Originally posted by Valor NR
To Phoenix:Good point but still that means that those battleships are tasked with Defending these lightly armed Carriers which would make them "usefull again" . Very good point Phoenix
If fighters and carriers have become the end-all/be-all of space combat, then it would make much more sense to use specially designed anti-fighter cruisers as the escorts for a carrier. Take a standard destroyer or cruiser (which is typically faster than a battleship), strip out the heavy weapons and fire control, and replace them with systems that are optomized for targeting and tracking a large number of small, high-speed ships. Slave the fire control systems to a single ship to better coordinate which ship is shooting at what.
If the fire control system is good enough, you may even be able to use the turrets on the escorts to pick off torpedoes targetted at other ships in the carrier group.
If a group of fighters approaches the carrier group at high speed, then the escorts will be able to interdict any that make it through the carrier groups own fighter screen. If a capital ship approaches the carrier group, then the fighters on board the carrier should have the speed necessary to sink the approaching capital ship before it can get within range.
The ONLY use that I can think of for something like a battleship is if a situation arises in which there is no approach battle to reach the enemy. A situation in which one side decides to perform a point blank defense of a jump point by dropping a battle station next to the point would be an example of this. A battleship would be able to jump in and immediately unleash on the battlestation. A carrier that did that might be cut to shreds before it could launch fighters.
Of course, since many fighters in WC can jump without the carrier, even that example doesn't exactly fit.