Space battleship
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A space battleship is a spacefaring warship in science fiction which functions similarly to a contemporary aircraft carrier and/or battleship. It is usually home to multiple single- or multi-pilot fighters as well as heavy defensive and offensive armament. These ships often lead fleets or battlegroups comprised of many smaller and/or specialized spacecraft.
Super-large space battleships are often given derived naval classifications, like "Dreadnought" or even "Super-Dreadnought."
[edit] Parallels to historic battleships
In addition to various military science fiction-typical parallels derived from historic and existing naval customs and technologies, fictional space battleships also often have some specific sea warfare battleship parallels, especially to those used in World War I and World War II:
- Use of main guns (instead of more dispersed armaments) and intricate tactics to bring them to bear in the most destructive way
- Being ponderous and slow (or at least slow to accelerate), thus creating an excuse for starfighters to exist.
- Having hundreds or even thousands of crewmembers (even in SF universes that should be capable of computer command of most functions)
[edit] Examples
- The tri-nacelled Federation Class Dreadnought in Star Fleet Battles
- Black Star in Babylon 5
- Warlock Class Heavy Destroyer in Babylon 5
- Blue Noah in Space Carrier Blue Noah
- Cylon Basestar in Battlestar Galactica
- Battlestars in Battlestar Galactica
- Star Destroyers in the Star Wars movies
- SDF-1 Macross in The Super Dimension Fortress Macross and Robotech
- Yamato from Space Battleship Yamato
- The Emperor, Retribution, Apocalypse and Oberon class battleships from Battlefleet Gothic game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe
- Exocarriers, such as Resolute and Resolute II, in Exosquad
- Great Fox, a Dreadnought-Class battleship from the Star Fox video games
- Battlecruisers in the StarCraft universe.
