Most races of the SF universe seem to be obsessed with making spaceships frigging enormous. I read Cordwainer Smith's "Golden the Ship Was," where the secret weapon was a tiny ship with a lethal biowarfare device and projectors that made it look like it was a thousand miles long.

But that was a fake ship. Is there really a point to making giant miles-long star destroyers, unless the size of the weaponry demands it? (If you have 16" guns, it takes a battleship to haul them around.)

Otherwise, the same resources could make a fleet of smaller ships that would probably be more effective in an attack, and not be One Big Fat Target.

Another tradition is covering giant spaceships with constellations of windows. In movies and games this creates a subconscious scale in the mind as you think "city at night.) In real life, what the hell does a giant star destroyer need with tens of thousands of windows? Do Imperial Troopers get cranky if each one doesn't have a room with a window?

You don't even get much psychological effect from a giant warship in space. Movie space battles aside, where you see ships sliding past each other firing Hornblower broadsides, real space battles rarely present any target to the eye other than a possible dot of light even if you're the size of the Death Star.