Playing With / The Dreaded Dreadnought

Basic Trope: The scariest vehicle in the work is called a Dreadnought.

• Straight: The SS Tropenought is the biggest, scariest, most powerful vehicle in the setting, and she and her sister ships are identified as being Dreadnoughts, Dreadnought-class, or something similar.
• Exaggerated:
  • The SS Tropenought is so big, powerful, and scary that she's effectively invulnerable to any conventional attack.
  • The SS Tropenought is also The Battlestar — in addition to her huge size and numerous guns, she also carries swarms of Space Fighters.
  • The SS Tropenought also serves as a Mobile Civilization Ship with extensive civilian facilities and full weaponry, including the capability to retrieve resources by itself and produces its own fleet (may include a WMD).
• Downplayed:
  • The SS Tropenought and her fellow Dreadnoughts are powerful and capable vehicles, but not that much more than other battleships.
  • Dreadnought-class ships are the biggest, baddest ships the Empire can build. They're matched by the Federation's Battlestar-class ships, but the main characters are in a scouting vessel, not a Battlestar, so "dreadnought inbound" is still an Oh, Crap! moment.
• Justified:
  • HMS Dreadnought and/or Dreadnought-type Battleships are cited in connection with naming the ship or class "Dreadnought."
  • Dreadnoughts have higher top-speed/acceleration, heavier armor, stronger Deflector Shields, and more powerful guns than any other class of warship. Add to that enough fighter and bomber wings to screen engagements from dedicated carriers, and you have a class of ship that dreads nought (ie "fears nothing"), as it were, due to being a Master of All that no lesser ship can go toe-to-toe with.
  • The Empire cannot produce a lot of FTL engines, so only the biggest, mean-and-nastiest, most heavily armored and hideously be-weaponed ships are equipped with FTL drives in order to protect such rare and valuable assets. Since such a ship has nothing that can reasonably fight it one-Vs-one, it's placed in the "Dreadnought" class. Predictably, everyone poos themselves at the thought of fighting such a beast.
  • Dreadnoughts are Powered by a Black Hole and huge by nescessity, so they need more weapons to cover more angles of attack from those pesky rebels and feds. Might as well make its primary armaments wave-motion cannons, and slap on that experimental super-shield too, since there's petawatts of energy to throw around, and suddenly you have a Tactical Superweapon Unit ready to rock.
• Inverted:
  • Dreadnoughts are among the least-powerful vehicles available in the setting.
  • The most powerful ship in the story is the Dreadnought-class Mighty Mouse, a corvette-tier vessel that can one-shot a fellow Dreadnought-class vessel with a big fuckoff cannon and/or egregious usage of Gatling Good / More Dakka.
  • Dreadnoughts are subjected to the Swords to Plowshares treatment after the war:
    • Decommissioned Dreadnoughts are re-tooled into hostile-environment science vessels, as their huge magazines make wonderful laboratories; complete with a launcher for probes and collection drones (ie, the mass-driver cannons). Furthermore, their massive laser cannon mounts can be converted into observatories with minimal fuss. Their shields and armor also protect from radiation belts, coronal mass ejections, asteroid strikes, and any other hazard even more dangerous than enemy salvoes. They retain the moniker of Dreadnought in a sort of Academic Athlete fashion; as in "We brave the darkest depths of the universe For Science!"
    • Dreadnoughts make for great hospital and repair/tender ships, as they have loads of room for patients and mission-killed ships once all the guns are stripped off.
    • Reprogramming the fabricators intended to make ammunition to produce medicines and medical equipment, colony modules, vehicles, and the spare parts for all of them makes for a great factory ship. Thus an engine of destruction becomes the key to rebuilding afterwards. Their once-intimidating name is then taken to mean "have no fear; help is here!" (But then again, the nine most terrifying English words are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help.")
• Subverted:
  • The SS Tropenought is a Dreadnought-class warship, but her weapons prove ineffective and her armor falls apart in battle.
  • A Dreadnought-class warship tears its way through other, smaller ships, before being curb-stomped by an even larger ship not identified as a Dreadnought.
  • The Dreadnought is the scariest ship when it's first introduced, and intended to stay that way. However, as the work's series goes on, things escalate, and Juggernaut-class ships reduce it to being So Last Season. Today's Dreadnought inevitably becomes tomorrow's baseline warship, as happened between WW1 and WW2.
  • The Dreadnought's engine has such a hard time lugging around all its fun little toys that it's a Mighty Glacier that most other ships can fly rings around. They're regarded as something of a joke or showpiece.
  • The Empire doesn't consider anything smaller than a cruiser to be any threat to their Dreadnoughts. Ergo, Dread's have nothing that can engage frigates and smaller. This leads to the Federation deploying "rat-swarms" of Mighty Mice to nibble them to death, and Rebels sending Space Fighters to fire torpedoes up their auxilary exhaust-ports.
  • The Arsenal's^note  a dedicated missile launcher warship with no other weapons massive salvo of cruise missiles can pummel a Dreadnought into space junk from farther away than the Dreadnought's compliment of lasers and autocannons can aquire targets. If you can't out-gun it, out-range it.
• Double Subverted:
  • To 1: The Tropenought only failed because she was sabotaged. Her sister ship, SS Destructor, is just as powerful as she should be.
  • To 2 and 3: The Juggernaut-class ships are bigger, scarier, and better armed than Dreadnoughts, but suffer critical weaknesses due to their size and power draw. Dreadnought-class ships can beat a Juggernaut one-on-one once these weaknesses are known.
  • To 4 and 5: Dreadnoughts are far from Point Defenseless/are retrofitted with hilarious ammounts of CIWS's, because their abysmal engine power was noted during prototyping (and/or the berk who suggested not having anything capable of engaging smaller ships is subjected to a near-fatal Dope Slap and a 72-hour long loop of the Trench Run scene from Star Wars). Any enemy lured into range by its lumbering top speed is quickly shredded. Including cruise missiles. What few daring fighters and Mighty Mice, and lucky missiles that can penetrate the flak curtain will only do Scratch Damage to its mighty bulk. And don't even think about going for the exhaust ports; they're the most heavily-defended areas possible.
  • To 6: The losses of several different Dreadnought-class ships against Arsenal-class ships is exactly why the SS Tropenought has conceptualized, developed, and finally installed several Wave Motion Guns that can fire in any direction and has a targeting range of several galaxies away, which means whatever the Arsenal can do to out-range it, the SS Tropenought has already thought of it and has installed better versions of it lightyears before the Arsenal even conceptualized it. The only reason Tropenought can still even move is so the enemy can't find it to target it for retaliatory strikes.
• Parodied: SS Tropenought is Lovesall-class, the biggest and most powerful party bus in the universe! As in, A Party, Also Known as an Orgy.
• Zig Zagged: The SS Tropenought is a bigger, scarier, and more powerful ship than any we've seen thus far. . . but there's talk of even bigger, scarier, more powerful ships than Tropenought. . . and then those even bigger ships are never seen, leaving Tropenought the biggest, scariest, most powerful thing visible in the work.
• Averted: Dreadnoughts do not exist by name in the work.
• Enforced: Y'know, considering that Dreadnoughts are historically the highest-ranking ship class, it is not abnormal to make it extremely powerful.
• Lampshaded: "That ship is a Dreadnought? Crap, we're in trouble!"
• Invoked: "We need something bigger and badder than anything the enemy has. We're building...a Dreadnought."
• Exploited:
  • The Dreadnought-class SS Tropenought is sent to potential trouble spots so that her mere presence scares enemies into surrendering.
  • Dreadnoughts are so scary that they're the core of the Empire's "Distraction Dreadnought!" strategy. Everyone's so focused on taking out the dreaded Dread's that they don't notice the rest of the Imperial Fleet actually accomplishing objectives under their noses.
• Defied: "No, we are not building a Dreadnought! Our purpose is exploration, not combat!"
• Discussed: "If we can build ourselves a Dreadnought, we could really kick some ass!" "I dunno about that one. We could go for Mighty Mice instead; They're just as deadly as a Dreadnought with the added bonus of being surprisingly cheap and not as noticeable as any other Dreadnought."
• Conversed: "Y'know that the word "Dreadnought" means "fears nothing"? Appropriate, yes?"
• Implied: The Federation receives intelligence reports that The Empire may be building a dreadnought. Shortly thereafter, a Federation ship encounters a huge, unidentified ship...and is quickly destroyed.
• Deconstructed:
  • Dreadnoughts are large, scary, and powerful, but a single one represents such an extreme investment they are either Too Awesome to Use or overshadowed by the Boring, but Practical option of building a larger quantity of smaller ships. Especially if, mathematically speaking, the smaller ships equal the resources of a single Dreadnought but are more capable (i.e., two cruisers cost the same as one Dreadnought, but offer half again the firepower).
  • Dreadnoughts are large, scary, and powerful, but there's only so much scare-based victories and complete wipeouts of relatively small enemy fleets before it's swiftly revealed that The Federation is over-relying on them because they're big, frightening, and devastating. A lowly Countrystan from some unknown planet sees this and decides that, theoretically, an Ace Pilot skilled enough to navigate and maneuver around tight, winding tunnels could easily pull off an Airstrike Impossible and destroy a Dreadnought, which is why they secretly send one to do just that while The Federation is currently in a skirmish against The Empire, much to the sudden shock and horror on both sides as to why one of the biggest and baddest ships on the field had mysteriously exploded, while the Ace Pilot flies off with nary a trace of where they came from and where they've gone after completing something that, until this point, was deemed impossible.
  • Dreadnoughts are routinely taken out by logistical issues. They're derisively referred to as "White Elephants," and it's said that "Whom the Emperor wishes to destroy, he first assigns as captain of a Dreadnought."
• Reconstructed:
  • To 1:
    • A larger number of smaller, less individually powerful but still capable ships may be adequate for most situations, but there are some things only something with the size and firepower of a Dreadnought can handle, and you need to have at least one for when that situation arises.
    • The development of resource collection and mass assembly technologies is sufficient enough to construct a number of Dreadnoughts that costs less than the total costs needed for building smaller ships that can match its power.
    • The Mighty Mouse is built instead. It's much smaller, with the potential for having an entire army with nothing BUT Mighty Mice, and it's also a Dreadnought-class for all their Dreadnought needs.
    • SS Tropenought is just the sole flagship of the space force, it is meant as being a mobile HQ, not a fleet flagship.
  • To 3: Dreadnoughts become Rescued from the Scrappy Heap by a combination of competent captains ("Ever wonder why I broke so many promising young captains accross the Dreadnought's stern?") and advances in Logistical technology.
• Played For Drama:
  • The Empire deploys a massive Dreadnought to attack The Federation, and our heroes must race against time to figure out how to destroy it and win the war.
  • An Insane Admiral seizes control of the SS Tropenought and uses her in his own personal war...and even his allies become targets.
  • The Federation develops a Dreadnought with full scientific and diplomatic capabilities as well as advanced/experimental military technology as the flagship of the scientific exploration division or to conduct high-risk exploration missions (such as exploring The Multiverse), and the full story is about its misadventures with its crew among dimensions and realities.
  • The over-reliance of the SS Tropenought means that when a highly advanced (to the point of being a bonafide Super-Soldier) Ace Pilot from the lowly Countrystan on some random and up-to-this-point unimportant planet somehow manages to blow it up in a spectacular Airstrike Impossible, The Federation suddenly realizes how screwed they are now that The Empire and every other enemy finds out that no matter how powerful a ship may be, it's always susceptible to being Point Defenseless and suffering an Airstrike Impossible from a particularly skilled pilot from anywhere at all. And so, begins the Lensman Arms Race between The Federation trying to rebuild and better versions of the SS Tropenought (including building an entire Planet Spaceship) and its enemies training the best of their pilots in simulated Airstrike Impossible courses and having their scientists meticulously analyze each and every possible weakness the next Dreadnought-class ship may have.
• Played For Laughs:
  • The SS Tropenought was such a colossal boondoggle, costing so many resources, taking years and years to be designed, partially built, redesigned midway through construction, rebuilt, refitted, features added and removed and added again that it never worked when finally launched, and was eventually scrapped or just relegated to a junkyard somewhere.
  • Warfare degenerates into a single Dreadnought and Arsenal sitting on opposite sides of the Universe ineffectually shooting at each other and Volleying Insults over the anisible. And then an Ace Pilot from Countrystan in a Mighty Mouse swoops in and takes both out with two well timed sneak attacks.

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Watch out, it's The Dreaded Dreadnought! You've got a better chance at fleeing from it than taking it head on!

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