So, what are people's favorite space combat scenes/settings?

Visually the field is ruled by the close combat and basically spitting distance to the enemies. From Star Trek, Star Wars and through the various movies and TV-series (Space, Above and Beyond, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica (old and new)) and so forth. I guess it is because a long distance fight wouldn't be interesting to watch.

Written I think some of my favorite space battles is from one of the first books bY Alastair Reynolds. He wrote a battle fought at light-distances. Light-seconds and minutes (and maybe even hours). Where computers calcuclated all possible moves by the enemy, and launched a attack-pattern based on this.

Other great novel battles is the early Honor Harrington series.

So what are your favorite space battles?

I thought the Exodus episode of the "re-imagined" Battlestar Galactica had space (and atmospheric) combat that was very good.

Exactly. Based on some stuff I've read in both books and online, a hypothetical battle in space between capital ships would occur at a minimum distance of a couple hundred kilometers.


As for favorite space battles, we should definitely include Babylon 5. That had some really great combat between capital ships and fighters.

I find the "in universe" excuse in BattleTech for the low ranges amusing. Basically the argument is that ECM and other systems that disrupts targeting computers are so good that you need to get to visual range to place your shots

Exodus was great, the opening of The Plan flashing back to the Cylon attack was great, and so was the early episode, I forget its name, where Lee takes on the Cylon asteroid base flying inside it.

Oh, Scar had some great scenes, too.

Outside of BSG, the end of ROTJ and beginning of Revenge of the Sith had some great large-scale battles. The Shadow War in B5. The Dominion war in DS9, with dozens of SF vessels and even fighters!

However, two greats are definitely Enterprise vs Reliant in ST2 and Enterprise vs unnamed Romulan BOP in Balance of Terror. Slower pace, but great tension.



The Jedi Master

"The Hand of God"

Battletech is absolutely bizarre, but almost as a requirement to make the land-combat centric universe plausible. It's a land where bipedal completely silhouetted-against-the-sky tanks reign supreme (with paltry 1000 meter effective distance weapon systems), yet all of a sudden once you get into space it practically follows hard science fiction rules. MechWarrior and such are awesome but Battletech in general is all over the damn place.

Heh, tell me about it. But it's the most amazing and fun Space Opera setting I've had the pleasure to both play and work in (I worked on Battletech tabletop for about 15ish years).

Most fun to watch:
Babylon 5 fights, especially with ships getting sliced in half. The Earth Force ships were really cool as well.
Star Wreck in the Pirkining and Iron Sky had some absolutely incredible space battles. Too bad they were in such horrible movies.

... Stand a little closer and say that!

I like the space combats in "The Expanse", especially the Donnager vs stealth ships, the Donnager getting pierced by high velocity projectiles and suffering hull breaches and life support blackouts. energy shields are for chickens.

I like the space battle descriptions in Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy. The books themselves aren't named that though, in order they are:
The Reality Dysfunction
The Neutronium Alchemist
The Naked God

He's a writer with a modern style, plenty of sex, horror, hard science fiction (i.e. based on principles as opposed to a more loose hand-waving sci-fi) and a good grasp of economic and sociologic elements in science fiction. He's a little pulpy, but it's really good reading IMO. I'm working my way up to my 4th reading of these books.

His space battles are not close in fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants style, they're long ranged with exotic weaponry and countermeasures.

I agree 100%, especially since there's no magical drive or inertial compensators. Every bit of speed they put on has to be taken off at some time, with the same stress on the crew. The SyFy series showed the ships maneuvering in a much more spirited fashion than the book described, but at least Gravity was still something that had to be taken into consideration for the crew.

My favorite is The Honorverse, especially missile combat. Battles in energy range are almost boring by comparison, because unless a ship happens to have the roof or floor of its wedge facing the enemy it IS going to get hit to some degree. Missiles lose lock, are lured off by decoys or ECM, or fall victim to countermissiles or point defense lasers, and even if they make it all the way in there's a chance their lasers will miss entirely, be blunted by the sidewalls and not penetrate the armor, hit the wedge, etc. It's all much more similar to submarine warfare in that there's an extended period of time between most weapons being fired and hitting their targets.

Jack Campbell's "The Lost Fleet" series is similar, but with less advanced weapons.

SOLD!
Thanks for the recommendation! I like them a little "pulpy".

I got the first Honor Harrington book too (On Basilisk Station).
Seems like I read this is being made into a movie.

Man you are in for a crazy ride

Larry Niven's work has a number of combat scenes in space that were enjoyable. Particularly memorable was the novel "Protector" with long-distance sub-lightspeed engagements. The sequel to "The Mote in God's Eyes", don't remember its name, had a fair bit of combat at interplanetary ranges, and then of course there's the whole "Man-Kzin Wars" franchise series with mostly enjoyable stories. IMO.

The first book was a little amateurish compared to "The Honor of the Queen" where it really takes off. I stopped reading at Ashes of Victory and War of Honor when battles just take a few pages with the massive power creep introduced throughout the series.

That ones showing free for me, is that a better place to start?

I would start with On Basilisk Station, action-wise there's not a whole lot going on but you learn about the tech and some stages are set for interpersonal relationships. Better yet, read them according to the Honorverse internal chronology; some of the earlier stories are material that can be skipped but are still interesting.

I can't believe no one has mentioned the X-Wing novels yet!



The Jedi Master