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[cj_iwakura]

I love when entire fleet of ships go into full scale battle, especially in sci-fi.

Some of my favorite examples:
The Battle of Scarif (Rogue One)

An entire fleet of Rebels decide they aren't going to take the Imperial situation lying down and show up guns blazing. Despite being way outgunned, the best damn Mon Calamari tactician ever somehow turns it into a win.

The Battle of Endor (Return of the Jedi)

Prior to Rogue One, I considered this the definitive capship battle. The Rebels send practically their entire fleet to Endor, but all hell breaks loose when the Imperials show up with their fleet, including the dreaded Super Star Destroyer.

Bonus points whenever there's a big focus on the commanders and changing tactics on the fly.

Honorable mentions:

Star Trek: First Contact
(or any battle with the Federation moving against the Borg, though we don't see Wolf-359 on film sadly)

Battlestar Galactica
(I'd say the Battle for New Caprica is the highlight)

Freespace / Freespace 2
(one word: DIVE)

No game's ever nailed the chaos of being a snubfighter in the middle of a capship battle like this.

What are some I might have missed?

 

[Trouble]

That one in Eve that cost players several hundred thousand dollars of real world money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodbath_of_B-R5RB

 

[Grexeno]

That one in Eve that cost players several hundred thousand dollars of real world money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodbath_of_B-R5RB

I fucking love that there is a god damn article on Wikipedia about this.

 

[cj_iwakura]

I fucking love that there is a god damn article on Wikipedia about this.

I can't believe it actually says the 'Clusterfuck Coalition'.

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

I love that moment in the Forever War when a pilot crashes one his two accompanying drones against an alien capital ship after he accelerated to relativistic speeds orbiting a u-turn around the singularity.

 

[Stinkles]

The opening chapter of Iain M. Banks Excession, but the payoff is at the end of the book. But you'll be glad.

 

[cj_iwakura]

The opening chapter of Iain M. Banks Excession, but the payoff is at the end of the book. But you'll be glad.

I wasn't thinking of books offhand, but that works too. The Bacta War(Rogue Squadron IV) is an amazing one.

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

The opening chapter of Iain M. Banks Excession, but the payoff is at the end of the book. But you'll be glad.

Love me some Mr. M. Banks payoffs. Matter and Consider Phlebas drop you in the end into a mayhem, and Player of Games and Use of Weapons with the plot twists.

 

[vivftp]

(or any battle with the Federation moving against the Borg, though we don't see Wolf-359 on film sadly)

We got to see part of the Wolf 359 battle in the first episode of DS9

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMa_SUDhn7E

 

[Schlorgan]

Serenity

 

[Volimar]

DS9 had some good ones. I kind of wish technology had been better but they still did pretty well with what they had. Poor Miranda Refit Class, the cannon fodder of the Federation.

 

[TissueBox]

That one in Eve that cost players several hundred thousand dollars of real world money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodbath_of_B-R5RB

Amazin'.

 

[RangerBAD]

Anything from Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

 

[Slayven]

Galactus and his siblings look like they are doing nothing but they are actually fighting Cancerverse on multiple dimensions

Then they pulled out the big guns

 

[WaterAstro]

My favourite is Stargate Atlantis where three enemies ally together in order to destroy a greater evil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iMHh9Utm8Y

 

[Pagusas]

OP what's with the itty bitty pics???

 

[Sinatar]

Babylon 5 has a ton of great space battles.

 

[Alpha Centauri]

That one in Eve that cost players several hundred thousand dollars of real world money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodbath_of_B-R5RB

"The 21-hour-long conflict resulted in the loss of 75 Titans, 13 supercarriers, 370 Dreadnoughts, and 123 Carriers, along with thousands of smaller ships and innumerable fighters and drones"


Talk about a battle.

 

[Slayven]

Babylon 5 has a ton of great space battles.

That CGI did not age well

 

[Pagusas]

That CGI did not age well

It wasn't even good for its time (though ground breaking for tv). But B5 was about story, not visuals.

 

[lastplayed]

Babylon 5 has a ton of great space battles.

The Battle of Proxima 3 is so awesome.

Also the battle to retake DS9.

 

[Pagusas]

The Battle of Proxima 3 is so awesome.

Also the battle to retake DS9.

That battle (DS9 battle) still made no sense from a tacticts standpoint. Hell it made no sense when thinking in 3D space.

 

[Stinkles]

Galactus and his siblings look like they are doing nothing but they are actually fighting Cancerverse on multiple dimensions

Then they pulled out the big guns

So wait so the panicky reaction from their galactus universe, or ours? And so point being that our galactus engine space skull is more bad ass than theirs? I'm not mocking I genuinely want to know,

 

[Sinatar]

That battle (DS9 battle) still made no sense from a tacticts standpoint. Hell it made no sense when thinking in 3D space.

That's something that Babylon 5 does really well, I especially like how they actually make use of newtonian physics and have fighters do horizontal strafing runs and the like,

 

[elrechazado]

Some great capital ship battles in the Hyperion series

 

[PhoncipleBone]

So wait so the panicky reaction from their galactus universe, or ours? And so point being that our galactus engine space skull is more bad ass than theirs? I'm not mocking I genuinely want to know,

Cancerverse invades ours. So Galactus and the other cosmic beings try and fight off the invading force, so the invaders send their Galactus Engine out to take on the cosmic and celestial beings from our universe. Shit got REAL.

 

[DBT85]

BSG had some great bits

Serenity

Yes!

 

[WaterAstro]

I want to see a Warhammer 40k show since 40k has the biggest ships in fiction.

 

[Haly]

/nerdhaton

You would never need to engage in close quarters in plausible interstellar combat.

/nerdhatoff

 

[Sinatar]

/nerdhaton

You would never need to engage in close quarters in plausible interstellar combat.

/nerdhatoff

Energy weapons dissipate over distance and the wattage required to pierce high tech shielding and armor requires maximum intensity, hence close range.

Traditional armaments (missiles, torpedoes, etc) would never make it past any laser based point defense system when fired at extreme range.

Your nerd hat is weak.

 

[Haly]

If you have FTL travel you can just use FTL bombs. They don't even need to be explosives. Just a large rock moving at FTL will destroy the internals of any of these space ships.

 

[Slayven]

So wait so the panicky reaction from their galactus universe, or ours? And so point being that our galactus engine space skull is more bad ass than theirs? I'm not mocking I genuinely want to know,

It's about to get nerdy.

The invading universe is the Cancverse, so named because Captain Marvel( the original one) made a deal with some very dark things to save himself from cancer. It resulted in the very concept of death being eradicated from their universe. Captain Marvel captured galactus and turned him into a weapon for his new masters. A universe's galactus with the right conditions can reset the whole thing, so one turned into a weapon is a very big deal.

 

[Haly]

Thinking about it some more, the only plausible need to get in what is effectively melee range would be if you were camping a wormhole jumpout point, EVE style. Otherwise, trying to blockade a planet is pointless. It would require multiple planets' mineral wealth's worth of ships to cover that area.

 

[nekkid]

The prequel trilogy was trash, but the Battle of Coruscant was my GOAT.

 

[Sinatar]

If you have FTL travel you can just use relativistic bombs. They don't even need to be explosives. Just a large rock moving at FTL will destroy the internals of any of these space ships.

Star Trek uses Warp Drive which moves objects into subspace while in FTL before entering normal space time again. It's never been very accurate which is why they always jump into a star system and then use impulse drive to maneuver to a planet. This renders it useless for weaponry.

Babylon 5 FTL is done by jumping through hyperspace gateways, this would be an utterly useless delivery mechanism for any munitions.

Star Wars hyperspace functions much like supspace does in Star Trek, though they appear to be able to pinpoint their destinations much better. It might work here.

 

[Haly]

So the only choice in Star Trek verse is to get in close range enough that you can overwhelm a PD system by brute force?

 

[mAcOdIn]

Energy weapons dissipate over distance and the wattage required to pierce high tech shielding and armor requires maximum intensity, hence close range.

Traditional armaments (missiles, torpedoes, etc) would never make it past any laser based point defense system when fired at extreme range.

Your nerd hat is weak.

It's a good thing space is vast otherwise how many civilizations would just get wiped out from stray munitions fired eons ago elsewhere in the galaxy?

Space combat's weird in TV's weird though. Like all of Star Trek has pretty shit combat, just ships all moving around at random firing at random, no organized lines or anything at all. To be honest I don't even see how anyone misses in Star Trek, you'd think their computers would pretty much be able to hit anything in front of them but whatever, guess it's for the drama. Just find it hard to believe they have one system, the transporter for instance, that can pluck a single living entity from another moving ship but the weapons system sometimes can't predict it's future or sometimes even present location well enough to hit the entire ship.

It honestly seems like, in Star Trek at least with how advanced their computers are shown to be, that combat to them should be an utterly boring affair of just plopping stationary somewhere and maximizing weapons and shields to see who has the most power by boring through the other's defenses first, moving around should be useless.

 

[Bluth54]

I wasn't thinking of books offhand, but that works too. The Bacta War(Rogue Squadron IV) is an amazing one.

The Lost Fleet series has some pretty great capital ship battles (and that's the main focus of the books). The human drama in the early books is pretty bad though (especially the love triangle subplot between the 3 main characters) but that gets better eventually and the books are worth a read.

The battles are different than what you normally see on TV or in movies, have the ships move rapidly at each other so they basically get one firing pass (then have to turn around to do it again). The battles are about positioning of the fleet and firing on the correct enemy targets.

 

[Radiant Silvertuna]

Freespace was incredible... I'm going to have to reinstall.

 

[WaterAstro]

If you have FTL travel you can just use FTL bombs. They don't even need to be explosives. Just a large rock moving at FTL will destroy the internals of any of these space ships.

Objects in FTL travel past objects not in FTL, so it wouldn't really work the way you think it will.

 

[Haly]

Objects in FTL travel past objects not in FTL, so it wouldn't really work the way you think it will.

You would FTL into their ship. I'm sure whatever the ship is made out of, it can't survive space being warped inside of it.

Hell if we take onboard FTL drives as creating an opening and an exit, you wouldn't even need to send anything through. You'd just have to create the "exit" inside the enemy target. I have no idea what'll happen but the results can't be pretty.

(I forgot about the difference between FTL and close-to-light for a second. I was thinking of relativistic weapons but FTL weapons would work differently.)

 

[Vincent Alexander]

I'll always argue against the space battles of Rogue One, simply because the big ships warp in...then sit there and do nothing. It's awful on re-watches especially noticing you never see them shoot any big guns or anything. It frustrates me just because I love big space battles and was letdown at not seeing them do anything. I was expecting some awesome stuff like the example already given here:

 

[Principate]

You would FTL into their ship. I'm sure whatever the ship is made out of, it can't survive space being warped inside of it.

Hell if we take onboard FTL drives as creating an opening and an exit, you wouldn't even need to send anything through. You'd just have to create the "exist" inside the enemy target. I have no idea what'll happen but the results can't be pretty.

(I forgot about the difference between FTL and close-to-light for a second.)

That's simply not how FTL works in a lot if these pieces of fiction. There'ers plenty of time. In star trek a ship has warped through objects to escape an object without any damage to said object.

 

[Haly]

That's simply not how FTL works in a lot if tgese pieces of fiction. There'ers plenty of time. In star trek a ship has warped througg objects to escape an object without any damage to said object.

That's really dumb. So you can use subspace to "phase" as well? What if you phased directly into another object?

 

[Pepboy]

It's a good thing space is vast otherwise how many civilizations would just get wiped out from stray munitions fired eons ago elsewhere in the galaxy?

Space combat's weird in TV's weird though. Like all of Star Trek has pretty shit combat, just ships all moving around at random firing at random, no organized lines or anything at all. To be honest I don't even see how anyone misses in Star Trek, you'd think their computers would pretty much be able to hit anything in front of them but whatever, guess it's for the drama. Just find it hard to believe they have one system, the transporter for instance, that can pluck a single living entity from another moving ship but the weapons system sometimes can't predict it's future or sometimes even present location well enough to hit the entire ship.

It honestly seems like, in Star Trek at least with how advanced their computers are shown to be, that combat to them should be an utterly boring affair of just plopping stationary somewhere and maximizing weapons and shields to see who has the most power by boring through the other's defenses first, moving around should be useless.

Regarding star trek, some of the movement is about activating munitions on various parts of the ship. It sort of makes sense to me that a super high energy phaser or torpedo might need time to recharge or reload.

Regarding earlier posts, I always enjoyed Gundam's take on why close combat is needed -- particles that scatter and disrupt light make far range weapons unreliable.

 

[Haly]

Minovsky Particles are probably one of the better justifications for melee space combat.

 

[wandering]

For all its faults, Mass Effect 3's climactic space battle was pretty cool:

https://youtu.be/tLlAObjR-gs?t=2m15s

 

[golem]

I'll always argue against the space battles of Rogue One, simply because the big ships warp in...then sit there and do nothing. It's awful on re-watches especially noticing you never see them shoot any big guns or anything. It frustrates me just because I love big space battles and was letdown at not seeing them do anything. I was expecting some awesome stuff like the example already given here:

Yeah the R1 capital ships only seemed to float around to get blown up. Didnt really see them shoot anything or do anything cool besides the Hammerhead.

For the record I really enjoyed Serenity's battle, AOTC, BSG and ST09 had some good ones

 

[WaterAstro]

You would FTL into their ship. I'm sure whatever the ship is made out of, it can't survive space being warped inside of it.

Hell if we take onboard FTL drives as creating an opening and an exit, you wouldn't even need to send anything through. You'd just have to create the "exit" inside the enemy target. I have no idea what'll happen but the results can't be pretty.

(I forgot about the difference between FTL and close-to-light for a second. I was thinking of relativistic weapons but FTL weapons would work differently.)

The problem is calculating when to stop as well as scanning where to stop.

In SW7, Han Solo was only able to exit hyperspace inside the planetary shield because the planet doesn't move. Try doing that on a moving ship.

There's also FTL jamming often seen in fiction, and also the fact that the weapon itself needs enough power to enter FTL.

 

[Haly]

Planets move bro.

All of us, we're moving.

All the time.

It's R E L A T I V E.