It sounds like you spent a great deal of time trying to "get it right." Sounds good.
The Dart always bothered me. Because "modern" warship doesn't mean much. See, the real Dreadnought could be considered the first modern Battleship, but was constructed with materials light years behind those used in modern vessel construction today. "Modern" could just mean the basic principles, layout and function of a design.
That being said, BT's Dreadnought could have been built with some pretty primitive components, but was outfitted with a fusion drive, KF-Drive and Naval Class Weapons, i.e. the basic building blocks of a "Modern" WarShip. Older military "black water" vessels could have been more akin to BT's Pocket WarShips rather than interstellar attack vessels. We'll probably never know.
If anything, I chock the construction of the Dart in the TRO to developer laziness. Why provide two full construction rule sets for an old design that has little pertinence to the overall universe outside of some historical scenarios? Seems like a lot of work for little gain. It was probably easier to provide construction of the WarShip using the standard construction materials.
For our purposes, the Dart is great since it cuts out quite a bit of leg work necessary to actually figure out what pre-BattleTechnology WarShips may have actually looked like. I just don't enjoy TPTB cutting corners in the name of expediency.
Had a whole response I was working on and lost it...
Based on what we see in Canon - the Dreadnaught was revolutionary because it introduced the modern warship technologies (KF Cores, Thrusters, Naval Weapons, etc)- we know warships existed before the Dreadnaught- they go as far back as the TAS Charger (early 2200s IIRC) so the difference must have been in the technology used, rather then the design principals. (although I would have preferred it the other way around)
Basically I think the issue is that the designs in the "lost" warships section 3057R are problematic. Look at the Dart compared to the original Aegis- the Dart is in many ways superior, despite being older. I think the issue is really one of being sloppy and not thinking through the ways the designs would have naturally developed. i.e we see the Aegis having Ferro-Carbide Armor in 2372 and the Farragut mounting Naval Gauss Rifles in 2448 (read the fluff- that's exactly what it says). So where was the evolution of naval technology? By 2448 we have every naval tech except for the LF Battery and maybe Lamellor Ferro-Carbide Armor -the LF battery was introduced by 2531 and Lamellor Ferro-Carbide by 2618.
Another issue with the early warships is their size- in the real world, warships constantly get larger - a Nimitz class carrier is almost 3 times the displacement of the WW2 Era Essex class. Modern destroyers are as large as WW2 cruisers. But in BT we get the Lola I, II and III. Originally the Lola's were 3 completely separate ships that only shared a name- a not uncommon occurrance. Now they are basically the same ship- all weighting 680 Ktons. It would have made a lot more sense if the Lola I & II were smaller vessels, showing how as technology advanced destroyers had to become larger and larger to fulfill their mission...
Unfortunately this is what we have- I can only hope as the TRO primatives come out the writers will do something to correct these issues....
