Giorgio[/quote]
Personally I don' t really like that size class distinctions are arbitrary. It means that people cannot talk about ships in generic terms with any common basis. Saying "Three cruisers and 9 destroyers" doesn't really mean anything. I would prefer if there was a table so people could customize the class ranges, but with standard defaults so most people would have a common basis for discussion. I realize with open ship designs that there will be huge differences in capabilities between one cruiser and the next, but if the tonnages were in consistent ranges by default, at least it would give you some rough idea.[/quote]
This would be pretty stupid from a RPG point of view (no disrespect meant)
If my empire/nation is capable of building ships from 1.000 to 6.000t, for example, of course my (very few) 6.000t warships would be called battleships.
Who in his right mind would call the biggest ships his navy has, a corvette or frigate?
This would only make sense, if you are a 2nd or 3rd rate navy, where the 1st rate navies are a measure bar for your ships. Like, Britain has 6 battleships of 11.500t in service, and Portugal launches its first warship at 1.500t. Of course, this couldn´t be classed as a battleship, as you know, battleships are supposed to be at least 10.000t.
If the portugese navy would be the only one on all of earth, however, this 1.500t ship would be the biggest and meanest around and so rightfully deserve the classification of battleship.
A general classification for all empires, based on tonnage, would be highly "unrealistic", IMO.
If you want to talk with others about your fleet size, instead of talking about 3 CA and 9 DD, just talk about three 7.000t CAs and nine 3.500t DDs. Problem solved.
Ralph Hoenig, Germany
P.S. What´s up with the BBCode? No matter what I am trying in the board settings (where it shows "BBCode active Yes"), I don´t seem to be able to get it to work (when posting, it reads: BBCode is OFF)???