Building Your Interstellar Navy | Ship Types, Naming Conventions, & Fleet Doctrines

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Ahhh yes, the frigate: the ship classification for when you spend way too long trying to puzzle out a fitting term for your odd warship, but then just go "ah, frig it."

"Politics of naming ship types" Starfleet: That is not a warship, it is a heavy escort!

While i find the UNSCNs naming conventions pretty cool (with results like Forward Unto Dawn, Pillar of Autumn, Point of No Return, Purgatory's Key, The Space Between, Midsummer Night, In Amber Clad, ...), the Covenant ship names are even more so: Enduring Conviction, Shadow of Intent, Seeker of Truth, Breath of Annihilation, Long Night of Solace, Splendid Intention.

I love that you used the Yamato as both the maritime and interstellar example of a Battleship.

"Oh, this isn't a Death Star. It's a missile carrying assault starfighter supplying strategic defence Death Star."

I'm a safety inspector at a nuclear power plant. But this is much more important.

28:10 My naming scheme would be to call everything a frigate: Patrol boat: Nano frigate Corvette: Mini frigate Destroyer: Slightly larger frigate Cruiser: Big frigate Battlecruiser: Fast, decently armed, big frigate. Battleship: Very heavily armed, very big frigate Dreadnought: Very heavily armed, very big, slightly different frigate Carrier: Fighter delivery frigate Titan: Gihugic frigate

Your notes on Titans/Juggernauts point to Stellaris handling them very well! The titans are really just an oversized battleship, built to cary a massive gun and be a fleet's heavy hitter while being just another ship. Juggernauts are absolutely massive and are basically flying cities. But, that use is put into being a massive aircraft carrier, with a ridiculous amount of hangar bays, and even two shipyards, capable of building and repairing everything up to and including a battleship, instead of being just a ridiculous gun platform

22:10 "tanks aren't useful in space battles" * Laughs in Anakin Skywalker *

"Any navy with an Advanced Ultra Heavy Tactical Assault Dreadnought has gone too far" Proceed to cancel plans for Advanced Ultra Heavy Tactical Assault Dreadnought building

Your analogy of a cloaked ship being a sub is actually pretty good. In star wars for example, there was a ship (fairly small) in the clone wars series in the cat and mouse episode that used cloaking tech and torpedoes. It was basically a space sub. To launch its torps it had to uncloak and recloak

I think it'd be pretty neat for a space carrier to carry larger slower ships like a battleship or destroyer across large distances quickly. The USS infinity had the ability to store 10 frigates for example

"Having soldiers onboard your ships is kindof useless in a space battle" laughs in 40K

"The Imperium of Man doesn't care though." Understatement of the year.

Regarding naming conventions: In David Weber's Harrington series, Weber introduced the idea of an 'honors list', when a ship accomplished something extraordinary, it was added to the honors list, and was thus 'immortal' in that there would always be a ship in service with that name in that general class. I really like the idea of this tradition, and I think you see shades of it in real life, like the number of ships named 'Enterprise' in the US Navy. It would also add some nice depth to the feel of a fictional feet's history if mixed in with their usual ship names, there's a few that don't fit, but which are particularly prestigious postings.

I like my doctrine in modded Stellaris: Strap a big gun to one side of a moon, strap a bunch of rockets to another. When that doesn’t work, do the same to a planet. When that doesn’t work, get three planets and 6 moons, do that to them, then strap ‘em to a Dyson sphere. It’s so stupid nothing can counter it.

In my Stellaris game I was playing as a Neo-Roman Empire. I named my two Titans Romulus and Remus. I was so proud of myself hahaha.

" Having soldiers onboard your ships is kind of useless in space battle. " - Right. Well, you say that, I say LAUNCH THE BOARDING TORPEDOS! IN KHORNE'S NAME, WE COMMIT SPACE MELEE!

39:22 The Lost Fleet has a running joke about ships called Invincible being anything but. The name's such a problem for morale that Captain Geary renames a captured ship (one that's much more valuable for scientific purposes than in combat) Invincible to take the name out of circulation. I always loved that sort of detail, as silly as it is.