Dreadnought

Dreadnoughts are large Capital Ships designed for force projection, fleet combat and breaking enemy defences. They lack speed and manoeuvrability, but this is of little consequence given their intended roles.

## History

The history behind Dreadnoughts is rather interesting. With a few notable exceptions, the term is a retroactive one, with the Dreadnoughts of the 2290s being the Battleships of the 2270s and 80s.

Prior to the newest generation of Battleships, the few Capital Ships in service were relatively small, being perhaps 1.5x the tonnage of a comparable Heavy Cruiser of the era. The best example of this is the Federation Class. Ships of this era were designed as command ships and for very specialised situations requiring heavier firepower than that of a Heavy Cruiser.

In 2286, a single new class of ship changed all that. The War Eagle Class was gargantuan compared to the Battleships of the Klingon Defence Force and especially those of Starfleet. This lead to a new arms race to build "Super-Battleships". Once these new ships, such as the Klingon B11 qeyLIS bet'Leth (Sword of Kahless) Class and the Federation Missouri Class, were in service, tacticians on all sides pondered how to classify them compared to the earlier generation of starships that they now dwarfed. Starfleet eventually resurrected a term from early 20th Century Earth, defining their new Missouri Class as a Battleship, and their smaller Ulysses Class (and the earlier and obsolete Federation Class) as "Dreadnoughts". The term soon gained popularity and became synonymous with smaller, often older Battleship designs.

Given the expense of such starships, few powers were prepared to scrap their newly-defined Dreadnoughts in favour of huge Battleships, and some even found that their smaller ships were more economical to run (especially smaller powers such as the Mirak Star League) and more tactically useful than the lumbering super-ships. Even the major powers that had adopted Battleships found that smaller Dreadnoughts still filled a useful tactical niche.

## Tactical Usage

Dreadnoughts, even after the adoption of Battleship, continued to act in the role of Capital Ships, defining the power of their operating navy. They were found to be more useful for fleet combat, especially in engaging smaller vessels, than the new Battleships, and for those powers that didn't operate those larger starships, remained the jewels of their respective fleets.

## Apocrypha

Dreadnoughts, along with the Battleships intended to replace them, fell out of favour with most powers by the 24th Century. Those in service generally remained so well into the new century, although eventually their technological obsolescence and high operating costs rendered them uneconomical and they were eventually withdrawn. Most powers returned to a Heavy Cruiser based fleet, this being more flexible, cheaper and capable of policing (and exploring) far larger areas of space in the new age of discovery. The exception to this was the Romulan Star Empire, who not only retained their War Eagle Class Dreadnoughts at the expense of their later Imperial Hawk Class Battleships, but actually constructed a new class based on her, becoming the infamous Melak Class Warbird.