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Risk<Snipped quote by WilsonTurner>
So you have 20 extremely expensive, hard to miss ships with a big "sink me" sign hanging off them. Good to know :P xD
A shame that the "sink me" sign is guarded by dozens of ballistic missiles, enough multipurpose fighters to launch 700 sorties in a day, the most advanced countermeasures the world knows. You know... more justice than anyone can take on.
Also, large capital ships means that their volume-to-surface-area ratio is much more in favor of the volume- meaning that a large ship can produce loads more power, and therefore support loads more. A smaller ship would have trouble running several systems at once, because of such limitations- meanwhile, a capital ship, a large ship, can carry more resources to go on longer journeys, produce more power or product, use more weapons at one time, consistently, while also supporting other support modules, like shields, electronic warfare, etc.
A destroyer might be able to confuse larger ships by using a couple powerful weapons, a light shield and radar-scrambling tech. Meanwhile, a dreadnought would be able to support enough weapons to take on multiple ships all around it, while having thicker armor and more powerful shields, while also disrupting enemy radar and even making ghosts of itself so that others will have trouble picking the right target.
Sure, you can complete the same as a large-ship fleet with a dozen times more with smaller ships, but the smaller ships are each easier to destroy, and would require a great deal more discipline and control, meaning that one can focus on certain ships and destroy enemy productivity.
The same goes both ways- smaller ships can focus on larger ships from more angles than what larger ships could handle, and use each other to confuse weapons and defeat countermeasures.
It's really depending on specialty. Armor is does not leap ahead of everything else, just as weapons are not overly powerful, at least conventional weapons. Our body armor can stop a bullet- and it will likely to stay that way for quite a while. An armored suit may be able to stop bullets, but then the guns will be evolved to pierce the suit, so the suit will evolve to remain protective, and so weapons will evolve, and etc.
A nation who invests heavily in one kind of ship will obviously have very good ships of that type compared to other nations who invest in a different class or type. For example, had industrialists invested more in rotary-driven engines rather than piston-driven engines, it's quite possible that rotary-driven engines would've been far more efficient and common- but they weren't, so they aren't as good, because there is less reason to do so.
