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.
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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.
- 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 Black Star and Warlock-class heavy destroyers in Babylon 5.
- Cylon Basestars and Battlestars in Battlestar Galactica.
- Exocarriers, such as Resolute and Resolute II, in Exosquad.
- The Pillar of Autumn and the Truth and Reconciliation from Halo: Combat Evolved.
- 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 Star Trek: Starfleet Command. (Note: both are not considered canon within the Star Trek Universe.
- 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 from Mass Effect
Battlecruisers
In science fiction, the meaning of the word "battlecruiser" is generally somewhat different to 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 Star Trek III: The Search for Spock 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.
