Cruiser

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   A cruiser is a main combatant type of warship that is midway, in both size and capability, between a Destroyer and a Battleship.

Earth Naval History

   This article is included in order to help authors understand the role of a cruiser and how it has changed through history.  A cruiser IS NOT just a bigger destroyer, otherwise destroyers would just be built bigger.
   The term has been in use for several hundred years, but it has meant roughly the same thing throughout this period no matter what 'age' or technology level the ships contained.  During the Age of Sail, the term cruising referred to certain kinds of missions —independent scouting, commerce protection, or raiding— fulfilled by a frigate or sloop-of-war, which were the cruising warships of a fleet.  These ships were able to live off their own resources for extended times, defeat any lesser opponent, and evade anyone able to take them down.
   In the middle of the 19th century, cruiser came to be a classification for the ships intended for cruising distant waters, commerce raiding, and scouting for the battle fleet.  With the change to steam for propulsion, a ship built for 'cruising' had to include long-term fuel stores and significant self-repair capability.  A large destroyer may have the same firepower as a "Light Cruiser", but the cruiser can perform its duties by itself while the destroyer depends upon support from a base, a fleet, or a tender.
   Cruisers came in a wide variety of sizes, from the medium-sized protected cruiser to large armored cruisers that were nearly as big (although not as powerful or as well-armored) as a pre-dreadnought battleship.  With the advent of the dreadnought battleship before World War I, the armored cruiser evolved into a vessel of similar scale known as the Battlecruiser. The very large battlecruisers of the World War I era that succeeded armored cruisers were now classified, along with dreadnought battleships, as capital ships.
   By the early 20th century after World War I, the direct successors to protected cruisers could be placed on a consistent scale of warship size, smaller than a battleship but larger than a destroyer.  In 1922, the Washington Naval Treaty which shaped cruiser design until the end of World War II placed a formal limit on these cruisers.  The Treaty defined cruisers as warships of up to 10,000 tons displacement carrying guns no larger than 8 inches in caliber.  "Heavy Cruisers" had up to 8-inch guns, while those with guns of 6.1 inches or smaller were "Light Cruisers".  Some variations on the Treaty cruiser design included the German Deutschland-class "pocket battleships" which had heavier armament at the expense of speed compared to standard heavy cruisers, and the American Alaska class, which was a scaled-up heavy cruiser design designated as a "cruiser-killer".
   In the later 20th century, the obsolescence of the battleship left the cruiser as the largest and most powerful surface combatant after the aircraft carrier.  The role of the cruiser varied according to ship and navy, often including air defense and shore bombardment.  During the Cold War, the Soviet Navy's cruisers had heavy anti-ship missile armament designed to sink NATO carrier task forces via saturation attack.  The U.S. Navy built guided-missile cruisers upon destroyer-style hulls (some called "destroyer leaders" or "frigates" prior to the 1975 reclassification) primarily designed to provide air defense while often adding anti-submarine capabilities.  These ships were larger and had longer-range surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) than early Charles F. Adams guided-missile destroyers tasked with the short-range air defense role.  By the end of the Cold War, the line between cruisers and destroyers had blurred, with the Ticonderoga-class cruiser using the hull of the Spruance-class destroyer but receiving the cruiser designation due to their enhanced mission and combat systems.  Indeed, the newest U.S. (Zumwalt class) and Chinese (Type 055) destroyers are more heavily armed than some of the cruisers that they succeeded.

Confederacy Navy

   As was the case in Earth's naval fleets, a cruiser is intended to perform long-duration combat patrol, raiding and escort.  It can reasonably be expected to perform independent operations, due to having the self-protection and firepower needed for any non-fleet engagement, but is usually part of a fleet where it protects large capital ships while delivering fire on the enemy.  They tend to be larger ships that are more easily detected.  A cruiser excels at tearing apart smaller or weaker vessels, but is quite capable of delivering effective fires against larger battlecruisers or Hive Spheres.  Designs successful enough to enter general use included:

• Hero Class Battle Cruiser - At 250 meters and over 90,000 tons, these behemoths are the largest cruiser ship in the Confederacy arsenal.
• Goddess Class Battle Cruiser - Smaller than their better known cousins in the Hero class the Goddess comes in at 210 meters and 70,000 tons.
• Raphael Semmes Missile Cruiser This cruiser is primarily a standoff weapon that depends on distance and screening ships for its primary defense.  It comes in at 180 meters and 60,000 tons.
• Raptor Class Medium Cruiser - Built from the initial concept to destroy large enemy ships and hives by application of kinetic energy, the Raptor weighs in at 40,000 tons and is 160 meters long.
• Europa Class Light Cruiser - At 155 meters and 15,000 tons, the Europa was our first Human-designed large warship and was intended just as much for training our new Navy as for fighting.  It carries a wide range of weapons, simply because when the design was approved it was not yet clear which, if any, would be effective in this war.   Compare with the Asian Class of escort Destroyer was designed immediately afterwards as a cheaper "Europa Lite" design.

Sa'arm Navy

   The Sa'arm have only one cruiser design, the Vervactor which is described as "Slow and sluggish, like the battleship, it has quite a bit of firepower."

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