In all honesty, I've played around with trying to do reworks one ship at a time, and somehow making that.. Work. We'll see. I also want to stop delaying transport balance work though.
Battleships are in an awkward spot. Granted there are a lot of them, so I appreciate the hefty work-load involved.
Something along the lines of really, painfully slow turret rotational velocity, long-range, heavy hitting...heavies. Bit like EVE Online (don't hurt me). Smaller ships get up close and under your main battery range, you aren't hitting them. Obviously we've secondaries at the moment, but I think cruisers and the like can deal with those, presently.