Interestingly, in Star Trek Online "Dreadnoughts" actually don't refer to a specific class that are bigger than other ships. They tend to be specific subvariants of ships otherwise described as Heavy Cruisers (For Feddies), Battleships (for Klinks), or uhh, "Advanced Warbird"* that happen to be equipped with a "lance" type weapon. That is, a forward mounted BFG that can either one shot or heavily damage most any other ships.Yeah there does seem to be a bit of a brainbug where dreadnoughts in both scifi settings and by the fandom are just considered a class above 'battleships' in just being some super-battleship type of class. Which is fine with me of course. If your in space might as well go big.![]()
STO actually does some very interesting things with ship classification spurred on by the more traditional Trek classes, and generally they make a lot of logical sense when you parse them down, even if some of the things are obviously done for gameplay reasons.
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* The Romulans are kinda masters of understatement. Their "advanced warbirds" in STO are some of the LARGEST ships by volume that a player can use, and for some variants they're actually two in one ships that can separate into two more normal sized ships.