Fighter- The generalist, typically mass produced and reasonably well armed. Individually these ships cannot challenge capital ships though they can certainly threaten them. These ships can in theory do just about any job though not quiet as well as other ships.

Interceptor- The devoted anti-attack craft ships, they typically don't carry heavy anti-capital ship weapons. More often then not these ships are relatively fragile with little armor or shields but with powerful guns and engines. Interceptors are typically cheap and mass produced.

Bomber- Dedicated Capital Ship killers and ground attack craft. This often comes at the expense at their defenses against Fighter and Interceptors. These craft are typically slower but more heavily defended.

Heavy Fighter- The mid point between fighters and bombers. Typically these ships are well armored and well defended often requiring two or more crew to operate. These ships are often excellent long range strike craft able to fend off enemy fighters and still attack capital ships. Often not quiet as a agile as Fighters or Interceptors.

Support Craft- Space AWACs. Typically these ships are used as recon or electronic support and cyber warfare. Sluggish but often reasonably well armed with good defenses. Also preform search and rescue operations. Can serve as a long range raider if needed.

5637990 What would the Normandy from Mass-Effect be?

5637993
The Normandy, both SR-1 and SR-2, was a stealth frigate. Not an attack craft.

5637999 Oh.

5638006

This is an example of an Attack Craft. In this case somewhere between Fighter-Bomber and Bomber.
Note the length, around 14 meters.

Now let's look at the Normandy SR-2 (That registry irks me to no end.)

Length: 237 meters

5638014 Wow, what's a 14 meter craft even doing with wrap capability?

5638017
The original design was a courier craft and smaller ships in Star Trek have FTL. Class 8 Probes can travel at Warp 9 for short periods of time and they are literally coffin sized.

There's a person in that thing. Alive.

5638014
Personally I'd call the Peregrine a Heavy Fighter/Fighter Bomber but that's just me.

5638017
Honestly a lot of other scifi has smaller craft with FTL.

5638027 Speechless.

5638031
It's mostly the roles they're used in that makes me question their use as a fighter. There's only one instance I know of where a Peregrine went up against a craft of similar size.

All other times, they're equipped for combat against relatively lower tech Cardassian warships and disposable Jem'Hadar Attack Ships.

5638031 I just thought something as complex as a warp system would be a lot bigger that what I'm seeing, i probably should read/watch more Sci-Fi.

5638036 True, but smaller craft need less complicated systems and far less power to achieve FTL. Within reason of course.

5638036
Here's the thing in series like Star Trek and Star Wars even fighters have FLT as faster then light travel in those verses are relitively safe. In other series like Warhammer and Halo FTL is resevered for massive capital ships as there method of FTL is quite dangerous resulting in the small ships to requiar to be transported while the massive capital ships brave the hazords

5638118
And in Stargate the X-302 Space Superiority Fighter mounted an FTL drive, but it was incredibly unstable due the way a drive of that size had to be powered. Which is why the production run, F-302, lacked the FTL drive

5638118
5638125
Interesting note the smaller FTL Drives usually have a smaller operational range. This means they either need an external booster or they need operate out of a nearby base or carrier ship (as in jump range) to function.

5639040
True, either that or they basically planet hop. Sort of like what a light freighter like the Millennium Falcon would likely do to get to a destination. At only 35 meters long, there isn't a lot of room for provisions and fuel in addition to cargo.
I know I did that early on in the free game Endless Sky. It's not the most efficient way to get from point A to point B, but if you take courier jobs along the way it makes it a lot more profitable.

Sorry, off track again.

5639082
Jem'hedar attack ships are weird, they straddle the line between a proper warship and what might be called a fighter. I do find it interesting that its only after first contact with the Jem'hedar that the Federation seems to have begun developing the Peregrine as combat craft, granted it may have already been like that and we of course do see the Maquis using it. It raises a lot of questions about what the Dominion War did to Starfleet and by extension the rest of the Alpha Quadrant's tactical and strategic thinking, along with star ship design and deployment. Notably in Nemesis we see some Reman Fighter craft though we don't see it really deployed in action. Again probably having to do with budget reasons. Could also be however that they simply aren't meant to attack capitol ships but intercept shuttlecraft and enemy fighters as to my eyes they have the build of a light interceptor.

The Falcon is an odd case where it has a very powerful hyper drive meant for long trips. Mind you the Falcon is already very heavily modified.

5639087
They even fit in that weird size area too. They're only about 65 meters long compared to the Danube's ~25 meters and the Defiant's 170 meters.
Hell, smallest variant of the famed Klingon Bird of Prey is at least a full 100 meters.
Though interestingly, the Attack Ship is also the same size as the Val Jean, the Maquis Raider used by Chakotay's cell before and during Caretaker.
Hmm, that does bring up a good point. Though the Maquis Peregrine's and and Raiders are normally referred to as civilian transports/freighters/couriers outfitted with weapons obtained through less than legitimate channels. Initially used to attack the Cardassain Colonies in the DMZ (which were also using armed civilian craft) , then later going against Cardassian warships, and culminating in an attack on the Excelsior class USS Malinche.

I can see two possible scenarios:
1: Starfleet maintained a Starfighter and Raider corps and the craft we see used by the Maquis are either civilian variants or decommissioned attack craft that were converted to civilian use.
2: Starfleet Command noted the effectiveness of Starfighters against less technologically sophisticated Cardassian vessels.* Given the events going on in and around that era**, it makes perfect since that they would invest in Peregrines to free up larger ships.

As for the Reman Fighters, those have actually been a rather interesting point of debate since the current prevailing theory is that they're for supporting an invasion force. But, is that's the case then why would their primary weapon be on the dorsal surface instead of the ventral surface where it'd have better arcs for attacking ground targets. Though, given that the Federation had managed to successfully use the Peregrines and even the Danubes as force multipliers during the war it does make some sense that the ever-paranoid Romulans would build interceptors.
Or they could be for a dark reflection of what I view the Peregrines as, a less resource intensive way to fight a less technically advanced foe.***

*Looking back through the series, up until they joined the Dominion the Cardassian fleet was kind of a joke. All the Enterprise D needed to do tank a Galor cruiser's main beam weapon without raising shields was reinforce the Structural Integrity Field. And that's not even getting into the Klingon fleet alone curb-stomping them before Dominion intervention ended the Klingon-Cardassian war. The Malinche doesn't count in this case because the cell leader had intimate knowledge of Starfleet systems and designs since he was a former officer.

**The armistice that ended the Federation-Cardassian war was in 2367. This is important because in early 2367, a fleet of forty Federation ships engaged a Borg Cube at Wolf 359 and utterly destroyed. Given that the fear of a second Borg attack was enough to kick start the Defiant class design project it's not unreasonable to assume that the Federation started negotiating an end to the conflict so they wouldn't be caught fighting another Borg attack AND the Cardassians.
Now, you may be wondering where I'm going with this. Well if I was an admiral in that era and saw a report that a bunch of rogues with cheap souped-up freighters and couriers were able to take down a Galor with minimal losses (and those losses not even being the Federation designed craft), I'd order up a few batches of them to free up capital ships from patrol duties along the DMZ.

*** That's something I've recently noticed in Trek. The only times we see successful usage of fighters is when the side using the fighters as a major technological advantage. Like the energy draining ships from the Voyager episode The Swarm or Krall's mining drones**** from Star Trek Beyond.

****Why is it that mining equipment is the most dangerous thing in the Kelvin timeline? First the 25th century mining ship Narada and now left over mining drones from a civilization that didn't pick up after itself.

5639187
I'd like to also add that it only took 4 Jem'hedar attack ships to kill a Galaxy-class. Each one of those has a crew of maybe 30 plus one Vorta, round 120 crew total vs 1 Galaxy-class which has a couple hundred crewmen? Add to that the Jem'hedar are cloned mass produced soldiers that cost a dime a dozen where as Starfleet personal require months if not years of training, and a Galaxy-class is a rather resource intensive ship where as those attack ships seem to be dirt cheap. A cost sink loss like that is not something that any military wants to see.

5639255
True, but that had to do with how the polaron beams used by the Dominion at the time could pass through Federation shield unhindered. Without her shields, the Odyssey was fighting with one hand tied behind her back. But I definitely get your meaning there. That'd be like losing a battleship to a squadron of tin can destroyers....
Actually, that's pretty much exactly what happened. A small force of destroyer-escorts closed in so the battleship couldn't bring her most powerful weapons (photon torpedoes instead of cannons in this case) to bear and pelted her with weapon fire that bypassed her main defenses (Shields instead of armor belts) and the battleships escorting PT Boats/Cutters (the Danubes) lacked the firepower to get them off.

Yeah, the fact that it only takes three days for a Jem'Hadar to go from infant to fully functioning adult.... it suddenly makes sense how they were able to avoid sending all of those suicidal craft out. Once the shield issue was fixed, it often only took a few good phaser strikes or a couple of torpedoes to destroy one*. But shear volume would have could have eaten away at the various fleets if they were able to bring their entire force to bear. After all, the Dominion forces faced during the war were either made locally or were the left overs from the Dominion's reinforcement of the Cardassian Union before the war. Just imagine what could have happened if they were able to bring their home systems to bear**.

*And in one case, a Danube runabout hitting its weak spot for massive damage.

**Though, how many systems they directly control is a completely different debate. Especially since they do leave species alone as long as they agree to the Founder's demands.

5639266
I think we already know the answer as it was stressed repeatedly prior to the Romulans entering the war. Total defeat for the Federation and the Klingon Empire, Earth destroyed and the annexation of Alpha quadrant territories one by one. Short version, game over.

5641284
True, baring any scientific solution they pull at the 11th hour and not counting the bio-weapon deployed by the rogue group Section 31 against the Founders.

5641309
So techno babble and war crimes? Fan-tucking-tastic.

5641309

rogue group Section 31

They aren't technically a organization they are just separate cells and they are technically legal under starfleet regulation and given that high ranking members of star fleet are apart of it... well

5641493
Actually if you look at the exact wording, Sloan claims thatthey are given authority under the original Starfleet charter. The first time they pop up in the timeline is on Earth in the 2150s, a little under a decade before the formation of the United Federation of Planets. They're claiming that the United Earth Starfleet charter gives them power.