Covenant starship classifications

The Covenant's starship classification system, like most of the hegemony's bureaucracy, is notoriously convoluted in structure. Rather than a unified tree that progressively categorises vessels into more and more distinct groups, they utilise a number of overlaid policies that exist entirely independent of each other. At the time of its fracturing, all starships were organised within four distinct systems.

Orders
Similar to human classification systems but on a more generalised level, Orders are organisational lists that catalogues all starships in the Covenant's ministrial fleets by the niches and fields that they best excel in. It primarily acts as a registry that archives the name, history, and relevant details of all ships commissioned by the Covenant, as well as those manned by the Sangheili and San'Shyuum since long before the Writ of Union. All this information is housed within a Forerunner reliquary known as the Unending Scroll located on High Charity itself. Smaller databases concerning regional units and ministerial fleets may also be backed up at smaller government outposts. While it was not entirely accurate, as transmission lag and bribery of its archivists meant that some ships were created and destroyed without ever being catalogued, it was reliable enough to be used by the High Council in planning naval expansions. Interestingly, it never made a distinct separation between civilian and military vessels, although some Orders would have low amounts of the former simply because it was necessary for their ships to be armed.

Orders are culturally-significant to Sangheili shipmasters, with each group being sponsored by their own patron saint. In the distant past, it was traditional for all Covenant ships to be gifted a shard created by the Unending Scroll to record their history on, and it was this action that convinced certain lineages that their vessels had a 'spiritual soul' embodied within them. Today, some clans today are divided on whenever it only embodies a single attribute present in all members of a given Order, or each ship has its own personality that branches off from this.