Relative to each other - weapons vs defence, that is.
I believe that space warfare between ships will be much closer to submarine warfare than any other current form, simply because the main problems will not be in attacking and defending, but in finding the target in the first place. Until we move to a power source that can reasonably allow for acceleration throughout a trip, a ship in transit is a very tough thing to find if it doesn’t want to be. So warfare will likely be one ship trailing a (possible) target until it is close enough to target, then a sudden flurry of activity (guided missles and countermeasures), probably resulting in the destruction of the original target.
Well, I think the ultimate purpose of a warship would be to project power around some planet. To that end, you would definitely have fighters, bombers, shuttles, gunships, “drop ships”, boarding ships and other assorted small ships for interdicting ships in orbit, ground attacks.
Remeber that a ship, no matter how powerful can only be in one place at a time. Also, it’s much easier to change a small fighters orbit than some massive space carrier.
One significant difference between Star Wars and Star Trek is that the ships in Trek can track other ships while they’re travelling at warp. This means that they can chase after enemies if they try to escape. In Star Wars, they can’t do this. When Han Solo makes the jump to hyperspace, he’s escaped. All the Empire can do now is attempt to guess his destination based on his last heading. (Yeah, they planted a tracking device on his ship in A New Hope, but obviously they will not have such an advantage in most situations.) The upshot of this is that people in Star Wars have a much greater need for reconnaissance and scouting than people in Star Trek do. This requires lots of small expendable ships.
Incidentally, have you noticed that ships in Trek have virtually no ability to project power? They don’t carry fighters, only shuttles and runabouts that aren’t meant for combat. They also don’t seem to carry any long-range weapons. As has been mentioned before, all combat takes place at close range. You’d think that something like a warp-capable missle would be in widespread use, but to my knowledge we’ve never seen such a thing.
Well, yes, but what I was trying to incoherently say was that it also might depends on the absolute level of capability? If you look at the capabilities of some of the Culture vessels Ian M Banks came up with, size is almost irrelevant to the fighting capabilities of the ships - any of them can trash a planet with ease and defend itself pretty well. Irrespective of whether defense or offense are superior, both are very strong in absolute terms. Size seems to be almost purely a function of logistics - some vessels are small for independent operation, others are huge to act as R&R and manufacturing facilites. Engagements happen at enormous distances with ships explicitly targeting each other. Same thing in the Nights Dawn universe, pretty much.
On the other hand, if offense is weak but defense is slightly weaker, then you might very well get the whole thing with fleets blazing away at each other from short range using area fire.
Cost, sphere of influence and construction time may also have something to do with it. A small space power may not have the peacetime need, construction ability, public support, materials or budget for large capital ships, and may prefer something cheap, mass-produced and quick to deliver.
Agreed. Armor will be mostly or entirely pointless. In the black of space, invisibility will be the first, best and probably only line of defense, and initiative will be victory ninety-nine times out of a hundred.
That said, I could imagine using small craft in civilian areas that required monitoring, or in/after combat for boarding actions. Can’t think of anything else, unless for some reason we run into a stone wall with artificial sentience.
One Voyager episode featured a Cardassian-built genocide missile that was an AI-controlled, warp-driven antimatter bomb capable of destroying an entire world.
In the Trek universe, the message I read between the lines is that even conquerors like the Klingons and the Cardassians are afraid of just how nasty an unlimited war could be. Even the Dominion war was about trying to subjugate, not destroy, the Alpha Quadrant. Given that a single Constitution-class starship (never mind later classes) could erase all life from the surface of an unprotected planet, a total war of annihilation would go on until the last few opposing starships destroyed each other, leaving the remaining 1% of the population to eke out an existence in a hollow asteroid somewhere.