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[WaterAstro]

Planets move bro.

All of us, we're moving.

All the time.

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

And spaceships move... faster, like, FTL fast.

 

[Haly]

Are you saying they calculate their exit point within the "FTL" bubble or whatever?

That's CRAZY.

IIRC Crest of the Stars does this.

 

[golem]

Also not a grand fight but love this depiction of space combat

Rocinante vs Stealth ship

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yojbMokev-Q

 

[Funky Papa]

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:

BSG did a very, very good job at conveying that WW2 naval action in space.

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

The Fact that most FTL in movies is through hyperspace deprives us of cool moments using relativistic projectiles. Dropping a rock is the most simple and most brutish form of space destruction and I can't remember ever seeing it in a movie. It's like there is an specific level of technological advancement in which it would be used, get too civilized and then it is the equivalent of a WWI soldier with chain mail and a pike.

 

[Haly]

The Fact that most FTL in movies is through hyperspace deprives us of cool moments using relativistic projectiles. Dropping a rock is the most simple and most brutish form of space destruction and I can't remember ever seeing it in a movie. It's like there is an specific level of technological advancement in which it would be used, get too civilized and then it is the equivalent of a WWI soldier with chain mail and a pike.

I watched that Mass Effect video linked earlier and they briefly touch upon it.

"This recruits is a 20 kilo Ferris slug, feel the weight. Every 5 seconds the main gun of an Everest class dreadnought accelerates 1 to 1.3% of lights speed. It impacts with the force of a 38 kiloton bomb, that is 3 times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means, Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space! Now, serviceman Burnside! What is Newtons first law?

Sir! An object in motion stays in motion, sir!

No credit for partial answers, maggot!

Sir! unless acted on by an outside force, sir!

Damn straight! I dare to assume that you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going till it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait for the computer to give you a damn firing solution! That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it"! This is a weapon of mass destruction. You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip!

Sir, yes sir!"

Still, 0.01c isn't even in the neighborhood of 0.5c. I imagine a world with relativistic weapons would ban them by treaty/convention like nukes are today. Using them would be far too cruel and destructive to be worth it.

 

[Jarmel]

BSG was probably the best at this.

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

I watched that Mass Effect video linked earlier and they briefly touch upon it.



Still, 0.01c isn't even in the neighborhood of 0.5c. I imagine a world with relativistic weapons would ban them by treaty/convention like nukes are today. Using them would be far too cruel and destructive to be worth it.

Yeah and you can't stop it, so it is inherently more desperate or impulsive, so more often than not seen used by space terrorists. A missile is just all that more refined all around, If I was in command of a military force I would choose the weapon that at least gives me the chance to stop it after launched.

 

[Funky Papa]

BSG was probably the best at this.

I'd say The Expanse is eveb better if you are into realistic battles with lots of physics juggling and projectiles tearing shit up port to starboard.

But as far as big dumb (and fun) battles go, BSG remains the king of TV.

 

[hobblygobbly]

B-R5RB has already been mentioned but here is video footage of the Battle of Asakai (a different one), you can see all the titan pilots (avatars specifically) jumping into the system at 3:30+.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLqb-m1ZZUA

Note that everything you see on screen, all those different ships, everything is a single player, no single AI/scripted events.

 

[Dreams-Visions]

Battlestar Galactica had some great ones. Mostly because the outcomes were never foregone conclusions.

 

[Haly]

B-R5RB has already been mentioned but here is video footage of the Battle of Asakai (a different one), you can see all the titan pilots (avatars specifically) jumping into the system at 3:30+.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLqb-m1ZZUA

Note that everything you see on screen, all those different ships, everything is a single player, no single AI/scripted events.

I only got a small taste of that nullsec life but warping with your fleet via Titan is just one of the best feelings.

 

[NightmareTrigger]

I remember the Space Battleship Yamato movie having some good ones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GenQSOl1OMQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoPZW1Y0A24

 

[Jarmel]

I'd say The Expanse is eveb better if you are into realistic battles with lots of physics juggling and projectiles tearing shit up port to starboard.

But as far as big dumb (and fun) battles go, BSG remaing the king of TV.

Yea but Expanse doesn't have the scale BSG did. The physics is definitely better but we haven't seen the scale of some of the larger BSG battles.

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

One of my favorites pace battles between ships is in Redemption Ark (the third book of Revelation Space Series).

In simple terms, two ships racing each other. One started first, doesn't know about the second, but speculates they may have someone behind. The second ship discovered a way to keep accelerating without killing everyone on board, and the one in front starts dropping traps in what they calculate will be the path the other ship would need to take to beat them to the goal.

 

[Walshicus]

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.

Wait, when has that happened in Trek??

 

[Laekon]

B-R5RB has already been mentioned but here is video footage of the Battle of Asakai (a different one), you can see all the titan pilots (avatars specifically) jumping into the system at 3:30+.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLqb-m1ZZUA

Note that everything you see on screen, all those different ships, everything is a single player, no single AI/scripted events.

There are drones and fighters besides players. I played Eve a long time ago and lag made what could have been great moments rage inducing. I was in a small group aligned with the Red something or another (Alliance?), and in a fleet battle having my ship and pod destroyed before loading out of a jump. The linked video makes it look better but I can't imagine the hours it takes to get back into the game.

 

[PBalfredo]

BTW, why was it in BSG that ships could shrug off hits from nukes?

 

[Liljagare]

Babylon 5 had a few good scraps,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96idw23kHdY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSa6Zl8fcyo

 

[Morat]

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

I love the fight in Excession where the Killing Time attacks a fleet of renegade but comparatively antiquated Culture ships. And then you realise the entire combat took milliseconds.

 

[Skunkers]

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

Not that dumb, as one of the theories of FTL travel is: you're actually traveling so fast that you are no longer traveling through every bit of space along the way. You're actually skipping like a rock on water across space/time and disappearing and reappearing somewhere farther along. In theory you are physically leaving normal space and going through hyperspace and coming out again.

 

[Jarmel]

BTW, why was it in BSG that ships could shrug off hits from nukes?

I didn't really think much of this when watching the show but now I'm curious and I googled to see if there were any answers.

Nuclear explosion damage comes in three flavours:

1.Direct heat
2.Blast overpressure
3.Prompt (mostly gamma) radiation

Type 2 is only applicable in an atmosphere. There is no blast in space as there's no air to create the blast.

Type 3 is expected to be sustainable by a space worthy ship. Interstellar space is a very radiation rich environment, so we can assume the ship is radiation proof.

This leaves direct heating. In space this would consist mainly of radiative heat transfer. Large amounts of this would be directed away from the ship into empty space. A large amount would still be absorbed by the ship itself and would no doubt cause substantial damage to the ship, but not necessarily enough to destroy it by vapourising it. Most metal objects survived in Hiroshima for example. Given the advanced tech here, they no doubt have equally advanced materials technology resistant to this sort of damage (as we indeed see throughout the series).

Probably the greatest threat to the ship would be via electro-magnetic disruption of its sensors and communications, disruption of flight ops, and destruction of unarmoured critical weapons systems exposed on the ship's surface.

 

[Doikor]

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.

In B5 big enough / advanced enough ships can create their own jump points. It is basically a question of having enough energy. For example the Minbari warships create their own jump points if needed as does the Excalibur with the help of some Minbari tech. Also Vorlons, Shadows and all the other ancient ones do this all the time.

Also you can literally use the jump points in B5 as bombs by opening a jump point inside another open jump point which causes a huge explosion (earthforce experimented with this during the Earth-Minbari war). Another way easier and more used tactic is just to lure the enemy to some known position and open an exist on top of them because touching the edge of a jump point or trying to fly into an exit point destroys your ship pretty much. (Minbari used this tactic in the series)

BTW, why was it in BSG that ships could shrug off hits from nukes?

Nukes in open space don't really do much as there is no air/gas to transfer the pressure wave. For a space faring race radiation shouldn't be much of an issue as space is already full of it. Only thing you have left is direct heat but bit metal objects can absorb a lot of heat. Also if you want to fly your ship anywhere near a star it already has to be able to handle a lot of heat (For example its like 180 degrees celcius at Mercury orbit around the Sun). Now if you can get the nuke inside the ship and detonate it you will get great effect.

 

[Herr Starr]

The Warhammer 40k novels have plenty of large-scale capital ship battles, and the setting avoids the problems mentioned in this thread. Ship battles often start at distances of tens of thousands of kilometers, way before anyone can acquire visuals. If they get close enough to see each other, it's usually because one or both parties are preparing boarding actions (a necessity if you want to capture a ship since its internal systems can be extremely unstable if hit by ship weaponry). Humans take care of the targeting since computers are considered heresy, so weapons can be quite inaccurate (sometimes compensating by impacting enormous areas of space). Battle tactics and formations are of vital importance. Battles are often lost the moment one side's formations break up, allowing the other side to focus fire on the most important enemy ships. Nobody can warp into enemy ships since warp travel is unpredictable and dangerous, and because jumping into the warp means actually traveling into an alternate dimension (sneaky edit: there are torpedoes that can do brief jumps through the warp to bypass defenses, but there are many reasons why they aren't used very often).

What I'm trying to say is that Warhammer 40k is awesome.

 

[Keasar]

I've said it before and I'll say it always again, Battlestar Galactica did my favourite iteration of capital ship battles in a sci-fi series. I just love the intensity of them as they are a constant heartpounding barrage of weaponry, knowing that in space, enemies can come from anywhere so fuck it: Fire everything everywhere!

In this universe, they do eyeball it!

Also:

Cause fuck yeah. \m/

 

[Funky Papa]

There's no way BSG's battle scenes were not inspired by the Pacific theatre.

 

[True Savior]

Legend of Galactic Heroes is more or less grand scale battles one after the other.

 

[Maledict]

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

Um, Star Wars ships are significantly larger than 40k vessels. To the point of Star Wars looking absurd - Snopes new ship is 60km in length, whereas an Apocalypse class imperial battleship is under 4km.

Star Wars ships have become really dumb in size.

 

[DieNgamers]

A little tip for those who want to see some naval/traditional fleet battle. I watched a movie called "The Admiral - Roaring Currents" and it's really entertaining and well acted. I had a really good time with it and while it's over the top here and there there's some cool tactical maneuvers.

 

[Herr Starr]

Um, Star Wars ships are significantly larger than 40k vessels. To the point of Star Wars looking absurd - Snopes new ship is 60km in length, whereas an Apocalypse class imperial battleship is under 4km.

Star Wars ships have become really dumb in size.

This is only true with the Disney canon. With the previous canon (disregarding the EU and the Death Star), WH40k ships are almost always much larger. Even the smaller light cruisers in WH40k are three times as long as the Imperial Star Destroyer in Star Wars. Only the Super Star Destroyer is able to compete, depending on the source you rely on (according to Wookieepedia, sources state the SSD's length as being anywhere between 2200 meters and 19,000 meters. I remember it as being 7200 meters, which is on the larger side of WH40k ships).

 

[Maledict]

This is only true with the Disney canon. With the previous canon (disregarding the EU and the Death Star), WH40k ships are almost always much larger. Even the smaller light cruisers in WH40k are three times as long as the Imperial Star Destroyer in Star Wars. Only the Super Star Destroyer is able to compete, depending on the source you rely on (according to Wookieepedia, sources state the SSD's length as being anywhere between 2200 meters and 19,000 meters. I remember it as being 7200 meters, which is on the larger side of WH40k ships).

The largest ship in 40K is 6000 meters long, the Emperor class battleships. And they are as rare as hen's teeth, whilst there are hundreds of SSDs in service.

Obviously craft worlds or space hulks are bigger, but they aren't warships either.

40K vessels aren't as huge as people think - they are very large, but there's lots of sci if that goes bigger, including Star Wars even excluding the new Disney crazy stuff.

 

[Doikor]

This is only true with the Disney canon. With the previous canon (disregarding the EU and the Death Star), WH40k ships are almost always much larger. Even the smaller light cruisers in WH40k are three times as long as the Imperial Star Destroyer in Star Wars. Only the Super Star Destroyer is able to compete, depending on the source you rely on (according to Wookieepedia, sources state the SSD's length as being anywhere between 2200 meters and 19,000 meters. I remember it as being 7200 meters, which is on the larger side of WH40k ships).

Pretty sure SSD is a lot bigger then any imperial fleet ship 40k.

Here is a nice picture with ships from various universes on scale. (Lexx the massive space dick is my personal favority)

 

[Kinyou]

The Halo Book Fall of Reach had some really interesting space battles with the humans being the complete underdog against the vastly superior tech of the aliens

 

[gaugebozo]

There's no way BSG's battle scenes were not inspired by the Pacific theatre.

What an insane hail of bullets. Even crazier when you realize the tracers are only one out of every five.

 

[Zaru]

Anything from Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

I love this series, but the battles had a lot of missed potential. I was too 2d for a 3-dimensional battlefield.

 

[Spiritwalker]

It's BSG for me, easily. Those GIFs are amazing.

 

[ZackieChan]

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

Seems to be no Kindle version, and I'm overseas at the moment. How is the Culture Series?

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

Ship battles often start at distances of tens of thousands of kilometers, way before anyone can acquire visuals. If they get close enough to see each other, it's usually because one or both parties are preparing boarding actions (a necessity if you want to capture a ship since its internal systems can be extremely unstable if hit by ship weaponry)
...
Humans take care of the targeting since computers are considered heresy, so weapons can be quite inaccurate (sometimes compensating by impacting enormous areas of space).

hehe. WH 40k seem to be so stylized or with so much fantasy roots that they can surely get away with not having any excuse to have battles with ships this close to one another. Cool that they give some, but you don't need any when you are visual as cool as the Warhammer universe.

Seems to be no Kindle version, and I'm overseas at the moment. How is the Culture Series?

I think it is fantastic. They are very solid stories and the world building is fairly unique, but consistent. A lot of people don't like the first book, since it is not in the style and themes of the rest of the series. I disagree, but it is one of the weaker ones so don't judge the rest based on it. You can read them in any order anyway (at most some will drop historical trivia about events that occurred in previous books). Excession is book 4 I believe.

That said, if you are looking for something that focuses on the superlative qualities of the Culture civilization in massive wars or massive undertakings you will be disappointed. The focus is usually that of an outsider, or of a more primitive civilization.

 

[Herne]

Serenity

Hmm... I love this battle as well, but the thing is, is that it's mostly one glorious shot and then we get a few glimpses of action as Serenity plunges down into the planet. We don't really get to see the battle as such.

 

[Keasar]

I love this series, but the battles had a lot of missed potential. I was too 2d for a 3-dimensional battlefield.

There was that episode where they fought in a "corridor" of space and I thought when they said "corridor" they meant maybe that outside it, it was difficult to navigate due to interference or something.

But nope, apparently corridor was quite literal as in walls of "holy shit we slammed into the corridor walls and ships blew up!"

What!?

 

[Lagamorph]

In star trek a ship has warped through objects to escape an object without any damage to said object.

When? I don't remember anything like that. Warp Drive doesn't remove an object from normal space, it just creates a bubble of normal space around a ship and that bubble is then accelerated to FTL within normal space, so warp speed collisions can occur.

 

[BigDes]

hehe. WH 40k seem to be so stylized or with so much fantasy roots that they can surely get away with not having any excuse to have battles with ships this close to one another. Cool that they give some, but you don't need any when you are visual as cool as the Warhammer universe.

The Imperium ships have macrocannons that are essentially giant railguns

But due to the nature of the narrative in that humanity is gradually losing knowledge and tech, these super futuristic guns are loaded by thousands of slaves/serfs pulling on chains.

 

[nekkid]

When? I don't remember anything like that. Warp Drive doesn't remove an object from normal space so warp speed collisions can occur.

Isn't the idea that it warps space time around it (hence the name), effectively tightening it in front to "pull" it through space?

Time and space get weird around a ship at warp, but it's definitely there. That's why they have deflector dishes - to move potential hazards (stray hydrogen particles etc.) out of the way.

 

[Yeoman]

Um, Star Wars ships are significantly larger than 40k vessels. To the point of Star Wars looking absurd - Snopes new ship is 60km in length, whereas an Apocalypse class imperial battleship is under 4km.

Star Wars ships have become really dumb in size.

Like most things in 40k the answer to these sorts of things are "it depends".
Apocalypse class battleships are usually 8km-12km but there are often far larger ships.
Ark Mechanicus ships have been described as "Planetoid" with kilometres of labs and continent sized sections.
Eldar craftworlds are also often stated to be the size of small planets and Necron Tomb Worlds are of course basically mobile planets.
Orks have their own attack moons too.
(The Tau aren't left out as they themselves have continent sized battlestations! - hell the Imperiumis stated to have planet sized battlestations.)

 

[Maledict]

I think Principate may be getting confused by the Pegasus experiment episode in trek, where the Federation's prototype cloaking device allows you to go through matter?

 

[orava]

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:

Pegasus and Galactica teaming against a basestar was incredible. I will always remember the image of the two battlestars circling around the basestar.

 

[StayDead]

Space Battleship Yamato 2199 has amazing battles.

 

[O.DOGG]

Space Battleship Yamato 2199 had some great battles.

Edit: Damnit!

 

[lastplayed]

Space Battleship Yamato 2199 has amazing battles.

You can get some awesome models of the Yamato.

 

[Succinct Verbosity]

Some of the DS9 battles are great. It helps they often result in something big and important happening.