Reconcilliation
Meta: I've intentionally left off dates, but I think this neatly explains things. Imagine the Discovery Channel's Great Planes music playing:
According to research, the first civilizations took to the stars nearly a billion years ago. These were only sub-light generation ships, but the Ancients soon took to the stars in jump-capable vessels. Only 2,000 years ago, the 6 major races began their supraluminal journeys outward. The first fleets consisted of ships with custom produced drives and weaponry powered by one-off fission and fusion power plants. No two ships had the same specifications and could not reliably utilize components from other vessels making travel much more perilous than today. Clearly a codified standard was needed, and the burgeoning Imperium would soon have it.
The Maarkesh Miillarn shipyards of Sylea was the first to offer an Imperium-wide codification of design principals, standardization, and best practices in their seminal work “On Starship Design Principals”. The book and accompanying data glyph soon became the iridium standard in not only the Imperium, but in many of the surrounding civilizations. The plain, glossy black book with the unassuming red lettering was fairly small, earning it the moniker “The Little Black Book”. After official -- and sometimes non-official – consultations with the surrounding races, the 2nd edition was soon printed. Although technology and political pressure did produce larger and larger vessel designs, the technical limitations off naval construction at the time of LBB2 printing limited practical ship design and construction to about 5,000 tons. However, this led to the standard scout, commercial, and paramilitary designs that are still wildly popular today and for the most part unchanged since their inceptions. The LBB received two updates, but advancing technology produced higher level power plants, greater jump capability, more exotic weaponry, and newer issues with structural integrity of larger vessels. A new update was needed.
Chadwick and Harshman of Maarkesh Miillarn soon produced the fifth version of their work, which codified ship construction of almost limitless size and capability. This fifth version was dubbed LBB5, and alternately “High Guard” after the smaller ship roll of protecting larger refueling vessels. The popularity and availability of standard components and designs of LBB2 origin and the updates and improvements of LBB5/High Guard soon created what was termed the “small ship universe” and the “large ship universe” paradigms. It should be noted that although the LBB2 designs and vessels are still produced, they are hybrid designs with LBB5/High Guard design principles backported into LBB2.
A byproduct of the small and large ship universe design philosophies led to ship classification anomalies, such as the Kinunir class. In the small ship design universe it was rightly dubbed a Battle Cruiser. In the large ship universe the Kinunir would be more properly designated a Destroyer Escort, which the LBB5/High Guard Fer-de-Lance, Chrysanthemum, and Sydkai have been labelled. Research and anecdotal evidence point to the late LBB2 design Kinunir as being a test bed for Imperial Naval black globe research and advanced automation systems. The Kinunir-class “Regal Splendor” has been gifted to the Vegan Autonomous District in a high profile act of the Empress, and there has been recent interest in a paramilitary role for the Kinunir, so the design may yet live.
The small ship universe and large ship universe design philosophies have so far neatly co-existed, dividing civilian/paramilitary and government. The lone scout in a Suleiman and the captain of a Tigress owe much to Maarkesh Miillarn. There currently exist several emerging variant design philosophies such as the T20, T5, and Mongoose projects, but for the time being, the LBB2 and LBB5/High Guard design philosophies reign supreme.
