An interesting viewpoint Bakana,
Not that I would digress into a war of opinion over fleet doctrine in this post about cool things Legend-wise, but IMHO the hard truth is, there is a need for Ranger assets that don't break the bank to deploy, or worst case, lose.
I try not to let the latter-day USN zeal for zero-defect, zero-tolerance, no losses peactime operations rule the day when thinking about what a future-war navy would really do.
I think the word expendable is the implied meaning behind even thinking of building and deploying ships known to be unable to handle certain enemy ships. The fleet planners are willing to risk losing a smaller ship to perform a mission so that the bonus resources can be saved to use elsewhere. War of attrition, and all that.
Yet I do not wholly champion the idea of sending Ranger crews out in underpowered vessels on their own. But sometimes there isn't a choice in the matter. LOTR began with a single Ranger frigate, on it's own, chasing pirate(?) fighters...obviously not a planned deployment since it could easily be turned against the Frigate. The next mission included a destroyer and a frigate on an escort mission.
Let's say that every Ranger vessel built is the largest, fastest, most capable War Cruiser stocked to the gills with the latest technology. No expenses are spared to ensure that every vessel deployed by the Rangers can best any other known or conceived enemy ship design. This doctrine can be defeated by an enemy with hunter-killer groups, rock-paper-scissors matching (think submarine vs. battleship), etc. Even without direct military victory, an enemy could use misdirection and feinting to lead these cruisers all over the galaxy, draining their resources and sapping the will/energy of the crews.
And what's the refit time of a large ship vs. a small one? The loss of a single Ship of the Line from active duty places a large strain on the deployment until it is replaced.
Finally, larger numbers of trip-wire vessels, frontier patrols, light escorts, etc. act to increase the *density* of fleet coverage. A large cruiser could be, say, 20 minutes away from anywhere in a large volume of space, for example...instead, there are two or more frigates/destroyers available within a few minutes of enemy action.
Thus endeth the sermon
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I think there was a thread in the B5 forum that you had 5 straight. Perhaps you need to look into some sort of outline/condensing format. Not bitching or anything, exactly the opposite actually. I just get a chuckle whenever I see you ripping off a stream of 2-3 posts back to back like that
