Apart from obviously possibly carring fighters what type of weaponry + speed + defence balance should a battleship have in comparison to destroyer Caps ect.
Battleships (BBs) in SS are ment for Massive firepower and armour/shields - as SS has shown that the bigger (or more) gun wins the match (try a Zolon destroyer versus a Devastator cruiser and you will see what I mean), because in SS it is all about passing the enemy armour, shields and PDB guns (wich SS anti capital to Capital ship missiles failure mostly to do - wich is why you can't compare SS to 21st century Naval combat - as a single harpoon from a ship or even from a fighter can cripple a ship today, contrary to SS).
A BB in SS could take a carrier escorted formation of enemy capital ships as I have demonstrated by building several missions where I've putted a cruiser as the BB. A BB would probably have less damage in the end of the engagement, wich would justify it, so it can keep fighting.
A BB battlegroup would surely be composed of a BB, 1 or 2 cruisers, an escort Carrier, and an assortment of Destroyers and/or frigates, probably as we saw in the later half of WW2 - wich is not an example by itself, as WW2 happened about 4000 years before SS time... there were no shields and the enemy force could mostly be applied only from surface to surface or air to surface (as a BB had destroyer escorts wich made it very hard for subs to even get close to the flagships).
In SS , enemy force can be applied from all possible directions [:'(] and this is worth considering [:-] [:D]!
Yeah, but to continue the ww2 comparison, you need a good CLAA in there to cover the battleship or it will get cut to ribbons by fighter-bombers.
Again, you should compare what is comparable and WW2 naval combat isn't year 6000 space combat...
Compare it rather with B5 mods, Star Wars, Battlecruiser Milennium, Starfleet Command, etc... even in Star Treck (wich is reputed to be "reasonably more science than fiction universe", when compared to Star Wars - wich is rather more fiction than science universe - in both universes they have BBs).
But if you do want to compare, think of the BBs that protected the Allied
vital convoys and the enemy German BBs that raided them, individually and without their escorts.
Offcourse, they were eventually all sank, like the Bismark and Graf Spee, or sabotaged in Port, like the Tirpitz.
But they do have a role on all Space sims (like the ones I've mentioned and other...).
=S=