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Standard Starship Scuffle (view source)

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{{trope}}
[[File:StarTrekIIBattle_6679.jpg|link=Star Trek II: theThe Wrath of Khan (Film)|right]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Yarr! Firin' a broadside of [[Frickin' Laser Beams]], captain!<ref>A scene from ''[[Star Trek II: theThe Wrath of Khan (Film)|Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan]]'', as digitally rendered by [http://wolf359a.anet-stl.com/jim.html Jim Varner].</ref>
 
{{quote|''Space battles are always [[This Is Reality|a lot more exciting on TV]] than they are in real life...''|'''Col. John Sheppard''', ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]''}}
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It may be [[The Climax]] of a tense [[Mexican Standoff|standoff]], the conclusion of a [[Stern Chase]], or the outcome of a [[With Catlike Tread|cunning surprise attack]]. Two [[Cool Starship|Cool Starships]] from opposing [[Space Navy|Space Navies]] will park [[See the Whites of Their Eyes|within arm's reach of each other]], and proceed to fire [[Space Is an Ocean|broadsides]] of [[Beam Spam]] and [[Macross Missile Massacre|Macross Missiles]] at each other's [[Attack Its Weak Point|Weak Spots]]. The [[Point Defenceless|Close In Weaksauce System]] -- if it ''exists'' -- will valiantly try to intercept enemy attacks, and fail. [[Deflector Shields]] will [[Some Kind of Force Field|flash and crackle]] as they slowly drop [[Hit Points|percentage point by percentage point]]. [[The Engineer]] will rush to prevent [[Phlebotinum Overload|Phlebotinum Overloads]] while avoiding the inevitable [[Stanley Steamer Spaceship|torrents of burning steam]], providing essential [[Techno Babble]] all the way. On [[The Bridge]], [[Bridge Bunnies|Bunnies]] will shout out [[Subsystem Damage|damage reports]] while [[Explosive Instrumentation]] claims the life of many a [[Red Shirt|Redshirt Ensign]]. Everyone flails about as each enemy hit brings on a [[Star Trek Shake]]. [[The Captain]] will sit stoically at the centre of it all, providing important [[Hollywood Tactics|tactical guidance]], such as "[[Reverse the Polarity]]!" or "[[Tim Taylor Technology|Give me more power]]!"
 
In a ''really'' [[Rule of Drama|dramatic]] battle, he or she may turn to [[Crazy Enough to Work|daring and original plans]] -- attempts at [[Stealth in Space]] (to turn the battle into a [[Hot Sub-On-Sub Action|submarine analogy]]), aversions of [[Two 2-D Space|Two-Dimensional Thinking]], uncharacteristically creative applications of usually-[[Misapplied Phlebotinum]], etc. Unfortunately, such daring plans will usually [[It Only Works Once|Only Work Once]].<ref>There's another possible parallel to the [[Wooden Ships and Iron Men|Age Of Sail]] here. Long ago, [[Brits With Battleships|British]] admiral [[Eyepatch of Power|Horatio Nelson]] shocked the world and revolutionized warfare by discarding traditions and turning to risky new tactics that won him many battles. His tactics didn't [[It Only Works Once|Only Work Once]], of course, but this was before the days of radio (/SubspaceAnsible/what have you), so his tactics -- and the need to develop countermeasures for them -- likely didn't have the chance to spread as quickly. (Also, after Trafalgar, there wasn't anyone with the resources or impetus to develop countermeasures, because no one had a strong enough fleet to challenge the Royal Navy.)</ref>
 
Once damage has had some time to accumulate, and the [[Crazy Enough to Work|daring plan]] has had a chance to either work impressively or fail spectacularly, one of the ships will usually find it prudent to invoke the [[Know When to Fold'Em|Thirty-Sixth Stratagem]] and attempt a [[Hyperspeed Escape]]. An [[Lawful Good|honourable opponent]] will let them go; a lowly [[Space Pirate]] may get out the [[Tractor Beam|boarding hooks]] instead, and prepare a [[Boarding Party]]. If the quarry manages to slip away, there may be a [[Stern Chase]].
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== Film ==
* The various ''[[Star Trek (Franchise)|Star Trek]]'' films, nach. ''[[Star Trek II: theThe Wrath of Khan (Film)|Wrath of Khan]]'', ''[[Star Trek VI: theThe Undiscovered Country (Film)|The Undiscovered Country]]'', ''[[Star Trek: First Contact (Film)|First Contact]]'', ''[[Star Trek: Insurrection (Film)|Insurrection]]''... ''[[Star Trek (Franchise)|Star Trek]]'' is essentially the [[Trope Codifier]], after all.
** In the 2009 ''[[Star Trek (Filmfilm)|Star Trek]]'' film, we see some beautiful examples, though aversions of [[Point Defenceless]] and a general reduction in the amount of [[Techno Babble]] from previous Trek incarnations make it a less straight example than most.
* ''[[Star Wars]]'' gives ''far'' more focus to [[Old School Dogfighting]] between [[Space Fighter|small fighters]] than to this trope. Usually when capital ships engage each other it is a brief fight. One side will be attempting a [[Hyperspeed Escape]] from the very start, or the fight will be a [[Curb Stomp Battle]] with one side at a huge disadvantage, and in either case there will be little time for a [[Standard Starship Scuffle]]. For example, we see many of the elements of this trope brought out in ''[[The Phantom Menace]]'' when the protagonists' [[Shiny-Looking Spaceships|Shiny Looking Spaceship]] is breaking through the Trade Federation's blockade, but from the start the focus is not on the fight, but on trying to ''escape'' it.
** ''[[Star Wars]]'' plays this trope straight in the opening battle of ''[[Revenge of the Sith]]''. Among other things it lets us take a look at the starships' broadside cannons. The only thing they lack is that they're not muzzle-loaded.
** The Battle of Endor from ''[[Return of the Jedi (Film)|Return of the Jedi]]'' starts out more as a Battle of Midway-style melee, with snub fighters attacking the enemy capital ships, but once the Death Star cranks up its superlaser the Rebel cruisers have no choice but to go in and engage the Imperial Star Destroyers toe-to-toe so that at least the Death Star can't get a clear shot at them. The novelization sort of lampshades it; there's a line to the effect that the opposing capital ships are now exchanging broadsides at point-blank range like the oceangoing vessels of another time and place.
 
 
== Literature ==
* The ''[[Honor Harrington (Literature)|Honor Harrington]]'' novels play with this. Although ships do tend to throw everything they've got at each other, they tend to do it from as far away as possible. Prior to the pod revolution, however, missiles were viewed as being more for softening up targets, and the only way to be sure to kill a dreadnaught or superdreadnaught was to close to energy weapon range.<ref>Even that, however, was still not "knife fight" range as often depicted elsewhere, however, with energy weapon engagements being at least several light-seconds apart.</ref>
** [[David Weber]] was also one of the people behind the space strategy board game ''Starfire'', and the space battles in ''Honor Harrington'', especially early on, are influenced by the game mechanics.
* [[EEE. E. "Doc" Smith]]'s ''[[Lensman]]'' series had multiple examples, everything from one-on-one battles to huge space fleets fighting each other.
* [[Isaac Asimov]]'s ''[[Foundation]]'' trilogy had space battles between the Foundation and various opponents.
* ''[[Dread Empires Fall]]'' both plays this straight with the "Established Doctrine" espoused by the Government committee charged with running the war, and uses the Admiral Nelson angle of innovative tactics from the protagonists.
* [[Vernor Vinge]]'s ''[[Zones of Thought (Literature)|A Fire upon the Deep]]'' has a somewhat unique kind of starship combat. All ships use a kind of "stutter drive" for [[Faster-Than-Light Travel]], with ships making [[Teleport Spam|many short faster-than-light jumps every second]]. Maneuvering in combat means trying to synchronize your jumps with those of your target, or throwing off the synchronization of your pursuers, while releasing torpedo-like drones that try to get close to the enemy and [[Stuff Blowing Up|blow them out of the sky]]. This somewhat unique form of combat still leaves room for many of the elements of this trope. Because a ship is only in a given location for a fraction of a second before jumping light-years away, getting ''close'' to your target becomes important so that your attacks can reach them on time. Shipboard instrumentation simulates things like bright flashes of light from explosions to make the battle more intuitive. And even the [[Star Trek Shake]] and [[Subsystem Damage]] make occasional appearances. Perhaps the closest parallel is [[Hot Sub-On-Sub Action]].
* ''[[PandorasPandora's Star (Literature)|Pandoras Star]]'' and ''[[Judas Unchained (Literature)|Judas Unchained]]'' both subvert this trope; space battles happen with nuclear missiles or relativistic projectiles, from many miles away. The crews of the human ships are immersed in the control system, controlling everything through their brains. Maneuvering, if it happens, happens in hyperspace. It still manages to be incredibly dramatic.
 
 
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* ''[[Star Trek]]'' is the [[Trope Codifier]]; this sort of space combat shows up with frequency in all its incarnations. In the later series, the trope is sometimes averted by having giant capital ships engage in [[Old School Dogfighting]], but it's still played straight very, ''very'' often.
* In ''[[Andromeda]]'', another [[Gene Roddenberry]] series, capital ships occasionally got close enough to one another to fire Anti-Proton guns at each other. But most of the time they lobbed relativistic missiles at blips on the tac screen several light-minutes away. And due to gravity manipulation most ships could maneuver like fighters anyway.
* ''[[Stargate SG 1|Stargate SG-1]]'' and [[Stargate Verse|its sequels]] started to feature space battles that fit this trope perfectly once the [[Humans Byby Any Other Name|Tau'ri]] developed their own spacecraft using [[Imported Alien Phlebotinum]]. [[Boarding Party|Boarding Parties]] often played an especially large role, however, and early on the still-experimental [[ISO Standard Human Spaceship|human ships]] were more prone to [[Phlebotinum Breakdown]].
* ''[[Babylon Five5]]'' would partake in this or [[Old School Dogfighting]] (the latter typically for the [[Space Fighter|fighters]], but occassionally for the faster or more advanced capital ships as well). If one side got the jump on the other before they could react (typically by [[Hyperspeed Ambush|ambushing them]] as they exited a [[Cool Gate|Jump Gate]], or jumping on them from a [[Faster-Than-Light Travel|jump point]] of their own making once the target had been lured into a predefined killzone in a inversion of the [[Hyperspeed Escape]]) then the fight would be [[Curb Stomp Battle|spectacularly brief]]. If both ships had fair warning that a fight was about to ensue, then it would be relatively lengthy, with the ships launching fighters and long-range attacks, using electronic countermeasures or [[Shoot the Bullet|interceptor weapons systems]] to avoid incoming fire while trying to get close enough to allow their own weapons systems to [[Point Defenseless|overcome the enemy's defenses]]. On at least one occassion, a duel between two enemy warships resulted in ''[[Mutual Kill|both]]'' [[Mutual Kill|ships being destroyed.]]
** The first battle of the Earth-Minbari War (after the failed first contact) was near the Vega colony. The Minbari fleet closed to weapons range and waited for the slow Earth ships to take the first shot. The whole battle lasted about 12 seconds with most Earth ships destroyed in the first Minbari volley. Only one ship (a prototype ''Omega'') managed to get close enough to [[Ramming Always Works|ram]] a ''Sharlin'' war cruiser. Nearly all battles against the Minbari were usually [[Curb Stomp Battle|pretty short and one-sided]]. Oh, and to add more similarities with the Age of Sail, humans had to "eyeball" their weapons at the Minbari (i.e. visual targetting only), as the Minbari stealth systems prevented normal weapons lock.
 
 
== Tabletop Games ==
* [[Battle TechBattleTech]]'s space combat spinoff, BattleSpace / AeroTech has this as one of its core mechanics. WarShips brawl with each other at ridiculously close ranges. The battles are very brutal and reminiscent of sea battles from the age of sail. However, it has advanced rules for Newtonian flight physics instead of the [[Old School Dogfighting]] style physics, and three dimensional movement is important. Likewise, the fiction usually averts this, with direct combat between capital ships typically fought entirely by instruments and mathematics.
* The ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' spin-off game ''[[Battlefleet Gothic]]'' is a tabletop game built on this trope. To its credit, while combat mostly occurs by ships firing [[Space Is an Ocean|broadsides]] at each other, they at least do it over realistic distances, several million kilometres apart. The models representing the ships are completely out of scale with the rest of the game, [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality|as otherwise you'd either be playing with microscopic models]], or would need a decently sized city to play in.
** Additionally, 3D combat is handwaved as "just another range modifier", and since most of these battles take place over such insane ranges, the planar weapon distribution could even be structural, only requiring maneuvering rockets to aim in the z-axis (from the frame of reference of our 2D game surface).
* ''Task Force'' Games: ''[[Star Fleet Battles]]'' and ''[[Starfire]]''.
** The latter influenced the portrayal of space battles in the ''[[Honor Harrington (Literature)|Honor Harrington]]'' books, as one of the creators of the game was also the novels' author, though how the two universes actually use this trope differs.
* ''[http://www.adastragames.com/products/adastra/av.html Attack Vector: Tactical]'' is a good example of an aversion. Battles between "10,000 ton cruisers plying the pitiless depths of space" is the whole point of the game, but special care is taken to realistically simulate physics. As the name implies, the key is all in "vectors and timing". Even [[Two 2-D Space|2D Space]] is averted!
* Ground Zero Games's ''[[Full Thrust]]'' pretty much plays this trope straight. Optional rules provide varying degrees of aversion.
 
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** The battles in ''[[Mass Effect 3]]'' tend to be one-sided on the part of the {{spoiler|Reapers}}. However, we do get to see geth and quarian fleets slug it out without much maneuvering involved. Interestingly, despite the Codex claiming that the quarian heavy capital ships were upgraded with the [[Wave Motion Gun|Thanix cannons]], we never actually see them in action. They keep using their standard [[Magnetic Weapons]].
* ''[[Infinite Space]]'' has this to a hilt, especially in cutscenes.
* The [[X (Videovideo Gamegame)|X]]-Universe games often feature slug fests between capital ships at fairly short ranges, even though the weapons will reach out 8km, they're too slow to kill the enemy before they close to sneezing distance. Battles between the player capital ship and AI capital ships usually end with the player[[Ramming Always Works|plowing his ship into the AI ship.]] AI vs AI capital ship battles sometimes result in them both smashing into each other (if the player is speeding up time) due to the poor maneuverability of capital ships and the slow reaction time of sped-up AI.
* ''[[Star Trek Legacy]]'', ''[[Star Trek Bridge Commander]]'' and the ''[[Star Trek Starfleet Command]]'' games all feature this heavily, as their respective settings lack [[Space Fighter|Space Fighters]]. Most Trek games are like that.
* ''[[Nexus the Jupiter Incident]]'' is a game designed around this concept. While there are fighters in the game, they're pretty much useless until the enemy's [[Point Defenseless|flak]] [[Beam Spam|lasers]] are disabled. All fights are big slugfests, especially the climactic fight in the penultimate mission, where the player's fleet must fight against the constantly incoming enemy ''fleets''. Lasers are specifically used to knock out enemy systems but don't do much physical damage. The other weapons are meant to damage the hull ([[Magnetic Weapons|mass drivers]]) and shields ([[Energy Weapon|energy shells]]).
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