I think their main use wouldn't be necessarily combat, but rather as a mobile forward operation base, aka glorified, FTL capable space station, where smaller ships dock to resupply and repair. Of course, they'd have weapons for defense, but you wouldn't really throw them into battle.
See also: High Charity, Axis, Solomon, A Boa Qu, Libra, Barge/Bulge/Baaji, and more.
Some of those are absolutely HUGE warships/space stations/space bases and used as a mobile base for things be they mobile suits, Covenant battlecruisers (or the Flood), or what have you. Naturally several of those use asteroids/planetoids/planet chunks as a core to work with but it still counts.
edited 5th Sep '17 4:40:57 PM by MajorTom
Keep in mind that if something doesn't move you don't have a technical reason NOT to build big. Most of the engineering issues is due to square-cubed law and without acceleration that's not an issue.
Of course, there's still financial reasons but not everybody cares about money in fiction.
The Square-Cubed law ONLY applies on planets. In space, the law literally may as well not exist.
New Survey coming this weekend!
It still applies in some way to mass and propulsion. Powerful enough rockets are important.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
We're still talking about a stationary instillation, right? Because inertial dampeners are pretty soft sci-fi.
edited 5th Sep '17 5:06:05 PM by Belisaurius
Not technically. Atomic Rockets notes that the idea of para-gravity is possible, it's unobtanium, we just don't know how to make it yet.
Artificial Gravity would easily be able to be used as Inertial dampening.
Yes, inertial dampening using para-gravity (good old gravity generators) is possible, though I doubt that this will be needed on a ship of those dimensions, as acceleration is rather low, e.g. 0.01 g. But that aside, you can use para-gravity also to accelerate something else, e.g. projectiles.
Bel: You seem to forget that different planets need different speeds to stay in orbit. If you want to stay 1000km over Jupiter you need to be faster than when you're 1000km over earth. And while it is possible to get to a orbit where you can keep your speed (if the FTL does conserve inertia) it might mean that you get to the same orbit as a moon, or the other extreme, are partly in the atmosphere which will play merry hell with your orbit. And this assumes that the FTL has enough pinpoint accuracy for this and you've got sufficient information about the planet.
Life's too short for being hectic.
I could see something like a Super Star Destroyer mounting a scaled-down Death Star superlaser. Not enough to blow up a planet or maybe even an entire city, but enough to knock three bells out of a starcruiser in one shot.
@Vlad
I'm going to be honest and say I have no idea what you're talking about. Objects in orbit don't feel acceleration as the force of gravity is effectively uniform. As long as an orbital station isn't being towed or moved the G force experienced is nil.
The assumption is that a station is built in orbit and stays in orbit it's entire existence so squared cubed law is irrelevant.
Can barrage balloons be useful in preventing drone-launched air-to-surface missiles from hitting their targets?
Not as-is, no. Drone launched missiles often come down at very steep angles and barrage balloons are only effective at low altitudes.
You might be able to intercept cruise missiles flying nap of earth but that's about it.
Then what can you use to block a drone-launched missile?
Hunter-Killer drones? They cruise around and move to intercept inbound drones or missiles?
The law in the night
All you need is BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT
Sometimes you don't need to redesign something or make something new. Stargate SG-1 showed that sometimes a simple solution (IE just shooting them) works wonders.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
The majority of missiles launched by drones are done in the tens of Km ranges and arrive in however many seconds. It is actually easier to just shoot down the drone rather than swat the missile. Though systems like CRAM might be able to hit the missile as well. One of the goals of future compacted laser systems is hard kill intercepts of missiles. Some armored vehicles have both soft and hard kill systems that can either cause the missile to possibly miss or try to destroy it before it hits.
Who watches the watchmen?
The reason for me using the idea of barrage balloons was that the story I'm writing, a country is in a middle of a civil war, and one city that kept its loyalty to Belligerent A is surrounded by territory held by Belligerent B. Belligerent B hijacked a drone fleet and uses them for attacks on cities loyal to Belligerent A. The barrage balloons also act as a early warning system where if an ASM hits one balloon, the civilians are notified that they're under attack by drones.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Cruise missiles wouldn't be all that bothered by barrage balloons given systems like Tomahawk can steered around terrain and obstacles they can also just pop up near the target and dive on them reducing the efficacy of the balloons.
Who watches the watchmen?
I wasn't referring to Tomahawks, I was referring to Hellfire missiles launched from UA Vs like Predators and Reapers.
You might have more success if you hung nets from the balloons.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Hallow; ASM or AShM are typically cruise missiles you normally fire at ships and completely different from most drone fired missiles. No one calls air to surface ASM.
edited 7th Sep '17 11:52:36 AM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?
^ Usually (in the West anyways) they're referred to as AGM.
Well, at the moment I don't really know how large the bulk of the ships will be, aside from 500m frigates and 100m corvettes, so cruisers will probably end up at 1+km in diameter. This could make a Battlestar that carries anything larger than cruisers difficult at best.
AFP: At the moment it is fully my intent to let those Awesome, yet Impractical behemoths stay behind friendly lines. And the "too expensive too actually use" wouldn't cut it in my setting, as the sides tend to have millions of planets and I want to avert a certain trope ;) Meaning they really would be used in their support capability, though there wouldn't be too many. I think they are more likely to be used like the USA used their carriers during WW 2, though with less ships in the hangars and more refill and repair facilities.
Life's too short for being hectic.