The question up in the air right now, is what are the standard hull sizes and configuration for the Confederation Navy.
Dual cockpits had been canonized to be able to control upto two kilotonnes, but the new High Guard:
Instead of a bridge, ships of 50 tons or less may install a cockpit. This is a self-contained, sealed area that contains a single seat and all controls necessary for the operation of the ship. Cockpits are typically entered via an external hatch or canopy; therefore, ships using them do not automatically include an airlock.
Instead of a bridge, ships of 50 tons or less may install a cockpit. This is a self-contained, sealed area that contains a single seat and all controls necessary for the operation of the ship. Cockpits are typically entered via an external hatch or canopy.
Which was basically copy pasted from the previous one.
Since we've pushed the frontiers of science into nanotechnology, the smallest standard hull size would be as close as possible to five tonnes, followed by fifteen and thirty five tonnes for likely light and medium fighters.
I've never figured out why docking clamps went from one to thirty tonnes, which sort of follows Tee Five, to one to ten, and then back to one to thirty, so I felt quite comfortable staying within the one to thirty ratio for half a tone variant capped at fifteen tonnes, and one and a quarter variant capped at thirty seven and a half tonnes.
Of course, one to a hundred, and fifty to infinity, is hard to rationalize, but since it suits my agenda, I decided just to play along.
One reason to favour cockpits is that semimegastarbux cost per hundred tonnes that any default bridge costs.
So if you can't install any cockpit on any hull larger than fifty tonnes, fifty one to ninety nine tonnes seems easily skipped, since since for a heavy fighter hundred to a hundred ninety nine just incurs one extra penalty during dogfights, assuming you get that close with beyond visual range weapon systems.
The largest viable tonnage is forty nine tonnes for smallcraft, in the view of the Confederation Navy, with a cockpit.
And then you skip to one hundred ninety nine, possibly one hundred seventy tonnes (still calculating whether you get more benefit from that additional twenty nine tonnes) as opposed to fourteen and a half percent hangar space saving. One hundred ninety nine more closely aligned to using the same hull for small starwarships, and a seven tonne docking clamp variant for two hundred and ten tonnes.
One hundred ninety nine to two kilotonnes may be too much of a leap, but there are ways around that. Still, two kilotonnes represents that border between smallship to whatever you define as a large ship universe; also game mechanic reasons.
Going by Deepnight, the Terrans feel pretty comfortable and confident in that hull size, otherwise they wouldn't be using it for deep space exploration.
Next jump is to maybe five kilotonnes et un, where you can add in a command bridge attachment, and other stuff.
These are hull sizes, not necessarily ship sizes.
Next up twenty five kilotonnes, and hundred kilotonnes, for game mechanics.
Militarily, a Confederation Navy starwarship would never tip the scales over a quarter of a million tonnes, due to spinal mount fire control reasons, though if they do have them, any starwarship over fifty kilotonnes has very little incentive to close in.