great point and cool idea, im looking forwad to hearing what others have to say or contribue on this topic :)

A few thoughts on your intersting proposition:

Why handicap the Iowas by stipulating no long range missles??  The most current versions of the Iowas all had Tomahawk missle batteries aft in place of a few 5" turrets.  To date deployed navy laser batteries are a 1st generation defensive weapon (i think the first operational laser battery deplyed on a USN ship just this year) where as the Tomahawks can deal massive damage at long medium or short range,(even without the nuc warhead).  I presume you are talking about the ships using actuall deployed weapons systems rather then something from say Star Wars ect..

Beyond weapons stipulations from a pure suviability question I would say that the Iowa would outlast anything built since.  Not due to armor belts but more because of triple bootom hulls with massive flood/counter flood and damage control abilities built in to the overall ship design.  Modern warships concentrate on not getting hit to survive.  Great if you can manage it but history suggests if you can find a target you can eventually hit a target.  I think the more practical approach (as taken by the Iowa class design teams) is to design to expect to take damage and still have a good chance to survive.  Then again I don't design ships for a living I only read books by those that do/did.

In point of fact the type of armor on an Iowa would be defeated by a number of modern warheads  ie heat round, depleated uranium rounds etc...  Monlithic steel armor actually becomes a liability when struck by the right kind of round as the thick steel provides more mass to the jet of superheated vaporised metal pouring into the compartment struck.  Also with terminal pop up manuver warheads that would plunge straight down on the thinner deck armor you would have some serious issues to deal with.  Now if you had Chobbom armor al la M1 Abrams or Lepard II, or British MBT whos name escapes me at the moment that would be awhole different story. 

Regardless of the relevance of the ships in a modern naval setting they are truely an awe inspiring site to behold.  If you get the chance i highly recamend you visit one. 

Enjoy the Game

I think an Ohio class nuclear submarine can one shot Iowa with a morden torpedo or cripple it to a point that the crew is forced to scuttle her. Hence why the subs in NF are perfectly balanced (not).

Compare them is not correct. Let us then compare Iowa with sailing ship of the 18th century)))
Completely different in terms of technology and modern ships. Iowa has no chance against Peter in the case of missile combat. In the case of artillery duel Peter not even have time to enter the zone of their guns, the range of 38 and 23 kilometers respectively. Nowadays hardly possible artillery battle such large ships, for this reason, Iowa is used by the US Navy as a museum.

Well, if i have long range turrets, why would i need Missiles? If peter the Great has anti Air defenses, i would equip my ship with Anti air defenses as well. Knowing Peter The Great is a Missiles whore. Can launch multiple misiles , so in my opinion i took the misiles capabilities off, to replace it with LAWS and Mini Guns, and let the shells hit the ship .**If any, i would leave 1-2 Spots for misiles , but the majority of seondary slots, would be anti air.**

Now, talking subs vs bb. then, we add Escorts ships with Sonar capabilities with Anti subs capabilities, Destroyers sends out a Scout/Helicopter that tracks the sub and keep it busy. Either gets hits. destroyed or goes away.