Basic Trope: A starship or other vessel is large enough that it's more convenient to describe its dimensions in units usually reserved for geography.
- Straight: The USS Really Big is over a kilometer long.
- Exaggerated: Planet Spaceship.
- Downplayed: The USS Large is described as a half mile long.
- Justified: The USS Really Big is that large because...
- ...it's a Generation Ship and needs to carry enough supplies to last for several hundred years of flight time.
- ...its main weapon is a railgun and can fire its slugs with greater force the longer the barrel is.
- ...it's meant to look imposing and frighten the enemy.
- ...the ship's height and beamnote are limited by the diameter of the Cool Gates in the Portal Network, so the only way to get a bigger ship is to lengthen it.
- ...the technology available does not allow to build a smaller vessel for whatever reasons (for example, power due to physical/engineering reasons ships of that size fulfill better certain roles than smaller ones
- ...it is made to have smaller spaceships inside, similarly to aircraft carriers.
- ...it's a Dreadnought-class warship, designed to carry lots of big guns and thousands of Space Marines.
- ...it's a cargo freighter, designed to haul monumental loads of resources from one star system to another- it doesn't care about being too ungainly because it was never meant to fight, and it's crew mostly resides in a more reasonably-sized engineering section and only rarely has to go anywhere else in the vast hold.
- Inverted:
- The USS Really Small is, although known in-series as a fleet battleship, was barely larger than the size of a heavy starfighter, with most other roles, including cruisers and destroyers, fulfilled by ships of sizes that belongs to star fighters.
- The USS Really Small is -1 kilometers long.
- Subverted: The USS Really Big is actually several smaller ships docked together.
- Double Subverted:
- ... which are still individually over a kilometer long.
- Although these smaller vessels are shorter than one kilometer from the out side, the inside of these ships are definitely longer than one kilometer.
- Parodied: A character runs from one end of the ship to the other and is all out of breath when he gets to his destination, complaining that the ship is too big.
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Most, if not all star ships in the series are of a more reasonable size, similar to ships used by real-world navies.
- Enforced: A network executive required that the USS Really Big be over a kilometer in length in imitation of Star Wars.
- Lampshaded: A character remarks offhand that the USS Really Big is ... really big.
- Invoked: A character specifically designs the USS Really Big to be over a kilometer long.
- Exploited: With only one exit at one end of the ship, the captain has plenty of room to catch up with an enemy infiltrator that made his way deep in the ship.
- Defied: "You want us to make the USS Really Big over a kilometer long? Are you crazy?"
- Discussed: "Look at the size of that thing!"note
- Conversed: "When you read the book, did you notice they wrote the USS Really Big to be over a kilometer long?"
- Implied: The actual length of the USS Really Big is never stated, but a fan works out its length by scaling its on-screen model against objects of known length.
- Deconstructed: The USS Really Big is Awesome, but Impractical, costing so much to operate that it bankrupts the country that built it and gets blown up by a much smaller ship taking advantage of its poor maneuvering and acceleration.
- Reconstructed: The USS Really Big despite its flaws has some major advantages. It is capable of transporting cargo with unprecedented efficiency per weight when fully loaded and covers the budget issues quickly with a few majorly profitable shipments. It is capable of holding smaller craft for its defense as well.
- Played For Laughs:
- It is implied that the ship was made so large because its funders and designers were Compensating for Something.
- The USS Really Big is so large that it takes minutes for it to fly past the camera.
- Played For Drama: The USS Really Big is shown dwarfing all the ships sent to fight it and brushing them aside as casually as someone who swathes a fly.
We could give you a proper link back to Mile-Long Ship, but it would be over a kilometer long.note
