Short history of naval engagements

Pre-cannon, it's all about ramming and boarding. Bigger ships hold more rowers, and move faster, and carry more troops. Galleys are up to three decks tall. Throw in a ballista to act as a harpoon. ...And that continues pretty much until the age of sail, when a wind-powered ship can outrun a galley over a longer period of time.

Age of sail, add very large fore and aft castles to ships, as archery platforms. Then add cannon to these platforms. Cannon are really important, because they allow you to sink a ship, or hurt people on board, without needing to ram or board. Cannons on the fore and aft-castles intermittantly overweights ships an causes them to capsize and sink (ie Mary Rose). At somepoint, someone puts the cannons as low on the ship as possible while remaining above water. This proves very effective. Over time, ship design improves, with ships getting longer, and fore-and-aft castles are reduced in size. Cannon technology improves, so cannon are less carronades (mortars) and more 'long guns'. This makes is possible to fire horizontally (at least for short distances). This also makes it possible to put multiple decks of cannons on a single ship. In some cases, for the Spanish, this means up to four decks of cannons on a single ship.

SHIP OF THE LINE OF BATTLE ('Battleship')

Big ships are expensive ships (hence the term 'capital ship'--it can't be bought outright, even by governments, and must be financed. At some point, someone comes up with two alternatives to bashing capital ship into capital ship: Fire ships, which cost almost no money, and gunboats. Fire ships are self-explanatory. Gunboats are small cheap ships with oars and very large guns. One hit destroys them, but they can destroy a capital ship with one hit. Thus emerges one of our fundamental tensions in naval warfare, that between big, expensive 'capital' ships, and cheap disposable flotilla ships.

There is also a mid-range option: Cheaper than capital ships, better armed/armored than armed merchant ships. For the Napoleonic Age of Sail, those are 'frigates'. In WW1 parlance, they analogous to 'cruisers' - cheap enough to be numerous, numerous to be deployed all over the place. Battleships tend to stay put, as a static threat to another fleet of battleships.

In WWI, the equivalent to the 'gunboat' is the 'Torpedo Boat', which are so successful that they invent an entire new type of ship to deal with it,the "Torpedo Boat Destroyer" or 'Destroyer': Small ships with big engines and enough weaponry to wreck a (disposable) Torpedo Boat.

Battleships themselves get smaller, as a result of the increasing destructiveness of cannon, which now fire high explosive (HE) shells, which not only do kinetic energy damage, but also blow up when they hit. Accuracy is still lousy, but a half a dozen hits can sink even a capital ship. WWII, you see aircraft carriers. They spell the end of the Battleship Era (read up on the Battleship Yamamoto for case in point), simply by having a greater range. A plane can bomb a ship from out of range of the best ships guns. But aircraft carriers are extremely expensive--only the most advanced nations can field them. So the less advanced nations go back to the 'Fire-ship/Torpedo Boat' strategy, this time as Attack Submarines. Cheaper to build, capable of destroying capital ships, even aircraft carriers. So Destroyers get repurposed as sub destroyers, with sonar and the capacity to drop 'depth charges' to destroy subs.

At which point, battleships are on the way out. Aircraft carriers win all the way. (Being the biggest, baddest battleship ever, and stacked with machine gun-turrets did not help the Yamoto)

Some cruisers still exist, serving as 'pocket battleships' in places far from aircraft carriers. Destroyers screen aircraft carriers from subs. So there emerges a burning need to 'beat' destroyers so you can get at the aircraft carriers. Thus emerges the 'guided missile destroyer'. Missile technology, mid 1980's, reaches the point with cruise missiles and guided warheads that you can file a missile from tens of miles away, and be reasonable sure of hitting something, and likely sinking it. And that's about the current state of affairs. Current efforts include the Arleigh Burke class of nuclear destroyers, which are a) harder to hit, and b) use lasers as anti-cruise missile defense systems. For future combat, the effects of drone systems is of special interest, as drone aircraft are capable of all sorts of things humans aren't, like lingering over an area for days, and being launched from much smaller carriers. They also end any type of top-gun style dogfight versus humans, because they can do aeronautic maneuvers that would cause a human to pass out or die.

Star Trek is WWII era naval military. The enterprise is (arguable) a cruiser.
Star Wars is Vietnam era naval military. The Death Star is an aircraft carrier. The X-wings are 'Torpedo Boats'.