1 minute ago, GiledPallaeon said:

Did you spot any of the Easter eggs I hid?

Probably not. Though as I don't know their nature, I can't be sure. I saw ONI and immediately thought of Halo, as I have never heard mention of it in Star Wars, but as it is perfectly plausible in this context, I doubt that is one of the Easter Eggs you refer to.

@GiledPallaeon you sir, win the Internetz. As a huge follower of military history, this was a well written and tought out piece, thank you.

It's a topic I myself thought about from time to time too. I really like your posts @GiledPallaeon but would change the basic approach a bit to better line up with SW. So here is my take on it.

Cruiser as a nonspecific term:

Firstly I'd give the word cruiser a double meaning. The first would be a general word for capital ships (actual ships, not squadrons, in Armada), mostly used outside a martial context. This could be explained by only larger vessels being capable of interplanetary and interstellar flight, or "cruising" through space, at the time the name came around. The other meaning would apply in a more strict military classification system. The naming of Consular Class and Gozanti Class cruisers could thus easily be explained, as both started their lifes as non martial craft.

Corvette:

I don't get the feeling that the slow budget craft definition applies to most SW corvettes, so I'd just scrap it. A significant common factor of Hammerhead, CRs, Raider and even Consular (fits the size of others) is their ability to easily land on an inhabitable planet. Admittedly that feature is present on vessels up to core ship size, but only on Corvettes it appears consistently. So we could construct another historical explanation of the classes name based on that. In earlier times Corvette could have referred to "Cruisers" (the general term mentioned above) capable of landing. As technology advanced, more craft gained the ability to do that, but the name stuck with those smaller capital ship and their roles.

So they are smaller, armed Vessels (up to roundabout 150 m) capable of landing. Usually they are very fast due to the thrust to mass ratio being more favorable on smaller craft, especially if built for easy take off and landing. Their typical roles, derived from that and on screen appearance, are thus armed interstellar transport of materiel and personnel, transporting VIPs (sufficiently sized to house a reasonable retinue with all the necessary luxuries and well enough armed for their security), policing, sometimes escort and for the more expensive models SpecOps and Recon (Raider, Stealth Corvette). Examples are the ones mentioned above plus Gozantis I guess. Those and Consulars were merely named for their role when first introduced, so name and role don't add up.

More to come later.

Well, now's later and so there's more to come:

Frigate:

I think there is an important aspect of age of sail frigates to consider and maybe apply to our view of SW. How were they used? Generally frigates were employed for force projection and patrol, maintaining colonial empires grips on their waters. In battle they mainly relayed orders and didn't exactly act as combatants. Looking at some frigates in Star Wars, they indeed seem to either be intended for action outside of battle fleets (Nebulon-B Escort frigate) or non-combat support (Pelta). The one "outlier" here is obviously the Munificient class, but that one can easily be explained away. We need to ask ourselves what they were intended for and not what they actually did. Being called Banking Clan Frigate, it doesn't seem to be unreasonable, that they were used by the namesake organization to protect the movement of their treasures. In fact, that is exactly what they did in legends. So the vessel would have been constructed and introduced to serve as a frigate, but was pushed into a mainline role in the Clone Wars, due to being what the separatist corporations had available at that time.

So a frigate could be a vessel explicitly NOT intended for combat in "proper" battles but for patrol, escort and/or support (logistical, medical, technical,...). This would actually overlap with the Corvette, which isn't that problematic, due to the other one being relatively well defined in other areas. Also overlap might help in explaining the inconsistent naming.

So, let me finish this. From here on it shouldn't take as long per entry:

Destroyer:

I really only know of two examples, the Recusant class light destroyer and the Providence class (smaller version). Both of them have one thing in common, they are pretty large. So we might have to move away from the WWII definition a bit. If we invert my proposed definition for frigates they could be "smaller vessels" (below Dreadnought/Battleship really) build with only battle in mind (analogous to Age of Sail ships of the line, regarding purpose note size). The main purpose of dedicated ship killer remains though. Might even be usable as a light flagship, IIRC we see Grievous doing that.

BTW: The Recusant seems to be a vessel employing principles and features of the Munificent on a larger (battle) vessel. That would fit well together with my frigate article. At least in legends it was developed and introduced during the clone wars. So the origin of it might look like that: CIS uses Munificent as main ship with great success just because already having them in relevant quantities -> CIS designs new ship based on that, this time actually designed for its employment in the war.

Cruiser (Military):

Derived from the general term I suspect behind cruiser, these would be general purpose vessels, using their large tonnage to be both effective in independent small scale operations and as a mainline battleship, with emphasis on different aspects depending on "weight classification", just as @GiledPallaeon defined it. Now we are in the proper flagship territory. To continue my trend of looking at one Vessel of note, I'd like to look at the Arquitens. The republic uses them in both capacities in the TCW, but they seem to be their main direct combat vessel (with the Venator often barraging from afar and doing carrier duty. Has someone said Battlestar?). In Rebels however we are introduced to the arquitens as a support and backwater control ship, doing things like patrol and comm relay duty. I'd find it very fitting for the empires overkill mentality if they used light cruisers in the frigate role. It definitely sends a message of superiority. For the psychological effect I'd argue it should be the smallest vessel used for anything but rear echelon support stuff by the empire. It would seem thematic.

The old rebel alliance sourcebook from west end games had a good break down on how ships were classified primarily based on how ship combat was designed for the ot. Ship combat in the ot was based around the line with cruisers forming the back bone of the fleet with support ships in the close support line, these were corvettes and frigates. After the close support line was the picket line which was mainly for scouting and intercepting fighters and close support line ships. Ideally picket line ships were highly maneuverable like system patrol crafts. Corvettes were ship that were under a certain length and had a certain number of crew, 150 I believe it was, frigates were ships that were under 300 meters or so and had a max crew of 1000. Cruisers were everything else bar dreadnought class ships like the SSD or death star. The concept of destroyers was eliminated due to the fact that they were an unnecessary class due to the three dimensional nature of space and the fact that multiple frigate and Corvette class ships would be used in the cruiser line to protect against incoming attacks.