> Indeed.  In fact, that's what I was hoping to do: work out what roles we
> wanted to fill, then have someone who knows their nautical history fit the
> ship names we have into those roles.  One of my earlier posts has a first
> shot at a list of roles.

So, to recap, a list of possible roles is:

generic ship to which all others are compared
low cost for starting/exploration
higher capacity transport
basic combat platform
larger combat platform
mage supporting ship
basic flying ship
advanced flying ship (combat support? mage support)?

There might be niches for even larger transport or combat ships,
perhaps flying variants thereof, or ships which combine combat
protection and mage facilities.

What have I missed? Or which of these are actually superfluous?

Thanks,

Steve.