I have to laugh at the people who voted down my big post above: “OMG he’s using reasoning, research and *gasp* facts to prove his point! Quite, vote down and save our ignorance rather than post a thought-provoking counter-argument!”
So, let us address those who did bother, on some level or another, to offer a reply…
As the guy above said, who cares? There is no military ship class designation for spaceships because that stuff doesn’t exist. The devs picked a name which makes it obvious that they are bigger and heavier. Corvette in some games refers to a 1-person scout, so that would be more ambiguous.
But by the same logic, almost every game I have played uses “frigate” to refer to a capital ship.
Case in point, Colony Wars. The fighters in Colony Wars are roughly the size of Star Conflict fighters. Star Conflict Frigates, on the other hand, are much, much smaller than Colony Wars ones; in fact, a SC Frigate is about the size of a CW APC, which Frigates carry in some missions.
Perhaps using the term “Corvette” is confusing to some people, but I don’t see why. If we’re going off scale, they should probably be called bombers, as they certainly meet a lot of the criteria; larger than fighters, slower than fighters, armed with comparable main guns as fighters, etc. The only reason they aren’t “bombers” though is the lack of bombs. So… what do you call a bomber with no bombs? I guess you could call them “Strike Craft”, but does that really sound right for the Engineer or Guard ships?
The point to take away is this: If you think calling them bombers or strike craft or support ships sounds wrong, we “pro-Corvette” people think the same thing about calling them frigates, and quite possibly for the very same reasons.
In the age of sail, the term “Frigate” meant one thing. In the age of steam, it meant another.
Makes sense that in the age of space travel it will have yet another.
No inconsistency at all here.
That is a fair point, and I will agree that meanings are likely to change. However, words have lots of layers of meanings. I would like to give you an example…
Imagine you were watching the news and you were told that ten insurgents had been captured. Now imagine the word “insurgents” replaced with “terrorists”. Do you think your view of the situation would change? What if they were freedom fighters?
This kind of thing does make a difference. When you use words like “terrorist”, it instantly paints the individuals as evil. Freedom fighters, on the other hand, tend to be looked at more positively.
In the context of this discussion, myself and others see “Frigate” as a term that describes quite large vessels; what we would term ‘capital ships’. Since Star Conflict frigates appear relatively small and could potentially only have one crewman (looking into the cockpits), that name doesn’t really fit to us.
It is not an invalid use of the word frigate, for the reasons you mention, but that doesn’t mean it is the best choice of name.
Your thinking is flawed. You are making the assumption that there is a corvette class of ships in this universe, which we have no evidence of.
So going off the evidence we have, and without making up things that don’t currently exist, it is pretty obvious that we are flying Frigates.
Noooooo… that’s not the case at all. The argument was, if you read, that they should be called Corvettes, since they do not really fit what we generally consider to be a Frigate. The argument that “we don’t have Corvettes because no Corvette has been mentioned” is a non-starter; you might as well argue that the game shouldn’t be renamed “Star Battles” because they called it Star Conflict, so Star Battles can’t exist.
Done.