The Ship Classification Mystery

[Frank Frey]

Greetings,

While going through the various resources, I noticed that several ships are classified in different ways. Take for example the Norway Class. I've seen it classified variously as a Cruiser, Destroyer, and/or a Fast Frigate. So, which is it?

Frank Frey

[Owen E Oulton]

Paramount does not always assign a type class to ships, and when they do, there are many who don't like the classification used...

Here are some of the official classifications as given in the various technical manuals:

DS9 TM (Note Class names for the "Frankenstein Fleet" are not given in the TM and those used are the commonly assigned names)
Galaxy - Explorer
Nebula - Explorer
Excelsior - Explorer
Defiant - Escort
Akira - Heavy Cruiser
Miranda - Medium Cruiser
Norway - Medium Cruiser
Saber - Light Cruiser
Elkins - Medium Cruiser
Centaur - Medium Cruiser
Shelly - Medium Cruiser
"3-nacelled Excelsior variant" - Medium Cruiser
"Constitution variant" - Light Cruiser
Yeager - Light Cruiser

On-screen references:
New Orleans - Frigate
Ambassador - Heavy Cruiser
Constitution - Cruiser/Heavy Cruiser

You can take those for what you will...

[Sea Tyger]

Personally, I prefer the LUG/Spacedock/Decipher classifications given to the various canon and popular non-canon ships, rather than those out of the older tech manuals.

Owen, you still have the Spacedock SRMs on your Memory Icon site, correct?

[Doug Burke]

He does. In fact, I just referred a guy over there in the Spacedock forum...

[Phoenix]

Sorry a little Nit-Pick:
Defiant should be down under 'On-screen references' section Sisko explained to O'Brian "Starfleet has officially declared her an escort" in the Ep: Defiant