The Tri-Scythe is a frigate???

[Dark Primus]

The ship has so few weapons for it's size in spite the fact the ship appear to be larger in the comics then the Scythe class cruiser and should definately be treated as a larger and more powerful ship class. But that is just my opinion.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tri-Scythe-class_frigate


And I don't understand why the wookiepedia insist on calling the Scythe class for battle cruiser when it was stated in the comics several times it is a cruiser.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Scythe-c ... le_cruiser

[Transbot9]

That's how they're listed in Star Wars Saga: Legacy Era book.

[Simon_Jester]

Star Wars writers normally don't draw consistent size distinctions between "frigates," "cruisers," and "destroyers." A Dreadnought-class heavy cruiser is smaller than an Imperial-class star destroyer, which is in turn smaller than a Mon Calamari ship which is also called a cruiser. (and what is the name Dreadnought doing hung off a ship less than a kilometer in length in this setting, anyway?)

Thsi is just another example of the same thing.

[Dark Primus]

Given the sheer armaments the Scythe class cruiser has the Tri-Scythe surely would have even more.
If the Scythe is a cruiser then the Tri-Scythe should be a heavy cruiser or battle cruiser.

I guess the ship designer and the author who writes the story should know more on the details.

[Simon_Jester]

Again, by all appearances the writers just take a ship and slap a "warship" word on it at random; they may honestly not know or not care about the convention that a frigate is smaller than a cruiser.

[Note that this convention is arbitrary; the first ships that could reasonably be described as "cruisers" in the sense that they actually cruised during wartime were frigates]

[VT-16]

This may be a convention of the Mon Calamari 100 years after Endor. Their primary naval design is the Scythe-class battle cruiser, a design that takes the designation after the Mediator-class, itself a ship roughly half the size of the 17km Viscount-class dreadnought. With the Scythe, the Calamari basically went into overdrive, fitting reactor equipment throughout the entire primary superstructure, and focusing most weapons batteries in the forward blade. This is a departure from the Star Cruisers before, who only had their reactor in the stern and nothing more.

This class being a true battlecruiser, and with no cruiser designations in the same era of design (only centuries-old cruisers from the Rebellion era, per some of the Legacy issues), it's possible the Calamari used the frigate designation for their second-largest and second-heavily armed warships (the Triscythe and ShaShore-class) which would otherwise be called cruisers in previous eras.

[Dark Primus]

Interesting idea there VT-16. Something worth to think about.

[bz249]

Some real life thingy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta ... sification

The USN lacked the cruisers and kaboom, the missile frigates (DLG) magically turned into guided missile cruisers (CG).

[Sea Skimmer]

Star Wars writers normally don't draw consistent size distinctions between "frigates," "cruisers," and "destroyers." A Dreadnought-class heavy cruiser is smaller than an Imperial-class star destroyer, which is in turn smaller than a Mon Calamari ship which is also called a cruiser. (and what is the name Dreadnought doing hung off a ship less than a kilometer in length in this setting, anyway?)

Thsi is just another example of the same thing.

People don’t draw any real distinction real life either, in fact it’s virtually impossible to distinguish those types anymore even if you want to. Classification is primarily a matter of the politics of getting the design approved for construction. Star Wars is likely no different particularly when you have so many different planets building ships.

As for Dreadnought, no reason exists why that term should specifically mean anything at all in Star Wars. It was only by a fluke and British cheating (counting a basin engine test as ‘completion’) that the name ever took hold to mean battleship in real life. The first HMS Dreadnought afterall was a 40 gun galleon built before battle line tactics even existed. The last one was a nuclear powered submarine.

[Simon_Jester]

As for Dreadnought, no reason exists why that term should specifically mean anything at all in Star Wars. It was only by a fluke and British cheating (counting a basin engine test as ‘completion’) that the name ever took hold to mean battleship in real life. The first HMS Dreadnought afterall was a 40 gun galleon built before battle line tactics even existed. The last one was a nuclear powered submarine.

Yes, but if you're going to name an entire category of ship Dreadnought, it strongly implies that they should dread nothing, or at least not dread very many things. Ballistic missile submarines qualify, as do big-gun battleships; a 40-gun galleon back in the early Age of Sail might well make the cut too.

But a 600m long ship in Star Wars? Come on, hang the name off something that doesn't need to run away from a fight so often...

[this is purely an aesthetic complaint, and I know it perfectly well]

[fractalsponge1]

Like marketing or tradition has never played a role in the naming of warships USS Devastator doesn't actually live up to her name much, after all.

The class-name itself is silly, but understandable. The designation, on the other hand, is a whole different argument.

[Lord Revan]

wasn't the Dreadnaught the strongest dedicaded long-range warship in the republic arsenal before the introduction of the Victories and Venators during the Clonewars?

[Bakustra]

wasn't the Dreadnaught the strongest dedicaded long-range warship in the republic arsenal before the introduction of the Victories and Venators during the Clonewars?

That's what WEG wrote when they introduced the Dreadnaught-class, but on the other hand we have the Invincible-class Dreadnoughts (from the Han Solo trilogy) used by the Corporate Sector Authority that are also Republican designs, and definitely larger, at 2km in length, though they are thousands of years old, according to the Han Solo and the Corporate Sector Sourcebook. Perhaps the Dreadnaught-class was the heaviest long-range warship in the post-Ruusan Republic?

[Lord Revan]

wasn't the Dreadnaught the strongest dedicaded long-range warship in the republic arsenal before the introduction of the Victories and Venators during the Clonewars?

That's what WEG wrote when they introduced the Dreadnaught-class, but on the other hand we have the Invincible-class Dreadnoughts (from the Han Solo trilogy) used by the Corporate Sector Authority that are also Republican designs, and definitely larger, at 2km in length, though they are thousands of years old, according to the Han Solo and the Corporate Sector Sourcebook. Perhaps the Dreadnaught-class was the heaviest long-range warship in the post-Ruusan Republic?

seeing as the Dreadnaught itself is a post Ruusan design that should be correct, ofc the Invincible-class might also have limitations were aren't awere of (like shorter range which is quite common in most post-Ruusan but pre-Geonosis designs)

[Simon_Jester]

Like marketing or tradition has never played a role in the naming of warships

Oh, it does, but there's a real danger of winding up with a public relations disaster if you hang mighty names on feeble ships. If the Indestructible gets blown to bits, or your Dreadnoughts are running for their lives, it's apt to look a little unpleasant in the news.

For example, the Germans built a number of "pocket battleships" in the run-up to the Second World War, one of which was named Deutschland. Then Deutschland had to be renamed during the war, after someone pointed out the unfortunate implications that would arise if the Royal Navy managed to sink a ship named after the entire country of Germany...

Again, this is purely an aesthetics and PR thing.

The class-name itself is silly, but understandable. The designation, on the other hand, is a whole different argument.

I agree; my original point was that the class designations are used with inconsistently, for better or for worse. In-story, it's either politics, or a casewhere the Star Wars words that translate as "frigate" and "cruiser" and such refer purely to tactical roles (as the word "cruiser" once did in real life), and not to actual sizes, making any correlation between size and designation largely a coincidence.

[bz249]

I do not know how are the things in the GFFA, but in current times the US and the Russian navy prefers calling their destroyers cruisers, because it sounds more potent. While European navies prefers calling their destroyers frigates, because it sounds more defensive and cheaper. (although the Tico is 30% larger than a Horizont-class or an F-125 frigate, but that only makes the first a large while the second a smaller destroyer). So it is confusing in real life also.