[@WilsonTurner]I never said dreadnaughts were a form of battleship, I compared them to a battleship, that's about it. I never said fleets engaged a pirate ship, and a pirate ship can engage a scout vessel, even a light-cruiser if it felt so, depends on the pirate ship. A pirate ship could be anything, not just tiny little fighters and armed civilian ships. You make it seem like we can't move fast in space, this is supposed to be a far future, the ship the characters will be on uses lasers and faster than light warp drive. A ship could respond to a ship quickly and efficiently, especially if it is on standby, all it would need to do is align and jump to the situation. As for mobilization, if I may compare the ships in this reality to those in Halo, you can see how the Pillar of Autumn prepared itself for boarding in less than about 10 minutes, not to say they won, but that is irrelevant, and the Halo jump drives would be very rapid to charge and engage, they are also quick to charge in most other sci-fi games. As for weapons HITTING stuff, the weapons and all other systems have developed in proportion to the change of battlefield, lasers, tracking missiles, high-velocity ballistics, etc. High-grade ballistic tracking equipment already exists, so do ballistic predictors, so I can only assume they develop as well. As for his age, I suppose it is a bit young, but the situation of the equipment and the dreadnaught is fine, there's nothing wrong with it being called a dreadnaught, sounds better than battleship anyway. Though in a time of constant never ending war, there would be plenty of battles with the OPFOR, so I would assume he would be in combat at least 1 day a week, though I would find that as a commanding officer in the ranks, he would be constantly looking at a holoscreen commanding multiple battlegroups across a star system coordinating different battles all at one time, which would count him as the head commander of the battle. Generals can command multiple battles at once, so why can't this man? He would be leading multiple battles a day, for multiple days a week.