So it looks like Victory Streak *meant* 22,000 meters. Is this the length that seems the most reasonable to us as a group?
Well, the question we should be asking ourselves is: why wouldn't Victory Streak mean what it says in the first place?
To be clear, I have no problem criticizing Wing Commander's length figures in general: they're all over the map between games, none of them pass the 'as seen in FMV' test and with the exception of Prophecy (which still doesn't match straight ship speeds) they don't correspond with their in-game sizes. What I do not understand is why people take issue with only this particular ship and why they have decided to accepd such an unusual solution to it.
Consider that the 2,200 meter number has exactly the same set of problems, plus one: it does not pass the 'measured in FMV' test, it doesn't compare correctly in the game... and you add to the issue that it isn't been stated anywhere. What's the single benefit to using it? This, and only this: it makes it seem like the original number was a typo.
Where does the eagerness to believe that the dreadnought isn't really big (but that all other ships are) come from? Victory Streak has been redesigned and updated half a dozen times since its original printing, including two major updates which fixed both incorrect ship specifications and incredibly minor continuity problems (the 3DO version, which fixes ship specifications to match their finished numbers and the Kilrathi Saga version, which goes so far as to change an ace's name to avoid a slight contradiction with a reference in Freedom Flight).
Here's backstory: deciding that the dreadnought is really 2,200 meters long comes from the early Wing Commander Aces club stories, when the club 'founders' fancied themselves grand arbitors of what was and was not "realistic". They also killed Colonel Blair (not a realistic character!) and changed the marine corps into part-parcel-In the name of realism!In the name of realism!and-proper-noun Mechwarrior dealies (soldiers, in space? Bah, only giant robots are realistic!). In the name of realism! We could complain about these things all day, but they're dead and we aren't. Nevertheless, I have no idea why this particular oddity has survived all these years while the others have (thankfully, thankfully) died their deserved death.
At the end of the day, Andrew Keith found the 22,000 meter dreadnought in Victory Streak and made it the centerpiece of that last great Baen novel... a magically smaller ship wouldn't work the same way, and that's just about as argument-ending as you can get in this case. We need to start thinking beyond 'this number doesn't feel right, it must be wrong'. Lets consider why it was chosen in the first place... to be incredibly imposing! Lets argue about what they could be used for (that's a lot of empty space - is it a troopship? Full of munitions? Thousands of fighters? What?).
Ultimately, I think the real shame is that the Saga project is using the Aces Club number instead of showing us the single thing that FreeSpace is supposed to be good for... really, really big capital ships.