Oh man, do I love space ships!!! Starfinder had me at, “you can fly spaceships” but looking at the stats on military ships had me wondering, and it seems that others have also found the information to be not correct. But a question is how off are Starfinder’s numbers, to tell let’s look at the military ships other fictional universes?
Destroyer= 300-800 ft or 150-420 tons and crew 6-20
Cruiser= 800-2,000 ft or 420-1,200 tons and crew 20-100
Carrier/battleship= 2,000-15,000 ft or 1,200-8,000 tons and crew 75/100-200/300 (for carrier/battleship)
Dreadnought= over 15,000 ft or over 8,000 tons and crew 125-500
In the Star Trek universe the original Enterprise (NCC-171) i.e. the Kirk ship is called a Heavy Cruiser, in its refit it is listed as 1,000 ft long, mass of 1,000,000 tons, and a crew of 300.
The Enterprise D i.e. Picard ship is 2,108 ft long, mass of 4,960,400 tons, and a crew of 1,012.
Next the Honerverse a long running series of books about naval officer Honor Harrington by David Weber. This series is hard military science fiction so there are lots of ships, and the sizes increase as the series went along so I will be trying to give ships from early in the series. Ship class in this series is defined by tonnage so:
Destroyers=72-88 thousand tons(Ktons)
Light cruiser= 99-165 ktons; Heavy cruiser=176-386 ktons
Battleship= 2,205-4,409 ktons
Dreadnoughts= 5,512-7,165 ktons; Super Dreadnoughts= 7,716-9,921 ktons.
For information on exact length, mass and crew size I chose some ships that best reprecetn the class.
The RMN (Royal Manticoran Navy) Falcon class destroyer was 1,164.7 ft, mass of 77,713 tons, and a crew of 300.
The RMN Apollo class light cruiser was 1,437 ft, mass of 138,891 tons, and a crew of 493.
The RMN Star Knight class heavy cruiser was 1,716 ft, mass of 336,480 tons, and a crew of 925.
The Peoples Republic of Haves Navy (PNS) Triumphant class battleship was 3,832 ft, mass of 4,952,960 tons, and a crew of 3,876. [yes I know the mass is in excess of the listed mass tonnage but it’s the only one I could find data for so, ehh work with what I got]
The RMN Majestic class dreadnaught was 4,192 ft, mass of 7,441,153 tons, and a crew of 3,561.
The RMN Gryphon class Super Dreadnought was 4,498 ft, mass of 9,192,174 and a crew about 4,527.
US navy ships modern day
Arleigh Burke class destroyer is 509 ft, mass of 9,200 tons, and crew of 276
Ticonderoga class cruiser is 567 ft, mass of 9,800 tons, and a crew of 330
Iowa class battleship is 887 ft, mass of 59,000 tons, and a crew of about 1,921
Largest modern ship in the US Navy is the Super Carrier Ford CVN-78 is 1,106 ft, mass of 112,436 tons, and a crew of about 2,600.
What does all this tell us…besides I am a huge nerd for STARSHIPS!!!!
From these examples I would say that the length of the ships in Starfinder look very right!
Crew size is pretty much impossible to get a good handle on due to an unknown level of automation. The Ford class carriers will have a crew size 25% of the previous Nimitz class but they are nearly the same exact size. What is a major problem with the mass of the military ship classes.
Just looking at Destroyer, Cruisers, Battleships/Carriers and Dreadnoughts I would make a quick fix by saying the mass listed are in thousand tons. For example cruisers would then range 420,000-1,200,000 tons This would make the original Enterprise a perfect fit for a cruiser and Enterprise D a perfect fit for a battleship. Honorverse masses become in the same ball park and given a little jiggering works out well too. A side note Dreadnoughts in Starfinder by the size charts and especially compared to things like Absalom Station at 26,400 ft, should be the extremely, extremely, rare far outclassing the largest Federation ships in Star Trek. The largest Super Dreadnoughts in the Honorverse in terms of mass just barely get into it but are way too short.
Fire power is a whole other kettle of fish which I ain’t getting into.
Compared to modern Navy vessels destroyers are about the same but after that well as you would expect for something that exists in space they comparisons just go out the window.
Fans of other universes how do your favorites compare or where did I go wrong?
Here is another look at the same problem
And another, seeing so many scifi nerds warms my mostly machine heart!
Info from
memory-alpha.wikia.com for the Star Trek
honorverse.wikia.com for Honorverse
wikipedia.org for the US Navy
*Note I can’t find what kind of tons Starfinder is using so given the publisher uses feet for length I will use US tons. So I converted metric tons to US tons for Star Trek. I also assumed that Honorverse uses metric tons and converted aswell.
