Ship Classification

I just put the final ship, the Myrmidon, into Anathema. (If you don't know what Myrmidon means, look it up. It's pretty kick-ass. :D) It's a very, very advanced little ship that fills a role somewhere between a gunship and a heavy fighter. Think if you took and Manta and combined it with a RAGE gunboat. So lots and lots of speed and very powerful weapons, light, and very weak defenses. The problem is, I can't really find an analogous naval ship class to classify the Myrmidon. I'm currently settling with "Fast Attack Vessel," but that just doesn't do it for me. It just feels too shallow.

Anyways, its intended role is to be a fast raiding ship, with 1-day jumps, to do quick hit-and-run missions and then get the hell out ASAP. Here's the SY graphic for it so that you can get a little feel for it.

Anything come to mind for anybody? I've already tossed out Gunship and Gunboat as being way too broad, Heavy Fighter as being not entirely accurate, and Light Cruiser is already a designation for the Épée class Excalibur, and Destroyer as being much too large as a classification for a smaller vessel.

I know that this is a very petty topic, but things like this are very important to me for consistency throughout the plug and creates a nice feeling of familiarity for many players. At least, I hope it does.

Heavy Ambush Craft, Heavy Attack Transport, Mobile Long Range Weapons Platform (MLRWP is a cool acronym, right?), Heavily Armored Assault Vehicle (HAAS). Those are the only ones that come to mind.

Corvette?

Hit-and-Run Attack Vehicle (HaRAV)

Just to name a few:

Heavy Assault Fighter
Pocket Cruiser
Assault Gunboat
Heavy Combat Vessel

That's all I can come up with at the moment. See how you like those.

Wow that was quick!

I love the MLRWP one, but unfortunately only one variant is long-range, that being the long-range variant (duh!) Great idea though! Heavily Armored Assault Vehicle is nice too, but it has really weak armor. However, the Assault Vehicle/Vessel part is nice. I'll play around with that one. I tossed around Corvette as well, and that actually fits the ship very well (since Corvettes were originally small, fast, lightly armored ships that tracked down and destroyed submarines, which eventually evolved into the much larger Destroyer). Unfortunately, Corvette is already taken by the RAGE gunboat.

Assault Gunboat is nice too as the "assault" implies something specified for hit-and-run. Maybe Heavy Assault Vessel? HAV is a decent acronym.

Thanks all for the input! I'll mess around some more and see what I can come up with. Although Heavy Assault or Heavy Assault Gunboat/Gunship do seem like very likely contenders.

I like HaRAV the best, but that's just me.

I have nothing to contribute to this topic other then the fact that i found it very difficult to not explode from the sheer awesomeness of that pic.

I am soooooo going to play this when it's out.

I didn't have any trouble not exploding. I just didn't look at it.

Aw, thanks Pi! You probably already know this, but the Teaser is already out. However, the Myrmidon will not be available until the final installment, out of probably 4-6.

The Myrmidon is definitely my magnum opus to date, and I'm taking real good care of her. Hence the going to the boards to get ideas for properly classifying her. :laugh:

Cosmic, I liked the Hit-and-Run Vehicle too, but I don't think I could stand calling a ship a "Harvey."

Hmm, you know, this is going to be the only ship in the plug capable of using the Improved Cloaking Device too, so perhaps we could work the word "Stealth" into there somewhere. Everybody knows that when you pile adjectives together, they have a geometric effect on coolness. Ohh I know, how about "Tactical Assault Vessel?" Or perhaps strategic?

This post has been edited by Archon : 30 August 2007 - 01:09 AM

May I suggest coming up with a naming convention that applies to all ship from that race? That's the way it's done mostly... You can define a set of 'rules' that indicate which words to use, depending on the size, speed, armor, loadout, abilities etc... of a ship... It really makes things easier...

I don't know how big this ship is, but it looks rather small, heavy weaponry, light armor, fast and with a crew of about 1 or 2...
You could come up with something like: Class D (small) - HW (heavy weapons) - Tactical (light armor) Fighter or Hunter (fast and primary use of ship).

So it would read: Class D HW Tactical Fighter (CD-HW-TF) or Class D HW Tactical Hunter (CD-HW-TH).

Heavy Raider?

Strike Cruiser?

@reinierk, on Aug 30 2007, 04:16 AM, said in Ship Classification:

May I suggest coming up with a naming convention that applies to all ship from that race? That's the way it's done mostly... You can define a set of 'rules' that indicate which words to use, depending on the size, speed, armor, loadout, abilities etc... of a ship... It really makes things easier...

I don't know how big this ship is, but it looks rather small, heavy weaponry, light armor, fast and with a crew of about 1 or 2...
You could come up with something like: Class D (small) - HW (heavy weapons) - Tactical (light armor) Fighter or Hunter (fast and primary use of ship).

So it would read: Class D HW Tactical Fighter (CD-HW-TF) or Class D HW Tactical Hunter (CD-HW-TH).

The man is brilliant. Listen.

I absolutely LOVE that idea for naming conventions, but since these ships belong to what is a sort of subsidiary to the Federation Navy, it would make it rather inconsistent with Federation naming criteria. But, for adding an entirely new gov't

That little speech alone got me excited for your plug Reineir!

The Scorpion Class/Striker.

@zapp, on Aug 30 2007, 09:51 PM, said in Ship Classification:

The Scorpion Class/Striker.

I like that.

Holy cow, take it easy, it was just a brain-fart
Glad I could/can be off help though... When I'm ready to model ships in blender, I will use something similar for the terran ships... I might need to get creative on the other races though

The Federation is very down to Earth (well, today's meaning of it anyway) when it comes to naming bigger ships, like the Aurorans.
The only things they name differently from their function are the fighters.
The RAGE Gunboat is basically a R.A.G.E. Gunboat. The Carrier is a Carrier. The Patrol Gunboat is a Gunboat made for patrolling.

So if you're making a Gunboat, call it Something Gunboat.

Unless you want to make this different from the stock Fed navy (in which case you'd have to justify it).

@pace, on Aug 31 2007, 12:28 PM, said in Ship Classification:

The Federation is very down to Earth (well, today's meaning of it anyway) when it comes to naming bigger ships, like the Aurorans.
The only things they name differently from their function are the fighters.
The RAGE Gunboat is basically a R.A.G.E. Gunboat. The Carrier is a Carrier. The Patrol Gunboat is a Gunboat made for patrolling.

So if you're making a Gunboat, call it Something Gunboat.

Unless you want to make this different from the stock Fed navy (in which case you'd have to justify it).

Way to spoil the fun.

Well, I don't want to give too much away right here, but it is kind of a subsidiary of the Fed navy but wholly separate. However, you are right about the naming conventions. With the new ships that have already been released though, the ship's actual names have been less plain, but with a ship class that follows Fed naming conventions, e.g. the Titan is a Battleship, the Sentinel is a Missile Frigate, and the Demon is an Interceptor.

Perhaps this can be explained by the fact that now that there's a different person in charge (the player), he/she decided to name ships something flashier. :laugh:

So, I guess I'll try to keep it in the vein of practical Federation classes, which leads back to the original problem in post #1: it's a hard ship to classify. :rolleyes: I'm thinking Tactical Assault Vessel, because of the raiding-based nature of the craft and its being the only improved-cloak capable ship in this particular Novaverse outside of the Polaris.