Space battleships and battlecruisers

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." E.E. Smith's Lensman series has two classes even beyond this: "Mauler" and "Bulldog Mauler".

Parallels to historic battleships

In addition to various military science fiction-typicalFact|date=August 2008 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.
* In the case of the Japanese animated series "Space Battleship Yamato (a.k.a. "Star Blazers")", not only is the old seaborne battleship directly transformed into a space warcraft, but the follow-on Earth battleships share naval architecture such as main, secondary and light gun turrets, superstructure etc.

Examples

* The Daedalus and Prometheus from the Stargate universe.
* The "Sharlin Class Warcruiser" of the Minbari, the G'Quan-class Cruiser of the Narn, the Primus-class Cruiser of the Centauri, the Shadow Motherships, the Omega-class and Warlock-class heavy destroyers of Earth from "Babylon 5".
* Battlestars, such as the "Galactica" and "Pegasus", along with their counterparts Cylon Basestars, in both of the "Battlestar Galactica" television series.
* Exocarriers, such as "Resolute" and "Resolute II", in "Exosquad".
* The "Pillar of Autumn", "Forward Unto Dawn", and the "Truth and Reconciliation" from "".
* The "Blue Noah" in "Space Carrier Blue Noah".
* The "SDF-1 Macross" in "The Super Dimension Fortress Macross" and "Robotech".
* The "Yamato" from "Space Battleship Yamato".
* The tri-nacelled Federation-class dreadnought in "Star Fleet Battles" and the quad-nacelled Yamato-V class Battleship in "". (Note: both are not considered canon within the Star Trek Universe.Also the Non-canon Federation Excalibur and Pathfinder classes.
* "Great Fox", a Dreadnought-class battleship from the "Star Fox" video games.
* Star Destroyers and Mon Calamari cruisers in the "Star Wars" universe.
* The "Hyperion", "Norad II" and the "DSS Aleksander" Behemoth-class battlecruisers and "Ganthrithor" carrier in the "StarCraft" series.
* The Emperor, Retribution, Apocalypse and Oberon-class battleships from the "Battlefleet Gothic" game set in the "Warhammer 40,000" universe.
* Devastator Warships and Planetary Assault Carriers in Command & Conquer.
* The Destiny Ascension and Kilimanjaro from Mass Effect
* The Caldari Raven and Gallente Megathron, among others, in the MMORPG space game EVE Online
* The Battleship class from "Ogame"
* The McKenna Class Battleship & Leviathen II Class Heavy Battleship from Battletech Universe.

Battlecruisers

In science fiction, the meaning of the word "battlecruiser" is generally somewhat different from the historical warship of the same name. Usually it denotes a spaceship more comparable to the fast battleships of World War II: A large, fast and tough vessel with both high firepower and enough protection to dish out and take considerable amounts of damage.
*In "Star Trek", Klingon "battlecruisers" often menaced the Starship "Enterprise"—which was classified as a "heavy cruiser", and just as often faced her on even terms. The crew of the Klingon vessel in "" also refer to the "Enterprise" as a "Federation battlecruiser" at one point.
*In "The Mote in God's Eye" (by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle) a battlecruiser (named "MacArthur") is seen as intermediate in power between a battleship and a heavy cruiser.
*In the computer strategy game "StarCraft", the battlecruiser is the most powerful unit of the Terran race and can be seen as the flagship for many Terran generals.
*In "Homeworld 2", the battlecruiser is the most powerful unit that can be built, and is practically invulnerable to almost every other unit in the game.
*In "Stargate SG-1", the "Daedalus" class battlecruiser (and its one-off prototype, the "Prometheus") is the only capital class vessel in use by humans. Unlike naval battlecruisers, "Daedalus" class vessels are also influenced by aircraft carriers, as the fictional vessels carry small squadrons of F-302 fighters.
*In the MMORPG "EVE Online" the Battlecruiser class is halfway between a cruiser and battleship, being of similar size of a battleship, having battleship comperable protection and slightly greater speed than the larger ships, but mounting only cruiser sized guns.
*In "Babylon 5" and its spin off shows "Crusade (TV series)", "Legend of the Rangers" and "" the Destroyers used by EarthForce were actually hybrids of Carriers and Battleships. They had massive firepower and squadrons of fighters. The Drakh, Centauri, Minbari, Narn, Vorlon, Shadows, other First Ones, Interstellar Alliance and other younger races all have their versions of space battleships, cruiser, frigates, patrol ships, fighters.

ee also

*List of fictional spaceships
*Starship
*Starship class
*Dropship
*Mother ship
*Starfighter
*Space warfare in fiction