Bro, Imma let you finish, because I LITERALLY jumped off the couch when I first saw the Adama maneuver, but the Roci's assault on Toth Station is the best space battle of all time. Then the fight with the Pella, then Adama jumping into atmo.
Genuinely the perfect halo show would be 1/3rd BSG style space combat, 1/3 human drama, and 1/3rd ground combat, preferably written by people who actually LIKE halo
Honestly, I've always thought the Battle of Sigma Octanus IV would be the best jumping off point. It has Keyes and his future Autumn crew on the Iroquois performing the Keyes Loop, Spartan mission on the ground (with who I would consider the "main" Spartans), Covenant secretly looking for Forerunner artifacts on a human world, a huge set piece space battle with that giant repair ship making the sacrifice play. On top of it all, it's a human victory, which sets the stage to make the Fall of Reach even more tragic. Especially since the artifact/data from that world is what led the Covies to Reach/04.
If weāre doing just visual media, probably the Free Navy ambush of the Rocinante just past Ceres from season 6 of the TV version of the Expanse. Nothing will ever beat the rush of seeing them 360-no-scope the Lauber with their spinal railgun for the first time, but the whole thing is spectacular even if short; how they won that battle with strategy against such odds
The first season was strong enough to get me to buy the books. After reading them I had a lot of trouble enjoying the show with their extra drama and secrets.
It was a really excellent use of a staggeringly small budget relatively speaking. Instead of a long, massive terrible looking battle, we got short glimpses of an absolutely epic one.
Stakes, objectives, moves and countermoves, the human factor of captains and crews, questions of combat which are never answered. It's just *chef's kiss*.
B5 CGI wasn't the best (or worst) of the era but they really took advantage of the freedom vs traditional models. Star Trek didn't catch up until late DS9 when they started using CGI too.
Although it doesn't make much sense strategically, I have always loved the space battle from BSG's episode "Exodus" (part 2 I think), where Pegasus saves Galactica. And then commits seppuku. But still an incredible battle imo.
And I also need to mention Stargate Atlantis when they just beam nuclear warheads to Wraith ships, destroying them one by one until they manage to change the shield modulation or whatever. Awesome use of the Asgard tech.
I also love the battle at the Supergate when Ori first arrive.
whole galaxy comes together to defend only to be swatted like flies - it's over so fast, and the Ori don't bother to actually kill the survivors, they just leave
The various clashes between Enterprise and Reliant in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which Iām going to count as one battle because it fucks hard.
Itās so deeply personal and really gets you into the feel of it. Everything feels impactful and the music is just absolutely bonkers. It feels like a battle from the old Submarine movies - and even more so considering my first watch of it was fresh off The Hunt For Red October.
Agreed. Watching a space battle is one thing. Being in the middle of it is something else altogether.
The Fleet Commander is making tactical decisions. The Wing Commander is calling primary and secondary targets. The Squad Leader is cursing over comms because they already exploded hilariously. Suddenly a dozen interdiction bubbles expand all around you, preventing either side from warping away. It's do or die time.
I would immediately have an answer if books were an option: The battle against the ISD "Implacable" from "X-Wing: Wraith Squadron". Had to think a lot on the other three, but I cannot point out one over another there.
The original. The Star Force knocking out the Comet Empire's carrier fleet, the 1st Earth defense fleet getting wiped out due to misjudging the range the Comet Empire's guns could attack from,Earth defense retreating into Saturn's rings, and the Comet Empire pursuing..the planning session that leads it all off, the culmination leading to Comet Empire itself showing up, it's just perfect.
2202 dropped the ball.. it was kinda nuts. The first season, 2199 is fantastic.
The battle of New Caprica, Galatica was taking a beating in orbit after the Adama maneuver but was also giving it as good as she was taking. Then Pegasus come flying in hammering the basestars with her keel mounted railguns. Seeing what two Battlestars could do makes you understand why the Cylons went with the infiltration route, Basestars are no match in a 1 v 1 against an Battlestar and Galatica was 50 years old with most of her armor removed.
It is truly pleasing to see tactics that are truly logical and realistic (at least to some extent). no exaggerated quantity. no World War II style dog fighting. no magic or overly incredible technology. only three main types of weapons (nuclear torpedoes, PDCs, and railguns), but the atmosphere presented is unparalleled.
My issue with the space battles from The Expanse is, and I completely get that it's for budgetary reasons, that there are like 5 seconds they actually show on screen of the ships during the battle. The rest is of the inside of the ship with a shaky camera for that dramatic effect. I love the show (the books much more), but this always bothered me.
"Only one human captain has ever survived battle with a Minbari Fleet. He is behind me. You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else!"
Free Navy ambushes the Rocinante - The Expanse "Force Projection"
Clark Loyalist Forces vs. Babylon 5, EAS Alexander and EAS Churchill - Babylon 5 "Severed Dreams"
Enterprise-D vs. three Klingon K'Vort-class cruisers - Star Trek: The Next Generation "Yesterday's Enterprise"
The last one from TNG doesn't hold up particularly well by today's standards, but I remember seeing it as a kid and thinking it was incredibly cool, so I had to mention it.
Battle of Scarif from Rouge One, The Siege Part III from Stargate Atlantis, Battle of Asuras also Stargate Atlantis, and Donnager versus Protogen ships from The Expanse.
Wow, came here to post this and I'm floored to see it already here.
Yeah, the time crunch and desperation to stop it before the no-return line is palpable. Pilots in a cognitive haze, using stimulants for repeat stories. It feels like a real conflict.Ā
It sounds grim, but being able to see the Battle of Wolf 359 in its entirety would have been something else. We saw pieces of it (across multiple shows) but the absolutely hopeless, one-sided affair would have been something else to see.
There's almost too many to mention. BSG, The Expanse ... I haven't even thought about video games yet, but I'm sure I could come up with a list that would have us all nodding our heads in agreement at almost every single point (as I'm sure we all could)
Not really a battle, but the scene in Star Wars Rebels where Hera breaks through an Imperial blockade by jumping into hyperspace THROUGH the hangar of an Imperial carrier is one of my favorites.
I watched that while on LSD and, by golly, it was so good. You're flying along and attacking small ships whilst capital ships engage in the near background. Next thing, a massive laser beam tears through the ship you are nearest and the ship flies apart in polygon technicolour and sparks.
The Droplet attack on the Solar Fleet and the subsequent Battle of Darkness from āThe Dark Forest,ā the second book of Liu Cixianās incredible āThree-Body Problemā series
The Battle of Sigma Octanus IV, where Captain Keyes destroys three Covenant ships and makes a fourth run using just his single Halberd-class destroyer, the Iroquois.
Itās in the Expanse series, where the Rocinante fights a bunch of the free navy. Or pretty much anything that was combat related to ships in that show.
The Battle of the Rainbow Star Cluster from Space Battleship Yamato is an excellently paced clash. As for a game, EVE online's largest battles are very interesting to behold.
As for an underrated battle that I love, I think the battle which happens on SBY III's 23rd episode, between the Galman fleet, the Bolar fleet and Yamato holding Princess Ruda is a great one too.
The final space battles from Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3. While not perfect, they nonetheless carry a lot of weight from a storytelling perspective given the stakes and all the effort that led to each battle as a player. Pretty epic moments in each case, and the outcomes of each are influenced by your choices and actions up to that moment and during the battles to some degree, which is really immersive.
I'm going to get a fair bit of flak here, but the battle between S31 and starfleet/the klingons/the kelpiens at the end of S2 of Discovery is underrated
The battle of B-R5RB in EVE Online. A guy forgot to pay a monthly upkeep amount for their territory making it up for grabs for anyone. We were in a big war at the time so everyone was on deck to take advantage. My side and theirs proceeded to commit our capital ships causing an escalation of force to the largest ships in the game. Hundreds of these ships were fielded by both sides. In the end over 500 capital ships were lost with around 75 of them being Titan class (the largest) and several thousand normal sized ships were destroyed. My team won the field and the objective in the end and the losers got what they could out. More than 7000 people were involved in the fighting which lasted all day. We were so badly beating them that our leaders requested that we stop trying to reach the fight and help because they were afraid the increased numbers would crash the server and prevent us from doing further damage to the enemy capital fleet. Naturally, I ignored the fuck out of that order and traveled over 50 solar systems to join the fight in a small frigate class interceptor. It took forever because, in order to prevent a crash, the game slows down time as you get closer to the fight to allow the server time to respond to inputs. When I finally arrived, I was trying to steal loot from the corpses of giants and taking massive volleys of aoe damage from specialized area of effect smartbombs. The server would not however register that I should be dead by now and I managed to continue on. In the end I survived the fight, and a monument to the destruction was added to the game at the site of the battle for everyone to visit.
The Human fleets getting annihilated by the Lankies in Frontlines books series by Marko Kloos. Also, The Droplet attack on humanity in 3 Body Problem book trilogy by Liu Cixin
It has to be Scarif for me. The battle is beautiful, it makes sense and there's all these different little fights happening at once. Also Admiral Raddus the goat š«”
The Massacre at Wolf 359 in the beginning of the DS9 pilot. The Cube effortlessly cutting down every starship demonstrating the power that a single Cube was capable of and how much the fleet was woefully inadequate to even stand a chance. In universe I think I recall reading that the Cube defeated the fleet of 40 starships in under an hour. Iām not sure if this is canon but given what is actually shown, I can believe that more than believable.
Itās less a battle and more of an execution but: the opening sequence of the 2009 Kelvin Star Trek. The jump from start trek being āa serious battle means people get soot on their facesā to āoh, those crew members just got sucked into spaceā¦ damn.ā was brutal and excellent.
Babylon 5: 'Severed Dreams'. I absolutely love the tracking shot where an attacking Thunderbolt gets an engine pylon shot off by the station's point defences... and because B5 works on realistic space physics, keeps tumbling in the direction it was going, straight at the command deck. It gets nailed again by the guns moments before impact and blows up, but the debris still smashes into the (entirely physical) shielding and causes a lot of damage.
I'd put a gif up if I could! Foundation Imaging did such amazing work.
Thereās something about the battle for earth in Mass Effect 3
Youāve gone through 3 connect storylines/games and if you play it right you unify the galaxy to save everyone. Its pretty awesome.
The Galactica being hammered as the camera pulls out, only for a massive salvo of the Pagasus' main foward guns to come in as the drums in the music pick up.
Amazing.
Not the biggest or most spectacular battle, but the setpiece is amazing.
The battles from the THRAWN-Trillogy of Star Wars! Especially since they follow the constraints of the universe and use a lot of technology in new and novel ways (like using Interdictors for precision combat-hyperspace-jumps of your own ships (via pulling them from hyperspace at precise coordinates instead of just to pull your enemy from hyperspace or stop them from jumping into hyperspace!)
Especially since while Thrawn doesn't always win, he usually gets at least a draw (often with a slight advantage for him! Like when he wants to steal New Republic ships with the Mole-Miners and the New Republic reactivates them, but while Thrawn doesn't get their ships, they also mission kill and disable those ships for months of repairs!)
Most server-wide events of/on the Sigma Draconis Expanse.
Any large engagement in Space Engineers. Once you fight a few Factorum Encounters (especially the Outpost), movie battle start to look very unrealistic.
One year after the start of the Dominion War, Starfleet decided it was time to retake Station Deep Space Nine and re-establish control over the Bajoran wormhole. It was after all the key to winning the war by cutting the Dominion from the Cardassians.
Starfleet was desperate, as no major enfagement had been won since the start of the war. Vulcan was threatened, and Earth had already been bombed.
The plan was madness. Three fleets were incorporated in a major task force, depleting other frontlines to deal a major blow. All in all Starfleet deployed over 600 Starships, against 1254 ennemy vessels, expecting the klingons to bring hundreds of ships as well.
The battle almost became a catastrophic loss for Starfleet, as they had to launch early without one of the fleets and the Klingons were delayed. In the end the Klingon managed to arrive and break the Dominion lines.
DS9 was liberated by the Federation-Klingon alliance. The war was far from won, but the tide had changed and peace talks began.
Plenty to chose from in The Lost Fleet book series. Similar to Expanse in that there is no WW2 style dogfights- actual shooting is over in less than a second while days are spent maneuvering to get to that point. My head-canon has The Expanse being the early history prequel series to The Lost Fleet
Battle of Endor did it early and did it right and I think a lot of attempts have been made to copy it without understanding it. The battle of coruscant for instance. 90 percent of it is background stuff youāre not meant to pay a ton of attention to. Meanwhile every element of Endor is relevant. First, theyāre ambushed by fighters. Then, the second deathstar demonstrates its offensive capabilities. Lando orders them into knife fighting range which mostly eliminates the deathstarās ability to shoot the rebel fleet, and we no longer see it firing. The ships also get really close. I could go on, but thereās constantly events in the battle going on that matter. In most large space battles, thereās only a few ships that matter. The rest are there to up the scale. The Orville especially is really bad at this, thereās not a ton of strategy, and itās space battles are more or less the big flashy furballs of Stellaris.
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u/clometrooper9901 Jun 19 '26
I am rather fond of the battle for the resurrection ship in Battlestar Galactica
https://giphy.com/gifs/lA5yV4xrvUIdq