Introduction.
Throughout its long, tumultuous 225 year history, the United Federation Of Planets and its member worlds has always held the critical need to defend itself from its enemies, whatever they may be. These enemies typically fight by way of starship combat, a great dance of vessels aimed at disabling or destroying each other, halting the loser in its tracks. This combat has birthed many concepts for many reasons, be it the recently declassified spore drive ship Discovery and her antics teleporting around the field of battle, the great Yorktown Carriers and their Minotaur strike forces and, of course, the battleship.
Originally a wet navy concept, the Battleship is a very simple idea. Increasing your mass to mount a greater reactor, more powerful/numerous weapons and greater shielding, often at the expense of worse speed and greater fuel consumption. This notion has existed long before the Federation, in fact the common designation comes from Earthen aquatic vessels dating to almost 400 years ago, but has remained a solid concept for starship development throughout history. For the sake of expediency this document shall only focus on battleships operated by the Federation Starfleet, but rest assured many incredible designs occupy non-Federation spaces.
Starfleet battleship design can be said to come in phases, due to the ever changing nature of the Alpha and Beta Quadrant. There have been times in history, most notably 2195-2250, where Starfleet simply did not operate Battleships. Other times, primarily the Golden Age of 2315-2360, where Starfleet most certainly did but distinctly refused to admit that it did so due to sentiments of the day. This also led to changes in how battleships were deployed, as whilst those of the 2160's or 2250's would operate with whole fleets escorting them, those of the Golden Age most famously tended to venture out into the unknown by themselves. It can be argued that this was as important in defining a ship's legacy as the ship's own capabilities, as there were cases of ships being lost where fleets wouldn't have been. However it can also be said that a number of them never truly got to test their own capabilities, only firing on targets arguably beneath them.