Hey guys, I noticed that current tags are pretty messed up. So I thought about it a little(and I want your oppinions as well!), and came up with a possible solution to the current tagging problem.

The general problem is that there is no way of saying what "class" a ship would be IRL, simply because we don't have spaceships IRL(appart from some tin cans that are the size of a car). So this is my idea: since ship classification is quite important for the workshop, we should standardize it, and this is how I think we could do it:

Every ship should have 3 tags, one for each: Ship Size, Ship Type and Ship Material.

First is the Ship size - since most people don't really understand classification of naval ships here on Earth(and our current tags are obviously based on those), they just use them however they feel, and that's not good. I mean "Frigate" sure sounds cool, but it probably doesn't stand for what you mean it does. IRL, those classifications are not ship sizes, but a combination of their size, firepower and purpose/usage. But I do propose we use them this way - simply determine the ship's class based on the number of System Upgrade slots. Here is how:

Tag class - "Ship Size":

• Fighter - used this tag for fighters
  
• Corvette - up to 3 system slots
  
• Frigate - up to 6 system slots
  
• Cruiser - up to 8 system slots
  
• Destroyer - up to 9 system slots
  
• Battleship - up to 12 system slots
  
• Marauder - up to 15 system slots
  
• Juggernaut - more than 15 system slots

Of course, ships in real life and Avorion not only differ by size, but also their purpose, so I propose these tags:

Tag class - "Ship Type":

• Miner - for mining and reclaiming
  
• Crew Transport - for transporting crew
  
• Cargo Transport - for transporting cargo
  
• Support - focused on repairing
  
• Carrier - focused on using fighters
  
• Direct fire - focused on "close combat"
  
• Suppresive fire - focused on "long range combat"
  
• Mothership - all purpose ship(used for all of the above)
  
• Station - a station, nothing else to say here

Last but not least, the materiels. I'm pretty sure there is a way for devs to make this automatic, but I'd rather have them work on important things. Simply, under the material tag, you tag the best material used in a given ship.

So if your ship is made out of 200k iron, 580k titanium, and 42 Neonite, you tag it with "Neonite". Of course, we the creators should make sure to include the stats of the ship with our creation, but that's for another topic. Tag class - "Material", as it currently is, and the tags, as is probably obvious(and is currently like that), would be "Iron", "Titanium", "Neonite" etc.

Lastly, we could have a separate section for all the other tags, like "Segment blueprint", "Art" and whatever other tag might pop up(I am thinking maybe "Replica/Model" tag could be added, for models of ships that were just redone in Avorion, but aren't "original work" and came from a movie, game or any other source. Not saying those creations are not worthy their praise, but I'm thinking maybe we should somehow separate it from original creations).

Of course, we, the community, will have to make the effort of tagging properly, but I'm certain once we all find a standardized way(not necessarily the one I proposed), everyone will follow suit.

I know I wrote a lot, and thank you for reading up to here. Please leave your suggestions and comments!