs.
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pedro1_1

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Re: functional ship class definitions
« Reply #22 on: April 16, 2020, 11:49:58 AM »

Actually, since this thread is off meds anyway...  ;D

Can military history people explain why modern ships even have guns? Aren't missiles just better for everything? Is it simple cost efficiency?

If yes, then space combat might also use some railguns/guns to cut costs.

It's because artillery is much cheaper than missiles when bombarding coastlines, it also helps that it saves the missiles for other ships and HP targets.

I also don't think railguns will be used in space combat, since you need a hit or you have ruined the day or someone, somewhere, missiles and lasers are better at hiting stuff, and that alone is a reason to use only missiles
« Last Edit: April 16, 2020, 11:55:52 AM by pedro1_1 »
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SafariJohn

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Re: functional ship class definitions
« Reply #23 on: April 16, 2020, 12:17:04 PM »

Ultra-advanced, Mach 3, guided gun shell - <$100,000
Roughly equivalent anti-missile missile (MIM-104 Patriot) - $2,000,000


Missiles are more expensive in every way: development, materials, construction facilities, storage facilities, transport, storage space on ship (how many you can carry), etc.

i.e. missiles have MANY drawbacks.
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Thaago

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Re: functional ship class definitions
« Reply #24 on: April 16, 2020, 01:35:58 PM »

In addition, anti-missile defense systems, while they are not 100%, also exist, so a hard target may take multiple missiles to guarantee a hit and kill. Shells could potentially be intercepted, but in practice they are far less fragile. (most missiles can be mission killed via fragmentation damage to control surfaces, guidance systems, engine, etc: a close by "flak" explosion will do the job. Advanced guided shells are much more durable, and unguided shells can only be stopped by a direct impact of something large.)

The main advantage of missiles though is the extreme range. Its no good to have a cheap weapon system if you have already been sunk :p.

With regards to space combat: believe it or not lasers are "close" range weapons (beam divergence) with very delicate equipment (optics). It may sound silly, but a spray of sand going at spaceship velocities would mess up any laser weapon really quick if it didn't have an armored cover (which it can't fire through).
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Igncom1

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Re: functional ship class definitions
« Reply #25 on: April 16, 2020, 01:49:14 PM »

You say spray of sand, but what you mean is to shoot the lasers with fragments of material moving at such high speeds that they might be more like bombs upon impact!

Yeah that'll do the trick.
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Nafensoriel

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Re: functional ship class definitions
« Reply #26 on: April 16, 2020, 02:36:05 PM »

In addition, anti-missile defense systems, while they are not 100%, also exist, so a hard target may take multiple missiles to guarantee a hit and kill. Shells could potentially be intercepted, but in practice they are far less fragile. (most missiles can be mission killed via fragmentation damage to control surfaces, guidance systems, engine, etc: a close by "flak" explosion will do the job. Advanced guided shells are much more durable, and unguided shells can only be stopped by a direct impact of something large.)

The main advantage of missiles though is the extreme range. Its no good to have a cheap weapon system if you have already been sunk :p.

With regards to space combat: believe it or not lasers are "close" range weapons (beam divergence) with very delicate equipment (optics). It may sound silly, but a spray of sand going at spaceship velocities would mess up any laser weapon really quick if it didn't have an armored cover (which it can't fire through).

Modern anti-missile systems are actually evolving faster than we can design missiles to penetrate said systems. There is a very real chance in 50 years we will return to gun-based platforms even for navy operations(depending on how drones play out). FMPDS type systems, in general, are incredibly effective and orders of magnitude cheaper than the missiles themselves. This is why "swarm" based doctrines are being developed by pretty much everyone because as it stands right now you either oversaturate the defenses or the target is effectively immune to long-ranged damage.


There is a constant assumption that lasers are a good weapon for space as well as missiles. In reality, both don't really work all that well and realistically neither does relativistic sand. All such systems come with significant drawbacks with what we know of physics and our current material technology.

Missiles have the issue of mass. The rocket equation still applies to space and the trade-off between range, tracking, and payload becomes very critical. If the missile is large enough to loiter and hunt on its own then is it going to ever be fast enough or have the longevity enough to actually score kills? If it is fast enough to always win the race is it going to have range or even the ability to track the target on its own? Tracking in AU distances is critical even for missiles because transferring all that ability to the missile itself creates a huge mass penalty.

Lasers require optics to see a target long before you can even shoot a target. The most forgotten part of "scifi space weapons" is a 12-inch telescope will give you a blurry image and only a blurry image. All photography and thus all optical tracking solutions require light collection. With telescopes the larger the aperture the more clear the image because you do not need to oversaturate the image to see weak details. A 1km object at 5au would be an extremely small and dim object. Anything behind that object would wash out any details of the target ship and would most probably obscure its actual location as well. Radar works but its always 2x slower than photons since you need a return to see.

Relativistic sand fails because of the rocket equation. While it would carry significant energy the mass is low enough that any body(including the sand itself!) in its path will distort the entire field. A small asteroid in the way might produce a clean miss or distort the cloud enough that it is no longer wide enough to be devastating. This is compounded by the fact that to get to the required speed requires energy. Would you be able to put enough sand in a rocket to actually achieve your objective? Would the field be to small? If you can accelerate to relativistic velocities do you need relativistic sand as a weapon anymore? Most likely(as with most weapon systems) once you have the technology to use relativistic sand as a weapon you would also have the direct counter as well.

Without "novel" technologies(thank you scifi authors!) real space warfare would be either total surprise or long brutal exchanges with multiple types of weapons.
Sorry for nerding a bit.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: functional ship class definitions
« Reply #27 on: April 16, 2020, 04:06:51 PM »

Based on my experience studying some orbital dynamics in graduate school, it seems pretty implausible to me that an unguided projectile could hit something with a size on the order of a kilometer or smaller that is on the order of an AU away. Even if you could perfectly calculate the required initial velocity and position to hit the target accounting for all the gravitational disturbances from moons and asteroids and stuff (which I think is implausible in the first place), the smallest motion of the target would mean you would miss. If they just noticed the massive expenditure of energy required to fire the projectile at the speeds required to cross the solar system in any small amount of time, they could just vent the airlock or dump the waste and they would probably dodge it. I would guess any practical 'long range' weapons would have to have on-board guidance and control, and aim to make many corrections over the course of the maneuver to successfully hit the target. That combat would more closely resemble sending an autonomous spacecraft to the other ship which would then launch a missile when it is sufficiently close. This stuff would probably take place on the time scale of weeks for interplanetary combat. More likely, combat would not take place at such extreme distances  but rather in orbit around planets. Then the distances and travel times are much more reasonable.

Obviously sci-fi hand-waving can solve all problems though.
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DatonKallandor

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Re: functional ship class definitions
« Reply #28 on: April 16, 2020, 05:16:12 PM »

Hitting things that can manouver in space is really hard if your projectile can't also maneuver. And that includes if your projectile travels at the speed of light like a laser. A light-second is about the very edge of where you might hit and that's not very far for space.
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calvin1211

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Re: functional ship class definitions
« Reply #29 on: April 17, 2020, 12:43:49 AM »

Ship classifications are based off size not because of some arbitary sci-fi or military history trope. Form follows function, and size is as much a part of form as anything else. The requirements of roles force ship design into certain size categories, and thus you can tell a ship's rough role and capabilities by its size.
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Mahan identified the fundamental theories that dictated naval combat in history. The gist of it was that splitting your navy up into smaller squadrons and  spreading them about was dooming them to get gobbled up one by one in a repeated defeat-in-detail. Hence, the optimal strategy was to blob your entire navy up into one big doomstack, which would inevitably get thrown at your foe's doom blob in one big decisive battle. The loser of that battle would be out of ships, and since ships would require literal years to build replacements would emerge from the yards one at a time and get mobbed. The winner was free to do as he pleased, and has basically won the war at the point. To win the war, you thus had to win that battle at all costs.
The ship required for that battle thus required big guns and big defences, to brawl it out with best of the enemy navy and win; it also needed a large operational range, to make it to your opponent's home ports and ram your victory down their politician's throats once the navy was dealt with, and so needed large stores of provisions. These demands all converged to the same solution: build BIG. Take advantage of economies of scale to concentrate as much power as possible into a single location. Such a big ship demanded a big investment of resources and capital, hence the term Capital ship. In the age of sail this would be the ship-of-the-line, mounting 70-100+ guns on a large hull with maneuverability a secondary concern. While the first ironclads were based directly on frigate designs this was very much their intended role, and thus competitive pressures kept them growing bigger and bigger until they became the "line-of-battle-ship" AKA battleship of the WW1/WW2 period.

But Mahanian theory is also wrong, or to be more precise incomplete. Navies also have to protect marine trade and protect coastlines. Expecting capital ships to spread out and patrol this wide expanse of coastline is folly, and goes against their intended purpose. Instead another class of ships is needed. Cheap to make and operate, so that many can be bought to cover large areas; nimble and manuverable and possessed of enough speed to run down merchantmen (but no more, because speed is expensive); and needing little gun or protection, just enough to intimidate merchants into compliance and scare off pirates. Going small covered the needs while keeping cost to a minimum. It meant low operational range, but these patrol vessels didn't need to go far beyond coastal waters. These are your corvettes, sloops, cutters, brigs etc, the naval equivalent of a garrison force. Modern days see ocean-going patrol vessels of a few hundred tons, and anti-submarine and anti-air requirements for convoy escort bump up mass even further to produce what in WW2 were also called "frigates, "destroyer escorts", "kaibokan" etc depending on what service you belonged to, but the patrol role remains in its demand for small, cheap, wide-spread ships.

This also leaves open another niche to be fulfilled. Distrupting your foe's shipping is tempting, and overmatching the patrol ships is relatively easy with a modest increase in size which also allows you to load the provisions you need to get to your foe's waters and hit their merchants. At the same time, you don't want to go too big; you'll need a lot of these ships that will have to spread out and operate on their own to effectively hunt merchants, you need to outmaneuver the inevitable retaliatory capital ship doomblob (since it'll be operating on its own, trying to outfight them at a hefty numerical disadvantage will never work), and if the worst happens, operating far from support or reinforcements in the enemy's backyard, it'll be cheaper to replace. Also relevant are a variety of other roles, such as protecting your merchants or other secondary targets from your foe's own raiders, bulking up distant colonial garrisons on the cheap, or scouting and conducting harassment to support the main fleet; tasks that require something bigger than a small patrol ship but not rating the attention of the full battleline. Thus does design of these ships converge to a medium-sized vessel, larger and longer-ranged and more dangerous than patrol ships, but smaller and faster and cheaper than the capital ship. Frigates filled this role in the age of sail, and with steam power came their descendants in the cruisers. The battlecruiser is also part of this lineage, caused by cruiser-on-cruiser competition forcing them to grow bigger to outmatch each other.

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