Both fixtures of a Standard Sci-Fi Fleet, though both can and do appear in other settings. In naval or space-based settings, expect a Dreadnought to pull double-duty as a Supervillain Lair.Д¬ompare and contrast with its primary competing/companion trope, The Battlestar. In fiction, however, the Dreadnought designation lives on, due in part to the game-changing nature of the original HMS Dreadnought, and partly to the undeniably metal nature of the word 'Dreadnought.' (Dreadnought, roughly, means ' Fear Nothing.') Not long after, battleships themselves became obsolete as aircraft carriers became the rulers of the waves. In Real Life, the name gradually dropped out of usage after World War I, as the Dreadnought-type of battleship became the default type of battleship. Ironically, Dreadnought was bordering on obsolescence by 1914 and the outbreak of World War I due to rapid advances in shipbuilding, leading to bigger, more powerful, and more heavily armed Dreadnoughts (with later examples known as Super Dreadnoughts). Combining heavy armor, high speed, and a relatively small battery of relatively large guns, Dreadnought rendered every other battleship afloat, henceforth known as Pre-Dreadnought Battleships, obsolete. This has strong roots in Real Life naval history, specifically HMS Dreadnought, a British battleship which revolutionized naval warfare for decades to come. There is a strong tendency for such a vehicle to be called a Dreadnought. It is The Dreaded when it comes to large-scale vehicle combat. It's a fleet unto itself, it changes the face of the battle just by showing up, and conventional wisdom is that it can only be taken down by something just as powerful as it is. It's the biggest, baddest, meanest thing flying (or walking, or rarely rolling), packed with weapons, armored ( and possibly shielded) to withstand a whole other fleet's worth of firepower, and may be The Battlestar on top of it all. When dealing with navies (or, occasionally, armies with vehicle support) in fictional settings, there is usually one class of vehicle that just outclasses everything else.

Star trek dreadnought class