Reminds me of star fox

It still made of awesome and win

lol EvE Beta

Like it anyway

What is funny with space battles is that small manned fighters can be considered a waste of resources where unmanned fighters or missiles are a more efficient use of resources.
But the concept of the 'knight riding into battle to slay the enemy' won't go away and fighters in one way or the other will be designed and implemented.

Personally I like the pic, it looks clear and clean. I want a higher res of it for my files.

I was gonna bring this up, but I see you've covered it.

I dunno if manned fighters would show up in the future. I guess it does depend on whether the society building spaceships has anything like a "knight" or some such "honorable warrior" concept. In Stargate, you have the Jaffa piloting gliders and then the Wraith Drones piloting the... Daggers? I forget. But yeah, I'm pretty sure they'd only show up in a society where they don't consider pilots a more valuable research than ships.

And despite the fighters in the Stargate series, America is making moves toward unmanned fighters. Bit like arming model planes and sending them off to wage war. I imagine America's spaceships, if we made any, would have purely unmanned fighters.

Now, if we can just manage to nurse the wounded egos of all those fighter pilots who won't be going into space...

I am not saying that the use of manned fighters will be fazed out completely, I am saying that manned fighters will be limited, to the point where an entire fleet would probably have at most a dozen manned fighters (maybe each manned fighter controlling a squadron of drones) and numerous unmanned drones (maybe even hundreds of drones if they can get the right blend of hardware and software developed).
Also with the development of Artificial Intelligent drones the pilot limitation of a fighter would be removed, namely the organic pilot (there are so many G's a human body can take before it breaks, and if I remember correctly the technology is out there to build a 12G fighter, but no pilot that could take that many G's).
With the right tech fleets could have drones that would be able to do things pilots could only dream of. It only takes a few minutes to 'teach' a computer, while it can take years to teach a pilot.

Wraith fighters were called 'Darts.'
And let us not forget that Stargate is a Television show. 99% of the technology on that show is for TV purposes only.

Sadly, I tend to agree on the scientific aspects. No fighters, no "knight flying off to battle." In fact, with weapons so blazingly awesome as real lasers, particle beam weapons, and even simple high-powered guns there would be little to see in a battle, not even the enemy. Like naval warfare, with ships firing over the horizon, ships in space can be half a solar system apart and firing at each other with weapons no one can actually see.


But then, that makes for really dull action sequences. So I kinda dig the cowboy riding the missile, the lasers that travel slower than a musket shot, and ships crowding in on each other like ancient sailing battleships, captains eyeballing each other through armored windows, ready to give the command for a full broadside. XD

The day we get unmanned fighters is a bad day. War needs to cost lives to both sides, otherwise it will probably be entered way too lightly.

That said, the bad day is coming.

Not entirely... War cost money, resources and has to be viewed by the public opinion. Countries do not want to be in debt and politicians want to keep their jobs.

Let us not forget that ground troops are necessary and synthetic ground troops are still a far way's away

Well, I think mass production of unmanned fighters won't happen in a looong time, especially since even manned fighters still have more serious problems, when you put more automatics in them.

I remember the reports of US fighter crash over a dried lake in Middle East - assisting system went crazy on negative altitude (those lakes are below sea level). Or one of the recent UAVs mistaking own base for a target.
Writing an AI that would control a combat unit as good as a human in all situation would is still impossible with modern programming languages, and neural grids will take WAY longer than a human to learn anything

They may (and probably will) be created when the humanity goes to space - but I'm sure there will be humans onboard a huge command ship to look for a computer to not mess up anything... Unless people get conquered by sentient machines - the best failsafe will be someone at the command panel =)

let's not forget human can predict a few movements ahead due of their power of imagination, logic and usage of past experiences, robots only see facts and probabilities.

I dunno how a UAV could mistake its base for a target unless it's running a faulty AI. Far as I know, most of them are piloted by USAF Pilots... from halfway around the world. Granted, they only control one at a time, so you still need pilots for the planes.

Considering the dangers with faulty AI's, I'm pretty sure they'll keep UAV's under direct human control for the foreseeable future.

"Don't die for your country; make that sonofabitch die for his!" - General George S. Patton

=P I am firmly on the side of unmanned fighters. It's not about "dehumanizing" war; it's about minimizing our casualties while maximizing the enemy's. Which is why we nuked Japan. Horrible? Yeah. But no Americans died invading Japan, and we didn't have to wipe out the whole country to win.

Noble as the idea is, I don't support keeping troops in harms way when we can send in a small recon/fighter drone first to assess the situation and possibly neutralize hostile forces. And I'm willing to bet many of the soldiers out there fighting and dying would agree.

It's ironic you bring this up...and that the author should mention Orions.

(the reference isn't that panned out...Orions from that canon are obsessed with small-crewed craft, because they allow for the honor and pride of the individual.

This is cool. :o

coolio

Killercool.

Nice. Reminds me of Sins of a Solar Empire.

neat

I just realized something: getting into a space battle with capital ships can quickly turn into a vicious knife fight, with ships taking damage even as they are giving it out, so that even the winner is seriously brutalized in the end. And the worst part of all is that, even if you win, you're on a smoldering, barely functioning wreck in the middle of a hostile void with no way to survive on the outside. Space warfare is just brutal.

Love it... *needs to find his own doodle pad for something like this.*

well minus the stars i think this is awesome because alot of people forget the fact that space is huge an pretty empty looking, this piece adds to the spooky depth of the limitless that is space ^^

Homeworld anyone? =3

you mean the actual Homeworld 2 or Homeworld: Cataclysm?

cause i havent played 2 ^^;

DO A BARREL ROLL!
ITS A TRAP!!
PRESS A TO SHOOT!

Now whos ship is whos?
Great job btw :)

Good job avoiding the "space is ocean, so every starship's in the same plane and the same way up" thing!

You need some thruster going off to indicate manoeuvring.

And being so close to the enemy I somehow doubt they would still be accelerating as the engine glow suggests. Funny thing where you don't have an atmosphere to drag you down. It will takes as long to decelerate as you spent on accelerating. A lot more time with your design with all the big engines in the aft if they don't come in with the aft first. Of course, if you want the hit and run variety where the ships are in firing range from each other during a split second your way is good too. For the epic drawn out space battles with ships close to each other you really need to make up jump gates like in Babylon 5 or similar to make it make any kind of sense.

(Of course, you can just ignore all this and blame it on the space opera coolness factor. Which is also OK. George Lucas got rich with just such an attitude.)

Yeah, thats cool^^

Nice. A low orbital knife fight!

Say, could you do commissions on ship concept art and the occasional (though markedly more boring) battlescape shot?

Das erinnert mich an die erste Szene von Star Wars Episode 3... und ich LIEBE diese Szene!!!!