I classify my ships mostly based on their upgrade slot count and overall visual size, since there's no one definite way to classify ships in Avorion, though it's usually 1-2 for corvettes, 3-5 for frigates, 6-7 for destroyers, 8~10 for cruisers and anything more is a battleship/dreadnought. These are mostly arbitrary, since you can also increase upgrade slots with computer blocks and such.
Lol, did the beta update really end up butchering the Raven's design that much? :P But it seems the Banshee is still alright, as you said. Though, it seems I may have to update a lot of ship "descriptions" once all the changes hit the stable release.
for the Raven Series Frigate...i went alittle over board with it. but that made it so i could stop almost instantly.
These 2 pictures show what needs to be changed to make it so it can stop alot better in the beta. Like i said before i went 100% over board with it. It is a great line of ships. i know when i go up the line to the TR and the XN one i will have to add 1 or 2 more pods on the bottom to help out alittle bit. since doing this to those 2 would take out shield strength and i really do not want that to happen.
also her stats without any upgrades in her.