Atlantis class Liberty Carrier

[AdamantineFist]

tubes are there as some sort of signiture for a carrier - maybe they are not the most efficient or logical feature, but they clearly say " i am a carrier " cause we *know* that this is the way we can imagine it. - real space combat would be boring. - the chance that even a superlarge fleet would meet with another superlarge fleet of ships is so tiny that real space-combat is irrelevant. - so the things we build are a compromise between spaceflight and something the lines of "flash gorden" from the 60s.

I always imagine that actual space combat would more resemble cold war era-to-modern day submarine warfare. Huge open spaces, and it would probably be about stealth quite a bit. Chances are that you'll be out of visual range at all times, so reducing ship emissions below the detectable level at engagement distances will be key. Since lasers fire at the speed of light, if you can sneak up on someone and rip them to bits without them noticing until it's too late. Missiles would likely be more destructive than lasers, if much slower and much, much easier to detect.

Due to the vast distances involved in outer space, you would likely only see any real conflict around points of interest, like planets and so forth, so large battles definitely could take place, but would only occur if there was a small area that the enemy wanted to actually capture. If they didn't want to take it, then you'd just want to be able to tie the enemy up long enough to bombard it from orbit.

Of course, actual space combat is likely a very, very long ways away from us at the moment. Heck, we haven't even gotten out of Earth orbit yet! And then, of course, travel times will be killer, and the lack of communications will severely reduce our capability in terms of military intelligence. Fleets would be cut off from outside information for between several minutes and several hours, depending on how far out you are. This is only within the solar system, of course. Barring the invention of instantaneous communication, communication would be next to impossible over interstellar distances. Of course, if we're fighting over these vast distances. we would have to develop an extremely fast method of travel, so that is what would likely limit communication times.

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