How to Build an Interstellar Warship, Part One: The Basics
Author: Derran Tyler

II. Types of Warships

Let us begin with the most generic and most famous of warship designs, the almighty Battleship. The battleship is quite simply the largest, most powerful warship class in terms of sheer firepower. It should possess the strongest and most durable armor available as well as weapons systems that can crush any smaller warship classification. Battleships serve as command vessels, not only because of their size, but because the enormous amount of resources they take to build make them a symbol of pride and power for whomever possesses them.

The weaknesses of the battleship are rather obvious. It is big and slow, thus it is not going to catch very many targets. Its size also makes it the obvious target of any major enemy attack, which means that a battleship is going to need escorting vessels to truly remain effective. However, the most dangerous weapon to any battleship is a starfighter. A starfighter can strike repeatedly against a mammoth battleship without fear of getting hit back. In large numbers, starfighters can cripple a battleship.

The next classification would be the Cruiser, by far the most generic type of vessel in any interstellar navy. Cruisers are extremely versatile in their application as they can be suited for many different tasks. Heavy Cruisers are the most common cruiser design, with enough firepower that they can trade shots with a battleship and deal significant damage. Light Cruisers combine firepower with impressive speed and are usually second-line units. However, there are many other variations of cruisers that are far too numerous to list here. Be inventive in the application of your cruiser designs, as they are the jack-of-all-trades warship of a fleet.

Now we begin to move into the smaller classifications of warships, namely the Destroyer. The Destroyer is a fast, nimble vessel with enough firepower to deal a decent amount of damage to a cruiser. Destroyers are excellent escort vessels and they can be used to defend the capital ships of the fleet. I myself have developed several variations on the destroyer, so once again, try and make this class of ship work for you.

The Frigate is the smallest large warship design available, and oddly enough, this is probably the most predominate classification as they are small and very cheap to build. Armor is rather thin, but they make up for this in speed. Once again, these are escort vessels, so don't expect to put a frigate on the front lines and expect it to survive very long.

There are other classes of warships available, but these are the very basic types of warship, so I'm going to end it there.