What would the best space battleship design be?

[DDE]

On ‎23‎.‎06‎.‎2016 at 11:56 AM, Elukka said:

The core of the US navy is really the carriers, which are the biggest, most expensive warships I can think of by a large margin, and they won't be getting any smaller. It doesn't really seem like the cruisers or destroyers are getting any smaller either. I'm really not seeing this trend.

Size creep. Few nations build "cruisers" and "destroyers", but then you have pretty nasty "frigates" being rolled out instead. Right now a littoral combatant can have 2000 km effective range on her cruise missiles.

OP, care to say whether you're talking about a battleship or a warship in general, and define "battleship"?

[Emperor of the Titan Squid]

 A ship  with its own armaments, which is equipped with its own propulsion system, and can stage attacks with out outside help. so, not missiles or aircraft carriers.

[DDE]

26 minutes ago, Emperor of the Titan Squid said:

 A ship  with its own armaments, which is equipped with its own propulsion system, and can stage attacks with out outside help. so, not missiles or aircraft carriers.

That's a good start. Missiles, drones and Autonomous Kill Vehicles should be kept onboard thin-skin carriers.

The best propulsion system for a "battleship" is obviously the Orion nuclear pulse drive. Immediately we get a worked historical example - 3 x 127 mm, a few hundred city-buster reentry vehicles...

I also suggest Niven-Purnelle-style x-ray laser "fascii" pumped by the drive explosions, alongside multiple radial railgun mounts as rapid-fire weapons for close range (100-1000 km) and area denial barrages; a mixture of CASABA-HOWITZER shaped nuclear charges and high-frequency lasers for inner point defense.

[wumpus]

On 6/21/2016 at 2:37 AM, kerbiloid said:

A giant space amoeba. It will enshroud and digest anything it meets, withstand any damages from kessleroids and meteoroids, partially vaporize but then condense back under nukes.

This reminds me, I need to get Spaceward Ho! on android...

(the last edition had a "radical tech" that included all sorts of weird results.  One of which was a biological space monster class craft.  Although I think the graphics were more squidlike than ameoba).