History Main / TheDreadedDreadnought

* In ''Franchise/MassEffect'' the Milky Way races' dreadnoughts are the heaviest units in the fleets, [[MileLongShip kilometer-long starships]] that use their [[FixedForwardFacingWeapon spinal coilguns]] as artillery in battle. The Citadel races are limited in the number they can construct by the [[FictionalGenevaConventions Treaty of Farixen]]. Two dreadnoughts, the Citadel Council's ''Destiny Ascension'' and your nemesis' flagship ''Sovereign'' ([[spoiler: the true BigBad]]) play important roles at the climax of the first game.

** Continuing the tradition, the Royal Navy would later name their first [[CoolBoat nuclear submarine]] HMS ''Dreadnought'', and rumor has it that the next class of [[UsefulNotes/UltimateDefenceOfTheRealm Trident ballistic missile submarines]] will be named the ''Dreadnought''-class.

** ''Film/StarTrekIntoDarkness'': The ''[[http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/USS_Vengeance Vengeance]]'' (pictured above) is a ''Dreadnought''-class ship, intended to be the first in a new line of Federation warships to aggressively protect the Federation against enemies like the Klingons. It's bigger and badder than just about anything else ever seen in the franchise, regardless of timeline[[note]]It's double the size of the Kelvin-era ''Enterprise'' or the ''Enterprise-D'', three times as fast as the ''Enterprise'', and according to supplementary material Khan gave it enough advanced firepower and shields to potentially challenge an entire Klingon fleet.[[/note]]. Also, as pictured above, it's designed to run down ships at warp and blast the hell out of them without breaking stride, as the ''Enterprise'' finds out the hard way.

** Chaos Dreadnoughts are even worse: They work on the same principle as Loyalist Dreadnoughts (armed and armored life-support tanks for Space Marines), but where the Loyalists use them to preserve their most experienced veterans and let them sleep for centuries between battles, CSMs use it as ''punishment'': between battles, their dreadnoughts have their weapons and legs detached before being chained to the wall of a starship or fortress, fully aware of every passing moment. Small wonder Chaos Dreadnoughts have a good chance of unleashing every single weapon they have at a target on their own side.

** ''Dreadnaught''-class Heavy Cruisers feature prominently in the ''Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy'', though they're actually a subversion of this trope. They ''were'' quite capable midsized warships during their heyday, but the ship design was old even before the Clone Wars, so compared to something like an ''Imperial''-class Star Destroyer, a Dreadnaught is small, slow, undergunned, and so inefficiently-designed that it requires a crew of 16,000 to run a 600-meter-long ship. They're relevant to the trilogy because both the New Republic and Empire are competing to find the ''Katana'' Fleet, 200 advanced Dreadnaughts that disappeared after their crews slaved the ships' navigation systems together and made a BlindJump to parts unknown - even if they are obsolete designs, that many "free" warships would give one side of the Galactic Civil War an edge. Grand Admiral Thrawn ended up swiping most of the ''Katana'' Fleet and put it into action faster than the New Republic expected with the help of flash-grown clone crewmen, while the New Republic preferred to strip down and refit their captured Dreadnaughts as "Assault Frigates," which only required a fraction of the crew while boasting much-improved speed, maneuverability, and firepower.

** Red Alert 3's Dreadnoughts can greatly increase their firing speed at the cost of gradually losing health.

* ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert2'' and ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert3'' both feature dreadnoughts as the Soviet Union's naval siege unit, and the heaviest armored naval ship in both games. In both games they launch long-range missiles which don't have much in the way of area damage - but [[CatchPhrase woe unto the hapless foe]] who finds themselves directly impacted, because these things ''hurt''. An Elite Dreadnought in ''Red Alert 2'' has mini-nukes so powerful that a single missile flattens a ''Construction Yard'', a structure so tough otherwise that it can survive a direct hit from a superweapon.

* ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert2'' and ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert3'' both feature dreadnoughts as the Soviet faction's best naval units, and the heaviest armored naval ship in both games. In both games they launch long-range missiles which don't have much in the way of area damage - but [[CatchPhrase woe unto the hapless foe]] who finds themselves directly impacted, because these things ''hurt''.

** 35 kilometers of starship crushes Reapers and other galaxy's ideas of dreadnoughts, establishing major naval supremacy. However, RealityEnsues in that these ships are AwesomeButImpractical, requiring insane amounts of consumables and gargantuan crews to operate.

* Creator/GamesWorkshop games

* In ''Franchise/MassEffect'' the Milky Way races' dreadnoughts are the heaviest units in the fleets, [[MileLongShip kilometer-long starships]] that use their [[FixedForwardFacingWeapon spinal railguns]] as artillery in battle. The Citadel races are limited in the number they can construct by the [[FictionalGenevaConventions Treaty of Farixen]]. Two dreadnoughts, the Citadel Council's ''Destiny Ascension'' and your nemesis' flagship ''Sovereign'' ([[spoiler: the true BigBad]]) play important roles at the climax of the first game.

** SerialEscalation leads to [[Fanfic/SovereignGFCOrigins more Star Dreadnoughts]] and the use of absolutely gargantuan [[MatterReplicator digistructors]] to throw any concerns about materials, [[CloneArmy crew]], or construction facilities out the airlock as the protagonists field ''hundreds'' of mass-produced ships in this weight class to fight an intergalactic war.

** Ironically the term "Dreadnought" would later be used to denote ''obsolete'' battleships toward the end of the original use of the term. Dreadnoughts refers to strictly to a style of battleships built between 1900 and more or less the end of WWI. After the war, all battleships possessed some dreadnought characteristics, and with the retirement of most pre-dreadnought warships, the term fell out of use except to describe older vessels. Incidentally, there is [[LastOfHisKind only one example of this type of battleship left]] -- the USS ''Texas''.

[[folder:Fan Works]]

* Averted in the ''Franchise/StarFox'' franchise. Though ''VideoGame/StarFox64'' calls the Great Fox a Dreadnaught class heavy cruiser,, it's actually a low-level Battlestar that's less useful than the four Arwing [[SpaceFighter Space Fighters]] that it houses.

* A species of sauropod in Argentina was given the name ''Dreadnoughtus'' after it's discovery, the main reason was that it weighed over 38 metric tons, making it one of the heaviest land animals ever discovered. There are several sauropod species that are ''probably'' larger than ''Dreadnoughtus'' (in some cases significantly so), but it's the largest land animal whose fossil was complete enough estimate the size with a high degree of certainty. (And the fossil is believed to have been of a ''Dreadnoughtus'' that wasn't fully grown, so adults could have been even bigger.)

** Also worth mentioning is that the concept was originally Italian (having been elaborated by Italian naval engineering colonel Vittorio Cuniberti as early as 1893, and pushed for it for the Regina Elena-class), and that Japan and the United States both started on battleships that applied the Dreadnought principle (all main battery guns are the maximum caliber) before ''Dreadnought'' was laid down. Italy however did not try and build the ships as Cuniberti wanted, instead building them as pre-Dreadnoughts and allowing him to publish the concept in 1903[[note]]Cuniberti specifically recommended the concept to the British Empire, as unlike Italy at the time their budget was large enough to afford such ships. While the nations were not formally allies (and wouldn't be until 1915), but they were on friendly terms and more importantly, Britain was hostile to Italy's main regional rival Austria-Hungary. Fisher on the other hand insisted for the rest of his life that Dreadnought was a purely British invention, in no way inspired by Cuniberti's designs despite the incredibly obvious similarities and the fact that Cuniberti published his article (title "An Ideal Battleship for the British Fleet") in English, in famous the British publication ''Jane's Fighting Ships'', making it unlikely that Fisher never read the article.[[/note]], and Fisher pushed the ship builders (and comandeered guns and turrets intended for other ships) so Dreadnought was completed first. Had Italy actually built the ships first or Fisher not pushed, this trope could have been [[{{Narm}} The Righteous Regina Elena]] or [[{{Narm}} The Scary Satsuma]] [[note]]However Japan also ran out of money for Satsuma and had to complete her as a pre-dreadnought[[/note]]or the Super South Carolina. Or the Menacing Michigan, since USS ''Michigan'' was actually completed 2 months ahead of her "lead ship" USS ''South Carolina''.

** It's also notable that some '''ultra''' dreadnought designs floated around during the dreadnought era, which were just dreadnoughts but ''far'' larger. Namely the British ''Incomparable'' battlecruiser design and the American Tillman battleships (AKA the Maximum battleship project). The final iteration of the latter would have a similar caliber of weapon to the ''Yamato'', the actual largest battleship built, but fifteen guns compared to the ''Yamato'''s mere nine. Neither design was serious.

''VideoGame/TreasurePlanetBattleAtProcyon'' has the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin aptly named]] Dreadnought class Ironclad. Befitting this trope, it is the largest, most powerful, most heavily armed, and most technologically advanced ship in the game, [[TheJuggernaut with armor so thick that lighter projectiles will almost always bounce off harmlessly.]]