The designation can be omitted entirely, but if a vessel has any significant added dry mass in the form of missiles or auxiliary combat craft, it is appropriate to speak of it as a “heavy” vessel when disambiguating it from similarly sized ships. Light and standard warships do not carry missiles, kinetic kill vehicles, torpedoes, fighters, or combat drones. This is a modifier that may be applied to any rated warship. One optional convention that is shared across the navies and privateer commands of The Bary is the definition of a light or standard warship versus a heavy warship. Only a ship with a shear drive can be considered a rated naval vessel. Atmospheric and Single Stage to Orbit (SSTO) craft do not have shear drives and, much like strike craft, rely on arcjets to ascend through the upper atmosphere and travel through suborbital space where they must quickly refuel at a spaceport. The first distinction among larger deep-space vessels is made between ships bearing two different propulsive technologies: unrated versus rated ships.
For this reason, the Terran megaliths inhabited by the Empyrean Commonwealth have achieved some religious reverence among many peoples of The Bary, even among scientists and engineers, who have been restricted from unlocking their secrets.
There is a soft limit to how large a ship can realistically be built before metallic stresses and propulsive efficiency become restrictive factors. The voidcraft of the Stardust universe are highly varied in scale, ranging from fighters and corvettes to massive kilometer-long freighters.
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