Star Cruiser/Legends

"Were you on a star-cruiser or a...?"

- Luke Skywalker

Star Cruiser was a widely-used designation for spaceships in general as well as a term used for a prominent Mon Calamari warship production line and a subclass of battlecruisers.

History
The term was sometimes used to describe spacecraft in general, and in this context, it was sometimes written lowercase as star cruiser, but it could also be used to specify a type of large battlecruiser,  and was used as designation for a series of large Mon Calamari warships.

The famous Mon Calamari Star Cruisers were the main capital ships of the Rebel Alliance and the New Republic. A typical Star Cruiser of the Galactic Civil War was around 1200m, such as the iconic MC80 Liberty type Star Cruiser, but the term could also apply to the 500m Kuari Princess, and to larger Mon Cal ships, like the Home One.

The lowercase term "star cruiser" was also applied to Imperial Navy warships, where it was used as an alternate designation for Star Destroyers. It was also used as a synonym for the standard cruiser designation, which referred to all combat warships above approximately 400m in length, as for example the Strike-class medium cruiser was referred to in this manner. Smaller warships, like the CR90 corvette, were also called this at times.

Some ships named with the upper-case "Star Cruiser" were bigger than standard Star Destroyer designs, and were large enough to be thought of as Super Star Destroyers. They were an Imperial warship class separate from both Star Destroyers and Star Dreadnoughts, considered by some a subtype of the battlecruiser class in the Anaxes War College System. Among many naval historians, the inclusion of this subtype into the ship classification-system was debated and contested. A typical example of the Star Cruiser design was the Allegiance-class battlecruiser, a 2200 m long model of Super Star Destroyer utilized by the Galactic Empire.

Behind the scenes
The term "star cruiser" first appeared in dialogue in Star Wars, written as "star-cruiser" and "starcruiser" in various versions of the script. Early Expanded Universe material such as Marvel's Star Wars comics uses the term quite loosely, including for the Executor. In the script for The Empire Strikes back, the EF76 Nebulon-B escort frigate is called a "Star Cruiser", with the words now capitalized. Since Return of the Jedi, however, the term has been most widely used to describe Mon Calamari Star Cruisers.

In his endnotes for The Essential Guide to Warfare, Jason Fry mentioned that he had planned to give an explanation for Luke asking if C-3PO and R2-D2 were on a Star Cruiser, but it ended up cut before it was released.

Known Star Cruiser classes

 * Mon Calamari Star Cruiser:
 * MC80 Star Cruiser
 * MC80 Home One type Star Cruiser
 * MC80 Liberty type Star Cruiser
 * MC80 wingless Liberty type Star Cruiser
 * MC80a Star Cruiser
 * MC80B Star Cruiser
 * MC90 Star Cruiser
 * Allegiance-class battlecruiser

Appearances

 * Jedi Quest: The Trail of the Jedi
 * Jedi Quest: The Dangerous Games
 * Star Wars (Marvel)
 * Star Wars comic strip
 * Star Wars Galaxies
 * Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
 * Dark Empire
 * Dark Empire audio drama
 * Dark Empire
 * Dark Empire audio drama