Some lovely ship blueprints, produced by a member of the community, here: http://www.elite-dangerous-blog.co.uk/post/Elite-Dangerous-Ship-Blueprints-23-Update
Whats the porpoise of that image?![]()
Ships in Elite are way bigger than they look in-game. Compared to Star Wars, the Cobra is about as big as the Millenium Falcon. the Orca is about as big as the Correlian Corvette. If you took the bodies of two AT-ATs and stuck them end to end, they'd still be smaller than the Dolphin.
So, the answer to your original question, the Dolphin is "not small"
I was messing around in the CG station yesterday in my hauler, flying as close to parked ships as I could without triggering the station. Some of those ships look gigantic when viewed this way. I think it was because you can use the comparative sizes of all the boxes and buildings inside the station as a comparison. From inside a ship, it's much harder to tell.I think the ships do look big, but the issue is with the Saud Krugers that all windows are tinted, so you can't use the CMDR to get a sense of scale.