Cruiser/Legends

Cruiser was a well-used term throughout the galaxy, often applied to a great variety of ship-classes. Cruisers could range from a few dozen meters to several miles in lenght and be civilian or military in function.

In some cases, the cruiser-designation would be given with a prefix, such as 'Space' or 'Star'.

Space Cruiser
This designation was used mainly for small, civilian ships carrying cargo or passengers. Although some classes like the Consular-class were at the lower range of capital ships, they would never be considered cruisers in the military sense.

Star Cruiser
This designation was given to the Mon Calamari branch of warships (most of which started out as nothing more than civilian starliners). The most well-known ships were somewhat smaller than Imperial-class Star Destroyers, but newer, dedicated military vessels would excede their size and strength.

Since several types of Mon Cal ships have sometimes been given designations other than simply 'cruiser' or 'star cruiser', yet been called just that in other cases, it seems reasonable that 'Mon Cal Star Cruiser' or just 'Mon Cal Cruiser' were more general terms used to refer to a specific line of ships, similar to the use of 'Star Destroyer' and 'Super Star Destroyer' with Republic/Imperial vessels.

Battlecruiser
This term was used for several types of warships, both smaller and larger than Imperial-class Star Destroyers.

A sub-term used for bigger warships belonging to the Republic and the Empire was 'Star Battlecruiser'. These were bigger than ordinary Star Destroyers but smaller than Star Dreadnoughts, and the prefix of 'Star' may have served to differentiate them from the smaller battlecruiser-definition used by non-Imperial ships.

Behind the Scenes
Many debates have occured within the fan-community, as the term 'cruiser' has been thrown around for many years, being attached to everything from tiny pleasure vessels to slow-moving behemoths and mighty warships. No clear answer has ever been given on the matter, and naming-procedures have never been laid out in detail. This has persisted to this day.

It has been argued that Imperial-class Star Destroyers could be called 'Star Cruisers', since they were capable of independent operations as well as being escorts (going by the RL definitions of 'cruiser' and 'destroyer'). In A New Hope, these ships were in fact called 'Star Cruisers', but this was later changed to 'Star Destroyer' in the subsequent films and used by most Expanded Universe-material.

Judging by the recent additions and re-classifications to SW factbooks, dagger-shaped Republic/Imperial ships seem to have their own catalogue of classes, on a grander scale than any other ship-building power in the SW galaxy. Even Mon Calamari ships seem to fall short in their catalogue of warships, though they out-rank most other ship-manufacturers.

*Capital ships