Space Battle

In space, no one can hear you explode and die.

"From a million miles deep in space"
"The battle rages on"

— "Battle Beyond the Stars" by Medieval Steel

One of the cornerstones of a Space Opera is for there to be a Space Battle somewhere along the line, where the heroes take part in an event that will change the fate of everything, then stop for a Victory Dance and tea if the battle is won.

Well, it's not exactly as simple as that, almost. It is meant to be the occasion in a movie, game or TV series where it can show off where most of the budget probably went and why it took as much time as it did. It provides jaw-dropping visuals, tons of Slow Lasers, a lot of tense edge-of-your-seat action, advanced iconic vehicles or weapons, and a totally awesome end sequence.

Essentially, it is an opportunity to show off the special effects and a ton of ideas that the creator has come up with, to try and blow the audience away and use the potential awesome to lobotomize them into drooling masses as they enjoy the spectacle of it all. Of course making such battles have become easier as special effects have become simpler to make and have become much more advanced. The first film to really push the envelope in terms of this was Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, during the battle against the Death Star. Virtually every battle will stick to the rule of Space Is Noisy, because of Rule of Cool. Nowadays however films with huge battles are commonplace thanks to the advancement of technology.

Typically Space Battles involve the following:

• The enemy will usually have some giant, unstoppable killing machine that the heroes need to destroy before it kills them
• The good guys will be hopelessly outnumbered or simply overpowered.
• There will be hundreds of soldiers or vehicles running amok to show the scale of it (in most productions made after the late 1990s they will all be computer-generated).
• They will involve some, or all of the main characters at once alongside many others for whom they are fighting with to show the unified cause.
• The enemy will either be overconfident to the point they see no need in a backup plan or to send everything at the good guys, or they will charge everything in knowing they will win.
• When it looks like the enemy will crush the last pockets of resistance, reinforcements show up to help the good guys.
• The heroes will have a time limit in which they have to win, and they will always achieve this with a second to spare.
• Someone will make a Heroic Sacrifice or perform a Heel–Face Turn or Face–Heel Turn.

This trope has extended into fantasy or historical movies as well as they have become more popular, this is because use several of the same methods and cliches to bring about the same effect. The Lord of the Rings for example required creative use of CGI and miniatures to portray and do epic battles described in the books justice.

The earliest visualization of the concept of space battles on film has its roots in the rocket ship aerial combat scenes from the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials of the 1930s-40s. However, such battes were much rarer than is commonly thought (most rocket ships being unarmed) and often involved nothing more than a chase scene with rocketships standing in for horses and buggies. Also, these don't quite count as space battles technically since they were generally restricted to the stratosphere of either Mongo or Earth. But these are the roots of the depiction of space battles as aerial dogfights.

The Space Battle can also be the Final Battle depending on when it starts in the show. Can also overlap with Decisive Battle depending on if it takes place before the Final Battle. Space Battles often involve Standard Starship Scuffles. Not to be confused with Fighting Across Time and Space.

Not to be confused with the website SpaceBattles.com, although as the name says, they do like a good battle there.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The climax of Doraemon: Nobita's Drifts in the Universe, a Space Opera-themed installment of the series, where Doraemon and gang, together with their allies in the Space Knights, battles the Independence Army's drone fleet to prevent their invasion on the universe.
• Space Battleship Yamato, being a quintessential Space Opera, certainly has a bunch of them.
• Robotech — which is to say, Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA.
• Macross series in general have a fair share of these.
• Vandread almost every episode have space battles, and it features most of all the examples mentioned above.
• Space battles are a staple in Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and their causes and consequences are major plot points.
• Gundam series typically focus on small-scale battles for most of their run, one ship's Mobile Suit complement against another's, but frequently feature larger battles at the climax.
  • The original Mobile Suit Gundam series has Solomon and A Baoa Qu, sieges of massive space fortreses with entire fleets on either side and hordes of Mobile Suits.
  • Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam has the final battle at Gryps Two with three fleets fighting and many dramatic deaths.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ ends with the battle of Axis, the final confrontation between AEUG and Neo Zeon and the resolution of the Neo Zeon civil war.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack has another battle for Axis, this time it's Londo Bell attempting to stop Char's Colony Drop and confronting his new Neo Zeon fleet.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam Wing ends with a battle between Zechs' White Fang group and Treize's OZ, with the Gundam pilots as their own small faction. The AC timeline never really developed warships, so this was almost entirely fought between Mobile Suits.
• In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, The final battle between Team Dai-Gurren and the Anti-Spiral in the last few episodes takes place in space.
• Blue Comet SPT Layzner One particular scene is where the world Air Force unites with Eiji and The Cosmic Culture Club to defeat the Gradosian Empire from invading earth.
• The Moldiver episodes "Overzone" and "Verity" feature space battles between Mirai Ozora as well as Machinegal's Dolls.

Comic Books

• Shakara: On many occasions Shakara will take on entire enemy space fleets with nothing but his (very advanced) sturdy little ship. Sometimes he got more creative: he destroyed one fleet by trapping it in range of a supernova, another by plunging them into a black hole, and another by turning a whole planet into a giant rocket and blasting his way through.
• There are two battles in Pouvoirpoint: The first one is lived from inside the vibro-cannons room of starship Entreprise-2061, during the ambush by a Proximian swarm from outer space. The second one is seen from outside the ship, when it gets attacked by a coastguard fighter.
• Wonder Woman Vol 2: There are two battles betwixt the Revolutionaries and the Sangtee Empire's fleet shown, one between a group not led by Diana and Sangtee fighters at a space port as the Emperor is briefed, and one where Diana's group ambushed the escorts to a train of slave freighters and freed all the slaves by taking most of the ships.

Films — Live-Action

• Star Wars thrives on this, it was the first film to really showcase how to make one. Four out of the six films have an epic space battle along the line while the last two take place on a planet. Even more examples abound thanks to the post-Lucas films, as both Rogue One and The Force Awakens have one.
• Starship Troopers has a particularly brutal one between the Fleet in orbit and the Bugs on the planet surface. The ships are vivisected.
• Serenity had a rather impressive battle between the Alliance fleet and the Reavers chasing Mal, it even had sound (it was technically in the upper atmosphere of Mr. Universe's moon).
• Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning builds up into one, although, technically, there are two.
• Independence Day ends with a space fighter chase through an enormous alien mothership to escape from an imminent nuclear detonation.
• Wing Commander, while almost universally hated by the fans of the original game, does feature some cool space battles, most of these involving the TCS Tiger's Claw (a carrier) against several Kilrathi cruisers. One of the most memorable scenes involves a deadly game of chicken between the Tiger's Claw and the remaining Kilrathi cruiser. The latter, of course, veers off, resulting in it receiving a bull broadside of torpedoes at near-point-blank range.
• Iron Sky features three (or one, if you think of it as a single continuous battle). First, the USS George W. Bush attacks the Moon-Nazi Zeppelin battleships and their Flying Saucer fighters. Despite the initial success, it begins to be overwhelmed, at which points reinforcements from every other nation (except Finland) arrive and obliterate the Nazi ships. Then the Nazis bring out the Götterdämmerung, a gigantic ship capable of simply plowing through the fleet and blowing up 1/5 of the Moon with a single shot. The other ships can do very little against it due to its sheer size. After it's brought down from the inside, the battle seems to be over. Then all the ships start shooting at one another in an attempt to get Helium-3.
• The Ender's Game film shows some cool-looking battle simulations at the Command School (they're actually live feeds via Subspace Ansible from the actual fleet engaging the Formics via orders received from Ender's battlegroup commanders). Since both fleets rely heavily on Space Fighters (Formics) and Attack Drones (IF), battles frequently take place at close ranges, even though IF also has a number of dreadnoughts.

Literature

• The Honor Harrington books each have a great big space battle or two somewhere. In fact, that's their emphasis; the titular heroine is a starship commander.
• The Lensman books contained some titanic space battles, usually described in over-the-top hyperbolic purple prose to get the sense of their bigness across.
• The Dendarii Mercenary fleet and the Prince Serg (commanded by junior and daddy Vorkosigan respectively) vs the Cetagandians in The Vor Game.
• William Shatner's (yes, that one) Quest For Tomorrow series includes several space battles, although most boil down to "forget how many ships you have and how advanced they are; tactics are all that matter - i.e. you need more processing power". The battle that's described in the most detail is the protagonist's first, when the ship he's on is trying to run a blockade. He's not actually supposed to participate in the battle, until all officers are killed by the enemy ships blinking (i.e. they rapidly shift in and out of subspace in a specific pattern to cause brain damage to anyone looking at them). Jim uses abilities he doesn't know he has to jam all the enemy sensors and destroy them one after another.
• Despite being your typical Space Opera, The History of the Galaxy series focuses much less on these than other examples of the genre. Even if they do, the battles are usually described from the viewpoint of a fighter pilot instead of a bridge officer aboard a cruiser. These series instead tends to focus on characters and ground battles involving Humongous Mecha, particularly because one of the author's ongoing themes is War Is Hell, which is not very easy to show with a space battle.
• A number of these are described in the Dune prequels, describing the times before the Spacing Guild monopolized interstellar travel. Usually, they are between the League of Nobles armada and Omnius's robotic fleets. Sisterhood of Dune describes an intense battle between the fanatical Butlerians and a number of Venport Holdings ships. While the Butlerian ships outnumber Venhold ships 12 to 1, they are also relics from the Butlerian Jihad, while Venhold ships are top-of-the-line. The battle is a victory for the Butlerians, but they end up losing nearly half of their forces, even though they have one of the greatest mentats onboard the flagship to guide them.
• The Starfire novels co-written by David Weber and Steve White have plenty of large space battles. The Shiva Option gets special mention for the sheer size of some of these battles.
• Also written by David Weber, the Empire from the Ashes trilogy has some extraordinarily large scale space battles. A single battle in the second book (The Armaggedon Inheritance) involves the protagonists using a few dozen warships that are individually larger than Earth's moon to fight against an enemy fleet that had millions of more normally sized ships in it.
• The The Lost Fleet series is full with space battles as two fleets battle it out at around twenty percent light speed. Each book usually has two or more instances of combat, while always having a major one. The battles usually involve the fleets passing one another in the blink of an eye and trading shots as they pass, as a mix of naval combat and Old-School Dogfighting.
• All Star Carrier books feature a number of battles with great emphasis placed on relativity. The battles are generally portrayed from the viewpoints of one or two fighter pilots and a ship/fleet commander (usually aboard the TC/USNA America). Great emphasis is placed on the opening rounds of any battle, usually involving a near-light-speed attack run by a number of fighter wings as soon as the battle group jumps in. The goal is to surprise the enemy with a relativistic strike just as the light from the arriving fleet reaches them.
• Given that the setting features both fairly casual faster-than-light travel and fairly powerful interstellar (sometimes even galactic) empires and such that occasionally clash, these are a natural feature of the Perry Rhodan universe — from duels all the way up to large-scale fleet actions involving tens of thousands of capital ships.
• Harry Harrison
  • Starworld has the rebel admiral screening a space battle scene from an old movie, then pointing out how unrealistic it is. He then goes on to demonstrate that Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better.
  • Deconstructed in Bill the Galactic Hero (of course). Bill spends the entire space battle changing fuses, without any idea of the big picture.
• Subverted by Iain Banks in Surface Detail and The Algebraist, in which the 'battles' involve the other side being curb-stomped without even the chance to fire a shot. His Culture novel Excession contains one of the few examples of a space battle actually being described rather than occurring off-screen.
• Mikhail Akhmanov's Invasion starts with the world leaders watching the recording of the battle between Admiral Timokhin's battlegroup (constituting 1/6 of the total strength of Earth's Space Navy) and a single Faata starship. Timokhin's ships launch scores of fighters and a nuclear Macross Missile Massacre with a combined strength of 140 gigaton. The alien starship launches annihilator-armed combat modules that make mincemeat out of the entire battlegroup, while the starship's own Deflector Shields shrug off the nuclear barrage without even a Star Trek Shake for the crew. Naturally, the Faata sent the recording to intimidate the human leaders. The story then rewinds to explain how we got to this point. More space battles take place in later novels of the series, although the novels rarely focus on them.
• In A Symphonyof Eternity space battles are a main focus of the series, with fleets that number in the tens of thousands each set in a universe where magic instead of technology is what is used in war. No wonder since it was inspired by Legend of the Galactic Heroes
• Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss, a sequel to Fighters from Mars, an unauthorized adaptation of The War of the Worlds, is the Trope Maker, featuring two space battles between the Martians and Thomas Edison's "cars".

Live-Action TV

• Star Trek didn't rely on those so much for budget reasons, the times ships would fight each other it was either reminiscent of submarine/destroyer battles taking place at long ranges (usually in TOS) or a couple of ships putting around a stone's throw from on another (usually TNG).
  • The movies and shows tended not to have large-scale space battles, with dozens or hundreds of ships flying around, but they did have space battles that were impressive in their own scope. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, for instance, features the on-and-off duel between the Enterprise and the Reliant, with both ships having to retreat early on to lick their wounds before meeting up for the final clash in the climax. Epic does not necessarily require a lot of participants.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, on the other hand, included several epic battles, like the Klingon assault on Deep Space Nine, the Dominion assault on Deep Space Nine, the Federation's retaking of Deep Space Nine, the two battles for the Chintoka system, and the battle for Cardassia.
  • Star Trek: Discovery had several of large-scale battles as early as episode 2, with the Battle of the Binary Stars between 12 Starfleet ships and nearly 30 Klingon ships. The season 2 finale also includes a battle between the Enterprise, the Discovery, and over a hundred armed shuttles and pods on one side and about 30 Control ships with hundreds of Attack Drones on the other. Klingons and Kelpiens (flying Ba'ul fighters) join to support Starfleet halfway through the battle. Season 3 finale also has a battle between the Discovery (captured by the Emerald Chain) and the Starfleet ships near the headquarters station, led by the Voyager-J. Meanwhile, the Chain's flagship Viridian is on the outside of the shield and is pounding it with all weapons to open a path for the Discovery to escape. Then a fleet of Ni'Var (formerly Vulcan) ships arrives to assist Starfleet, although the threat to Ni'Var ships forces Starfleet to let the Discovery go.
  • Star Trek: Picard featured two small-scale (mainly 1-on-1) and one large-scale battles in Season 1.
    • In "Absolute Candor", La Sirena and Seven of Nine's ship trade phaser fire with Kar Kantar's antique Romulan Bird-of-Prey while attempting to avoid Vashti's planetary defense system.
    • In "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1", Narek's Snakehead fighter attacks La Sirena when they both reach Coppelius. Just before the Artifact can join in their firefight, all three vessels are incapacitated by the Orchids.
    • In "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2", the Romulan fleet unleashes a barrage of disruptor fire against the ship-disabling Orchids while they're in orbit around Coppelius. However, we never get to see the remaining 200 — 18 were lost to the Orchids as reported by Jurati — Romulan warbirds fight it out with Starfleet's armada (which contains more or less the same number of starships) under Riker's command, since the Romulans decide to withdraw.
• Babylon 5 contained several of these, usually marking major points in the main Story Arc. There was a major battle between Babylon 5's defenders and an attacking Earth fleet after B5 declared independence; a much larger battle between the League of Non-Aligned Worlds and the Shadow fleet; a huge three way battle between the Shadows (with one of their planet-killers), the Vorlons (with some of their planet-killers), and Everybody Else; a huge battle between Sheridan's fleet and the Earthforce fleet besieging Proxima 3; and finally an all-out assault on Earth with Earth Defense satellites acting as the giant killing machines that are going to kill everybody and everything.
• The new Battlestar Galactica's space battles had quite a wow factor due to the outstanding special effects, despite only having a couple of big ships slugging it out (usually the Galactica versus a couple of basestars).
• The Stargate-verse had more of these as the show went on longer and got a bigger budget. The most visually impressive was probably the Battle of Asuras in Stargate Atlantis, featuring an Atlantis-Wraith-Travellers alliance vs. the Asuran Replicators. And the battle was just a diversion until they could merge all the Asurans together and implode the resulting mass, which also destroyed the planet.
• The Expanse:
  • In "CQB", the Martian warship Donnager ends up engaged in a battle with five smaller stealth ships. They start by exchanging torpedo shots, with the Martian ship's point-defense guns shooting down most of the enemy torpedoes, while its own manage to take out one of the attackers. As the remaining attackers get close, torpedoes are abandoned, since the targets are too close for a good lock. The Martians switch to railguns, only to find out, to their dismay, that the mysterious attackers have managed to fit railguns on those small hulls as well. Eventually, the Martian ship is boarded, and the Captain and her first officer initiate self-destruct to keep the ship out of enemy hands. To be fair, the only reason the Donnager is boarded is because one of the enemy torpedoes manages to get through the PDC screen and damages the ship's reactor, eventually forcing its shutdown to prevent an overload. By that point only two enemy ships are left. These two are also taken out by the Donnager's self-destruct.
  • In "Doors and Corners", the OPA launches an attack on the ring station that The Conspiracy is using as a research base, protected by another stealth ship and a hull mounted artillery gun. It takes some significant maneuvering, but the Rocinante is eventually able to disable both the ship and the gun, enabling a Boarding Pod to land on the station and take control of it.
  • In "IFF", an unnamed UNN warship attacks the racing pinnace Razorback with Bobbie Draper and Chrisjen Avaserala aboard. The pinnace is unarmed, so Drapper sends an SOS, which is picked up by the Pinus Contorta (formerly known as the Rocinante, formerly known as the Tachi). As the UNN ship fires two torpedoes at the Razorback, several more torpedoes are shown incoming from another direction. They turn out to be from the Contorta. Two of them continue past the Razorback and explode in the path of the UNN torpedoes, destroying them. The remaining torpedoes take up an escort formation around the Razorback. The UNN ship them starts launching torpedoes at the Contorta, but the crew is able to shoot them down with PDCs. But they're aware that the UNN ship outclasses them and has a lot more torpedoes to fire. So they launch several more torpedoes and peel off the escort torpedoes from the Razorback, sending all of them towards the UNN ship. All the nuclear-tipped torpedoes explode in front of the UNN ship, temporarily blinding their sensors, while the Contorta races through the blast wave and, in a slo-mo shot, spins around and blasts the UNN ship's engines clean off.
  • In "Nemesis Games", the Free Navy attacks the joint UNN-MCRN fleet defending the Sol Ring (consisting of 2 Truman-class dreadnoughts and 1 Donnager-class battleship). The Free Navy (17 ships in total including former Martian ships and armed Belter ships) opens fire with a barrage of torpedoes. The joint fleet responds in kind, and both are able to take out many of the enemy torpedoes with their PDC fire. Meanwhile, the joint fleet is suddenly peppered by a shower of micrometeors, as Marco Inaros timed his attack to coincide with the shower. The micrometeors take out some of the weapons on the joint fleet's ships. Then the Medina Station launches a volley of torpedoes from inside the Ring space. Not expecting an attack from the rear, the Martian battleship is destroyed with all hands. The remaining dreadnoughts put up a fight, but then a rogue Martian (now Laconian) fleet arrives and launches a volley of torpedoes at the UNN ships, destroying them.
  • In "Force Projection", we finally see the long-awaited battle between the Rocinante and Marco Inaros's flagship Pella (a Martian-built light cruiser), plus two armed Belter ships on Inaros's side. The Free Navy outclasses and outguns the Roci, but the Roci has a railgun. However, in order to use the railgun, the Roci has to cut engines, spin around, fire, continue spinning, then re-engage the engines. The Roci manages to take out one of the Belter ships with a lucky railgun shot, causing the other Belter ship to fall back to assist, leaving it a 1-on-1 battle between the Roci and the Pella. However, Inaros is wise to the railgun trick and dodges whenever the Roci turns to fire. Bobbie takes the gun controls and notices that the Pella is always dodging to one side. She and Holden come up with a plan to distract the Pella's crew with torpedoes. As Holden spins around and fires the railgun, Bobbie fires a burst of PDC fire at Pella's likely location after a dodge. With the torpedo explosions blinding the Pella's sensors, they don't catch the PDC burst and are gutted. Holden then gives Inaros a chance to surrender, which Inaros refuses. Holden fires a nuke at the Pella but sees Naomi's son Filip behind Inaros and disarms the warhead before it impacts, unwilling to be the one to kill his lover's son.
  • The series finale starts with a massive offensive where the Combined Fleet (UN, MCRN, and Drummer's faction) engages the Free Navy. The Inners focus on the main Free Navy fleet, while Drummer and her 12 Belter ships are sent to take out supply ships escorted by a single heavy frigate. Drummer orders all ships to fire torpedoes at the frigate, seeing it as the primary target, while Walker is intent on capturing a transport ships intact and loot it. Many of the Belter torpedoes miss (poor guidance systems). However, Drummer then notices that the transport ship appears to be breaking apart, even though no one hit it. She's shocked to see the Pella inside the "transport ship", having covered itself with Belter ship parts. Inaros orders his flagship to open fire on all Belter ships. Drummer orders the remaining torpedoes to be used to intercept the Pella's barrage. Meanwhile, the Pella moves through the Belter fleet and guts it with its Martian-built PDCs (more precise and firing 40-mm rounds vs the Belter 20-mm). With nearly half of the Belter ships taken out and no torpedoes left, Drummer decides to ram the Pella from behind, but Walker beats her to the punch. He accelerates his ship, the Inazami. The Pella fires PDCs, which damages the Inazami, but then the Free Navy frigate intercepts the Belter ship with its own hull, sacrificing itself to save Inaros. Still, the front half of the Belter ship slams into the Pella, dealing damage to the engines and killing one of Inaros's lieutenants.
  • Other engagements tend to either happen off-screen or out of focus, such the as the Battle of Ganymede, simultaneously taking place on the moon's surface and in orbit.
• The Orville features several battles, although most of them involve only two ships: the Orville and a Krill destroyer/battlecruiser. One of the massive battles we see is pretty short and is between two races featured in only a single episode. In a particularly memorable battle, Mercer has Gordon take the Orville into the upper atmosphere and skim it, which creates a "smoke screen" of sorts, preventing an accurate weapons lock for the pursuing Krill ship. Mercer then has Bortus load all the plasma torpedoes into the aft launchers and has Gordon shoot the ship straight up. The residual "smoke screen" obscures the Krill sensors, preventing them from seeing the torpedo barrage until it's too late. The other truly massive battle takes place in season 2 with hundreds of Union ships plus thousands of fighters defending Earth from over 30 Kaylon greater spheres and dozens of lesser spheres. Then dozens of Krill destroyers arrive to reinforce the Union fleet and launch hundreds of fighters.

Music

• Iron Savior does this roughly once per album:
  • Unification: The battle to free Earth from the eponymous warship.
  • Dark Assault: The mission to destroy the interdimensional invaders.
  • Condition Red: Hunting down the Traitor of Atlantis.
  • Battering Ram: The war against the Realm of Steel.

Pinball

• The "Space Battle" mode in Star Wars Episode I
• This is the theme of Stellar Wars

Tabletop Games

• Battlefleet Gothic portrayed the space battles of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, until it was discontinued along with most of Games Workshops spin-off games.
• Traveller has plenty of these in the fluff, as well as various rulesets for simulating them.
  • Mayday was a boardgame spin off of Classic Traveller that specifically focused on 1v1 spaceship combat.
• Star Wars has two wargames focused on space battles: X-Wing, which focuses on skirmishes between squadrons of fighters and corvettes, and Armada, which follows larger ships like Star Destroyers.
• BattleTech has large-scale spaceborne battles available to players via BattleSpace. It used variations of the Aerospace combat rules, but at a much larger scale.

Video Games

• Some space-themed video games live on the concept of a Space Battle, and since this genre is going in a pretty bad way, the ones that done it right have gained a cult status among their geeky fans, becoming the 'Space Battle Generator' to fuel their unending needs of space battles. Expect a huge amount of Game Mods to spice things up... a lot. Some of them are Freespace, Homeworld, Freelancer, Sins of a Solar Empire, Tachyon: The Fringe, Star Trek: Bridge Commander, with honorable mentions to Star Wars: Empire at War, Star Wars: Battlefront II, Gratuitous Spacebattles, Nexus: The Jupiter Incident and Rogue Squadron.
  • The X-wing Series. Sure, the earlier games lacked scale due to the limits of computing technology of the day, but X-wing had more than its share of epic engagements.
• Fallout, despite being set in a wasteland with small hints of alien life features one of these in Fallout 3 with the Mothership Zeta add-on, complete with a Death Ray. It's a mostly static affair but the first time can be considered quite tense due to you being unfamiliar with the controls. In fact the wiki advises you to perform Button Mashing to make the battle better. If you go through it again it becomes a pretty predictable "Full power to weapons, reroute power to shields!" etc. Does feature a nice explosion at the end.
• The climax of Mass Effect showcases a cut scene where the Citadel defense fleet is trying to take down Sovereign and save the council until the Human fleet shows up, much ass kicking ensues and it is absolutely awesome!
  • Space battles take place at both the beginning and end of Mass Effect 2. The second is much easier on the protagonists, but how much so is up to the player.
  • Mass Effect 3 features several, from something small like Cerberus fighters engaging the Normandy at Grissom Academy, to battles as grand as the Migrant Fleet versus the geth and [insert race here] fighting the Reapers. It eventually culminates in the largest fleet the galaxy has ever seen assaulting the main Reaper force at Earth. If you do everything right, this fleet consists of the human, turian, asari, salarian, geth, quarian, volus, and even batarian ships all working as one.
• The entirety of Space Debris runs on this, where you control one of three Ace Pilots leading the (vastly outnumbered) human forces against an invading alien army who arrived in our solar system via a wormhole.
• Half of Sword of the Stars is this, with ships that you have designed, built, and formed into fleets slugging it out with the enemy fleets and/or planetary defenses. With dreadnoughts, though, this is usually a static affair. The game is notable for allowing the player to target any part of the enemy ship, including individual turrets. Each Expansion Pack has added more technologies and weapons to be used in battle, as well as new races with their own advantages and disadvantages. The sequel plans to add even more complexity to battles. And did I mention that the battles are in real time while the strategic actions are turn-based?
  • The sequel ups the ante by having even larger ships called Leviathans that dwarf dreadnoughts. Furthermore, one of the factions can eventually summon the Suul'ka, a race of Abusive Precursors who are, effectively, Eldritch Abominations. They are larger than even the Leviathans, and their huge tentacles can physically smash enemy ships or burn them with lasers. The Suul'ka also have Psychic Powers that dwarf any abilities employed by the younger races.
• Star Ruler is frequently home to space battles of increasingly larger levels of ridiculousness. Early battles will consist of skyscraper sized "dreadnaughts" at most duking it out with kinetic weaponry till they run out of both ammo and fuel, causing both sides to loose all ships. Then the arms race begins! Ships grow increasingly large until the destruction of stars may become a tactical action when engaging enemy ships, and unmanned fighter craft dwarf the dreadnaughts of old. Fortunately, blowing up stars stops being necessary once you get a chance to analyze the enemy ship designs and pick out any flaws the space battles will stop being several hour battles, and instead resemble rather glorious curb stomp battles. Unfortunately, the base games graphics cause the battles to not necessarily be as dramatic as they could possibly be.
• Several occur throughout Asura's Wrath. The most epic one of all, is in the DLC Part Iv, Nirvana. During the final fight with Chakravartin, Asura becomes the extremely huge planet sized Desturctor Asura, and starts flying towards chakravartin as he throws Planets and starts at you like they are basketballs, and causes a start to supernova just to kill you! It's really cool!
• You can technically have these in Starcraft, if you fight on a space platform map with ships and fighters.
• Starcraft II plays it much strighter withe the "With Friends Like These..." mission, which takes place entirely in space and featuring massive battles, point-blank dogfights, and vast swarms of missiles and lasers all over the place. And is itself based on a popular custom map called "Star Battle", which is a MOBA... you guessed it, IN SPACE!.
• The into to Alien Crossfire expansion to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri shows a battle between two Progenitor scoutships that results in one of the color-coded ships (they're identical otherwise) doing sufficient damage to the other, causing the loser to fly out-of-control and straight into the path of the other ship. The resulting explosion destroys both ships, except both manage to eject Escape Pods that land on Chiron.
• Galactic Civilizations handles space battles as a short video with no player input beyond the forces they commit. A bit like Civilization in space.
• Battles are simplified in Endless Space, as the game's main focus is economy. They consist of four stages: arrival (no shots exchanged), long-range (missiles most effective), mid-range (lasers most effective), and short-range (kinetic weapons most effective). If no side is obliterated by the last stage, the battle is a draw. Visually, ships simply travel towards a planet in standard naval battle lines and exchange shots. Combat is affected by tactics (which act as cards in card-based games) pre-selected at the start of the battle and locked in for that stage at the start of the stage. To this end, if you're not planning on changing your tactics/cards during battle, you may as well let it play out automatically. The result will be the same.
• Mission Critical is a Myst-style adventure game, but you do have to engage in ship-to-ship combat one at mid-game and once during the climax. All combat is done with the capital ships hanging in orbit and acting as bases, rearming and repairing Attack Drones. These drones are the ones that do all the fighting. Capital ships do have some weapons, like anti-ship missiles (that are fairly easily swatted by a single drone) and point-defense lasers that are fairly useless against the fast-moving drones. The game notes that the primary reason why The Alliance is losing to the UN is because the UN has better (and more) drones. Normally, all battles are computer-controlled due to humans being too slow to match their speed. However, the Alliance has developed a top-secret substance that temporarily boosts a human's reaction, allowing the player to control drones and beat the more predictable enemy computers. Visually, the battles employ vector graphics. Additionally, while there is no Stealth in Space, enemy ships will often be hiding on the other side of the planet, requiring drones to be sent to scout beyond the horizon.
• These appear in Star Wars: The Old Republic. They tend to be more along the lines of space skirmishes, however, and the non-PvP ones usually involve the player's small ship slaughtering everything.
• Star Wars: Squadrons places space battles front and center, with its multiplayer component featuring two types of battles: simple dogfights, and larger-scale battles where players are tasked with destroying the enemy's capital ships.
• In EVE Online its the only type of battle there really is, except for corporate warfare. Notable in that is the current record holder for largest battle in an MMO ever, with thousands of players joining a single fight.
• Infinite Space shows large-scale space battles in several cutscenes, such as the Elgavan fleet being wiped out by Lugovalos, the Federation fleet failing to stop a Lugovalan fleet at a Void Gate, and the Nova Nacion-Kalymnos conflict. Yuri's participation in large conflicts typically plays out as leading a small strike force pursuing a key objective with the larger battle in the background.
• Stellaris can have fairly massive space battles, especially by the end of the game. However, battles are simulated (although still shown visually), so the primary role of the player is to create a well-balanced fleet of custom-designed ships. Ship behavior can also be set at the design stage. For example, corvettes are frequently used to charge at the enemy and circle them, while striking them with close-range weapons. Meanwhile, "line" behavior has ships stand back slightly and pound the target, while "artillery" ships stand back even father and engage the enemy with missiles and/or fighters. The game is notable for automatically assigning each ship a unique name from a list selected at the beginning, although eventually it runs out of unique names and just starts adding numbers to previously-used names (you can rename each ship to your liking).
• Rimworld's Vanilla Events Expanded mod reminds you that there are civilizations out there beyond the space age, by including Space Battles as a random event. Naturally, you don't get to participate, but you get to deal with a portion of the spaceship fragments, missed shots and escape shuttles/pods that crash into the planet as a result. Dangerous, as no one wants a giant chunk of ship crashing into their house, but profitable once its over and you can recycle the parts. And sweep up whoever survived the crashes.

Western Animation

• Exo Squad had a lot of them, using Mini-Mecha in place of more conventional space fighters.
• Shadow Raiders.
• Futurama has planty of these (often in humorous manner though). To name a few: Battle against Omicron Persei invasion fleet^note actually the Hubble Telescope, and a big surprisingly epic battle against a fleet of golden Death Stars in "Bender's Big Score".
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars has multiple of these per season. Notable examples inclue the battle of Ryloth in Season 1 and the batle of Sullust in Season 3.
• Invader Zim has Zim vs. Tak in "Tak, The Hideous New Girl" (as a distraction while Dib figures out how to shut down Tak's Doomsday Device). There's technically also one in "Backstreet Drivers From Beyond The Stars" between the Massive and the Resisty ship, which is really just the Resisty taking pot shots at the Massive while it's being remotely hijacked by a competing Zim and Dib (which, ironically, saved the Resisty from an instant Curb-Stomp Battle).
  • There's also the titular fight in "Battle of the Planets", where Zim and Dib fight each other while piloting Mars and Mercury as ships.
• Il Était Une Fois...' Space'' has a few, most notably by far the epic Curb-stomping of the Cassiopeian fleet at the hands of the Great Computer's one.
• The climax for the Season 2 Finale of Ducktales 2017 features the Duck family flying into space via rocketship to stop General Lunaris from crashing his mothership into the Earth.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks has several battles worth mentioning. In particular, there's a battle in the episode "wej Duj" ("Three Ships" in Klingon) involving the Cerritos happening upon a meeting between the Klingon captain Dorg of the bird-of-prey Che'ta' and the Pakled captain Rebnar of the Pakled. Unwilling to let the Federation ship report on the meeting, Dorg orders both ships to attack the Cerritos. Then, suddenly, the Vulcan cruiser Sh'vhal arrives to assist the Cerritos. With help from one of the Vulcan lower-deckers, the Sh'vhal is able to do significant damage to the Pakled, while Dorg's new first officer challenges and kills him, choosing to return to Qo'noS instead of participating in this dishonorable battle. The Pakleds likewise retreat.

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