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[Suggestion] Rename the ship types
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
One of the things that always bugged me with the Klingon ships is that they've never had ship catagories like the Federation ship types. This was kind of ok when there was only 1 skin for each ship type, but now that we are getting more and more varaints added, the naming system is making much less sence, for example, the B'rel class Bird of Prey having the B'rel, D'Gavama and Koloth skins, therefore, would it be possable to rename the variants to something like as follows:-
Bird of Preys
Light Raider - B'rel, Kolath, D'Gavama
Raider - Quldun, Mchor
Attack Raider - Norgh
Fast Attack Raider - Ki'tang
Strike Raider - Hegh-Ta, Hah
Raptors
Raptor - Somraw
Heavy Raptor - Qorgh
Tactical Raptor - Pach
Advanced Raptor - Qin, Birok
Battlecruisers
Battlecruiser - K'tanco
Heavy Battlecruiser - K'T'Linga/D7, K'T'Linga refit
Assault Battlecruiser - Vorcha, Torkaht
Command Battlecruiser - Negh'var, Qudaj
Carriers
Carrier - Vo'Quv, Vod'leh
Battle Carrier - Karfi
Most of the VA ships have specific catagoes, like Patrol Cruiser or Support vessel, so these are ok. I genuinly belive that sorting out the ship types like this will make it much easier for players to tell the ship types much better than the current system whilst at the same time make the system more logical when we have different variants in each type. The names above are just suggestions, the names could obviously be altered as required.
Bird of Preys
Light Raider - B'rel, Kolath, D'Gavama
Raider - Quldun, Mchor
Attack Raider - Norgh
Fast Attack Raider - Ki'tang
Strike Raider - Hegh-Ta, Hah
Raptors
Raptor - Somraw
Heavy Raptor - Qorgh
Tactical Raptor - Pach
Advanced Raptor - Qin, Birok
Battlecruisers
Battlecruiser - K'tanco
Heavy Battlecruiser - K'T'Linga/D7, K'T'Linga refit
Assault Battlecruiser - Vorcha, Torkaht
Command Battlecruiser - Negh'var, Qudaj
Carriers
Carrier - Vo'Quv, Vod'leh
Battle Carrier - Karfi
Most of the VA ships have specific catagoes, like Patrol Cruiser or Support vessel, so these are ok. I genuinly belive that sorting out the ship types like this will make it much easier for players to tell the ship types much better than the current system whilst at the same time make the system more logical when we have different variants in each type. The names above are just suggestions, the names could obviously be altered as required.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Though I would suggest a minor change to the order of your battlecruiser line.
Light Battlecruiser - K'tanco
Battlecruiser - K'T'inga/D7, K'T'inga refit
Assault Battlecruiser - Vorcha, Torkaht
Heavy Battlecruiser - Negh'var, Qudaj
The plural of "Bird of Prey" is "Birds of Prey", not "Bird of Preys".
The Vor'cha was actually called an "Attack Cruiser" in TNG, not an "Assault Battlecruiser", maybe something like "Attack Battlecruiser" might be a good compromise between its canon designation and the need to keep in line with the Battlecruiser designations in this game.
I think this one should just be Command Cruiser. It's Klingon, they know what they're for. This might be my federation POV talking, but the battle part seems redundant on this one.
It's just to ensure there is no confusion between the Federation and Klingon cruisers thats all.
Maybe, but maybe this is just the way Klingons think of their ships in terms of terminology.
When Duras (improperly) repeated Archer's words in "Judgement" he said Archer had referred to his ship as "Battlecruiser Enterprise".
Also the Klingons in Star Trek 3 referred to the Enterprise as "Federation Battlecruiser" when they saw her on sensors.
So it seems to be the typical way for Klingons to call certain ships battlecruisers the Federation might simply call cruisers (and the Romulans possibly Warbirds).
That this was ignored, and that the skill tree, names, and organization of classes can be so confusing puts more weight onto the 'after thought' they gave the KDF after they started tossing out that lie about us originally being PvP only.
The only soft canon that used this was "Armada 2", which Cryptic cannot use due to license problems.
So they CAN'T use it no matter how much anyone of use would want it.
Just like the Vod'Leq is the same name for the Negh'var variant and the "Emperor Class" from Klingon Academy.
Games are totally independent of each other.
Battlecruiser to me has a very visceral feel of a heavy warship. Putting Attack or Strike before that can be still keep the Klingon "every cruiser is a Battlecruiser" while implying that these are lighter ships than a battlecruiser.
I would also make K't"inga a standard "Battlecruiser" and a couple of other changes.
My revised cruiser names:
Attack/Strike Battlecruiser - K'tanco
Battlecruiser - K't'iinga/D7, K't'iinga refit
Heavy Battlecruiser - Vorcha, Torkaht
Assault/Command Battlecruiser - Negh'var, Qudaj
Just my 2 cents.
OK, who had "8" in the pool for this one? Come collect your quatloos.
While the Klingons seem to use it in the manner described above, "Battlecruiser" isn't really interchangable with "Cruiser". Historically, it referred to large warships (at many times, larger than their contemporary Battleships) which were armed with the largest, Battleship-calibre guns, but given the higher speeds and lighter armour of Cruisers. Here endeth the history lesson.
Rather, I would suggest the following terms.
K'tanco class - Honestly, I get more of a "Destroyer" vibe from this ship, but it wouldn't jibe well with the terms for the rest of the category. Strike Cruiser implies a lighter, swifter vessel, which fits it's position on the tree. An alternate suggestion would be Escort Cruiser, which would also tie it to being a lighter, swifter ship than the heavier cruisers.
K't'iinga/D7 class Battlecruiser - Canon designation. No real reason to change it.
Vorcha class Attack Cruiser - Canon designation. No real reason to change it.
Negh'var class - My default suggestion would be "Warship", but it doesn't fit the Cruiser meme. Beyond that, Command Cruiser or Assault Cruiser seem to be most apt, given the role the ship was seen used as in DS9; namely, as the Flagship, and using it's ventral cannons to bring down DS9's shields (an aside, the Negh'Var model ingame is still missing those pods, iirc).
On the subject of type realignments, I'd suggest some more realignments on the Federation side;
Miranda/Centaur/Shir'kar class Frigate - Among other reason, this will align them with the NPC versions of the ship you see throughout the game. It also removes them from being lumped in with the Cruiser line, when it seems like they're meant to be starting points for all three types.
Constitution class Cruiser (TOS) - Both Constitutions are generally accepted as Heavy Cruisers, but it's understandable that both can't hold the title given they're on different tiers. This, at least, keeps them from being "Light Cruisers" which chafes a bit.
Constitution/Excalibur/Vesper class Heavy Cruiser - Coupled with above and below, this brings the type more in line with the Canon designation.
Excelsior class Testbed Cruiser - I dislike the "Advanced" label slapped on a bunch of ships, as all of them are decidedly....no longer advanced in the 2400s. Testbed ties in to the Excelsior's ingame gimmick and most notable appearance in the movies; as the Testbed for the Transwarp engines. (realistically, it's just a newer ship of the Constitution's type, a Heavy Cruiser, but I recognize the need for it to be classed differently)
Cheyenne class Scout Cruiser - The four nacelle, no secondary hull layout of these ships suggests they are built for sustained travel, but not much else. Labelling them "Heavy cruisers" seems particularly improper, as they seem lighter in their layout than the more conventional cruisers, lacking features and backups that the secondary hull normally employs.
Sovereign class Command Cruiser - To be blunt, I'm not a fan of the concept of Starfleet's flagship (the E-E) being known for Assaulting things, so here's the most apt alternative I can come up with offhand.
II've also got a bone to pick with "Dreadnaught Cruiser", but don't have anything to suggest at the moment. (Dreadnaught Cruiser should just be Dreadnaught, but I can understand why Cruiser has to be in there somewhere.)
NX class Prototype - I agree with the need to have a 'starter' escort, given Oberth and TOS Connie filling the other two types, but the term "Light Escort" doesn't seem valid on several levels.
Prometheus class Battle Escort - Ideally, I want to call this a Tactical Cruiser, but I can see the reasoning for keeping the Cruiser label off of anything not strictly a cruiser. But I definately want to drop the "Advanced" title. These ships were new during Voyager....30+ years before the game. Alternatively, Combat Escort.
Disclaimer; I intensely dislike the convoluted 4 word classes for most of the high-end science ships to begin with, so there's a definite attempt to get most of them condensed or redesignated.
Oberth class Scout Vessel - Among other reasons (including that pattern of me not liking slapping "Light/Heavy" in front of something), there's the implication from STIII in the line where Chekov thinks he scanned a "Scout class Wessel"; In fact, it's a Bird-of-Prey, but Kirk also says it could be Grissom.
Nebula class Surveillance Vessel - As with the Prometheus and Excelsior, it's worth noting that these ships are 40-50 years old, and no longer Advanced. Surveillance ties into their Tachyon-based Cloak-detection gimmick.
Intrepid class Survey Vessel - I get the reference to just how long-ranged Voyager turned out to be, but the premise of the show was that she wasn't supposed to go quite that long-ranged. I have my own preferred designation for the Intrepid, but in keeping with the ____ Vessel meme of this overall category, this is the best I can come up with offhand. Survey is missing from any of the Science Vessels, and Luna seems the most apt for the moniker
Luna class Fleet Science Vessel - I dislike the attempt to combine "Reconnaissance" with "Science Vessel". Short version; Recon is a military term, and is what you get a Scout to do. This isn't an ideal name, but it keeps in the ____Vessel convention.
Destiny class - I'd really like to suggest something less unweildy than the current DSSV moniker, but I've kind of run out of science/research-y terms, and of all the lengthy named categories, this one's the least offensive.
Excellent idea. Some standardization and clarification is a good idea.
I agree with most of what you said, more so been Ex-Navy myself!
The only reason I can see it been better to use the term battlecruiser rather than cruiser is to prevent any confusion with Starfleet ships, more so when weapon types have the ship types they can be equiped on.
I'm also not overly keen on using the term 'advanced', but with so many ship types in the game, it starts getting hard to come up with new terms whilst not duplicating any already in use that could cause confusion!
The script referred to that ship as "Voodieh" class.
It was actually quite maneuverable in that episode, similar to the Negh'Var in STO yet quite unlike the Negh'Var from DS9.
The version from DS9 is completely missing and I'd like to add that the (probably-slightly-less-than-soft-canon) "Starships" module of the Decipher RPG suggests that that version is not really maneuverable.
Which would fit what we saw in "Way of the Warrior".
So my propoasl would be to use the term "Heavy Attack Cruiser" for the Negh'Var version we have ingame right now to fit "All Good Things" yet keep the Negh'var differentiated from the Vor'cha terminologywise.
I'm also hoping that one day we'll get the Negh'var incarnation from "Way of the Warrior", but as a seperate ship similar to the way the Galaxy and Galaxy-X are closely related cousins.
For that one perhaps "Negh'Var Heavy Battlecruiser" or a simple "Negh'Var Battleship" would be fitting.
And that Negh'var could have a spinal lance type thing like the "siege disruptors" it fired at DS9 when they tried to talk to them.:D
I'm liking where this thread's going though, I also agree that everything being a battle cruiser seems strange, they carried battleship level weaponry, but only cruiser level armour so they could kill anything that could catch them and run from anything that could outfight them, the Royal Navy lost moe ships than it ought to have at Jutland partly because battle cruisers were put in the line of battle toe to toe with battleships, and that's not the role they were designed for.
I'd say the Vor'cha was a battlecruiser, and the Negh'var a battleship, if we went by the strictly naval classifications, they have the same weaponry essentially, but one is more agile and one is tougher.
I made an effort to avoid duplicating any categories in my list, but that may eventually become moot if the plans to add more factions into the game eventually comes to pass. There's only so many terms to go around, less so if you're trying to keep things consistent, and somewhat realistic.
I could do a more comprehensive re-classification of the game, but I'm guessing Cryptic won't want to change anything more than absolutely neccesary (as shown by their continued refusal to fix the rank structure). So that means keeping things mostly in line with what they've already established, unless they want to provide more detailed guidance on the matter. That means, that while the Negh'Var does seem to come off as more of a Battleship than a Cruiser, it has to remain a Cruiser to tie it in with the rest of the ships in it's line.
The good news is the Romulans can use "Warbird" for their cruisers, the bad news is they'd use "Bird of Prey" for their smaller ones.
Well we can always add "armored space thingy" to the list when push comes to shove.;)
Well, there's a couple of options from the literature when it comes to Birding up the Romulan ship tree when things get to that point; Preybird (Proto-BOP), Swarmbird, Stormbird (Romulan D-7s), et cetera. We're a ways off from that, but if Cryptic wants some help/advice in that area, they know how to contact me. :P
"Battlebird" also sounds kinda fun.
The guys who make the Dominion War mod for Birth of the Federation use that one for their basic cruiser.
I'm currently working on a post-Nemesis refit for a Romulan D-7 3-d model (the novel "The Art of the Impossible" indicates the House of Duras aquired both wealth and close ties with the Romulans by selling off surplus ships in the early 24th century)
It would be a stop-gap refit required to fill the ranks because of the losses from the Dominion War with the kaboom of Romulus forcing them to stay in service even longer.
My guess is something similar to the old FASA Stormbird term would fit such a ship as well.
http://images.wikia.com/startrek/images/7/7e/DC2_53.jpg
Worf: Captain! A ship is decloaking off of the starboard bow!
Picard: Can you identify it Mr Worf?
Worf: It appears to be some kind of... armored space... thingy...
Picard:...
Riker:...
Picard:... Mr Data, could you please man tactical?
Data: Aye sir... scanning now.
Picard: Well Mr Data?
Data: I can confirm there is an armored space thingy approximately 2 kilometers from the starboard bow.
Picard: *facepalm*
I suspect mister_dee was referring to the historical category of Armoured Cruiser (and by extention, Protected Cruisers), which evolved into the Heavy and Light cruisers folks tend to be more familiar with.
Not really but I guess that my thinking was so out of the box you could interpret it that way.
A typical human tendency, that we all exhibited here, is to put a name on something or to put it into a category.
It is a way for us to make things more "ordered" and to give us a feeling like we know something about something because we know its name.
An example where this was clearly not the case were the "Glorious", "Furious" and "Courageous" class Large Light Cruisers created by Fisher for the British RN.
Nobody knows what those things were intended for but it is assumed they were for shore bombardment.
But they had a name and a class, that was important.:)
Stargate Atlantis parodied that human tendecy in its pilot episode when the humans began to give various names to different gadgets they found in the city, like the "lifesign-detector".
The name gave them a feeling they knew something about the device even though they had no clue of its function whatsoever.
This was also parodied in an older "Perry Rhodan" book where the humans encoutered an alien adversary whose ships seemed to be in several places at once but where only in each place for a fraction of a second so it was difficult to hit them.
The humans solved the problem by simply blanketing the target area with large-caliber nuclear weapons.
But the alien ability made them uneasy...unti somone gave it the name "5-d indifference compensator".
One person at the briefing commented on that human tendency and remarked that the name did not give any insight into its actual inner mechanism but by giving it a fancy name the people in the room felt less...dumbfolded by it.
That's why I used "armored space thingy", because even when we run out of interesting terms (I played "Babylon5 Wars" and had to get used the Minbari "Heavy Battle Frigate" so I still have a few more up my sleeve) we can always fall back on that.;)
Actually, their purpose and the rationale of their designation is known; When Fisher returned to the Admiralty in 1915, he wanted more ships with 15 inch guns ordered, and in particular, more battlecruisers. This resulted in two of the Revenge class battleships being reordered as Battlecruisers (Renown and Repulse), but he did not have authorization from Parliment to order any further capital ships (as it was assumed the war would be over long before they'd be completed). He exploited a loophole that allowed him to order more Light Cruisers, hence the "Large Light Cruiser" designation.
The rationale for their design was to support an amphibious assault from the Baltic Sea (A pet project of Fisher's that never came to fruition), which required ships of a shallow draft to support the landings with heavy gunfire. Of course, the design compromises to achieve the shallow draft, high speed, and large guns were so extreme that the ships were tactically rather useless when completed, being built so lightly that they suffered damage from encountering bad weather and firing their own guns.
/history lesson
I used "All the World's Battleships from 1906 to Present"by Ian Sturton as a basis.
I'll quote from the Couragous section:
"To get around the Cabinet ruling against new capital ships Fisher ordered early in 1915 three 'large light cruisers' which were in fact light battlecruisers intended to support his proposed baltic landing.
The precise role, like everything else connected with Fisher's Baltic Plans, was never worked out, but it can be assumed that they were to provide gunfire support with their heavy guns and possibly to lure away German forces.
To that end their high speed and shallow draught made sense, but as with the original battlecruisers, the result was a very expensive solution to the problem."
So I am aware that they were intended for the Baltic operations but appearently it is not documented anywhere what their precise job in that operation was to be.
Anything else is speculation unless new documents have turned up where their actual mission profile is explained.