History VideoGame / GratuitousSpaceBattles

* ConvergingStreamWeapon: A beam weapon specific to the Swarm first fires multiple lasers into a point to gather together into one beam, much like a certain iconic [[Franchise/StarWars space station]].

* ThemeNaming: Each faction has ships named after a particular theme. TheFederation's ships are named after terrestrial animals, the Alliance's fleet is named after aquatic and reptilian predators (with their fighters named after arthropods), TheEmpire's ships are named after Ancient Roman military terminology, and the Rebels' ships are named after Norse and Greek mythology. The Tribe draws their names from terms regarding tranquility and transcendence, the Order has names drawn from the Catholic church, and the Swarm is based on ancient Egyptian mythology. Nomad ships have names that sound vaguely Arabic, and the Parasites take names from taxonomic classifications. Outcast ships are named after metallic elements.

* CriticalExistenceFailure: Averted. A ship can be reduced to little more than a slowly moving hulk, billowing flames from holes that seem to make up most of the ship, but so long as it doesn't take one more shot and shave off that last point of hull, it won't explode. However, a ship's hull integrity is composed of the collective HP of its modules, and as a result modules can be damaged and destroyed individually, directly reducing a ship's performance in battle as it takes damage. To get to the point of it being a wreck that's one hit away from exploding, it will likely have lost all of its weapons and engines along the way. It's not at all uncommon to see ships turning away and fleeing the battle because all of their weapons got destroyed by enemy fire, even though the ship's hull is otherwise mostly intact.

* ArmorIsUseless: Generally averted; you want some armor on your cruisers and frigates to stop them from getting mauled by shield-bypassing fighters, and heavier armor on cruisers, when combined with repair systems, can allow them to shrug off a truly gratuitous amount of fire from almost anything. One may still want to skimp on armor for fighters, however, as even basic ablative armor will add up when the upgrade is being spread across an entire squadron of fighters, and any heavier armor will result in a speed loss and ''decrease'' the fighters' survivability[[labelnote:+]]For example, if you have a basic fighter design that only costs 80 credits per ship, and add a basic ablative armor upgrade, that'll tack on about 30 extra credits to each fighter - now multiply that by 16 fighters in your squadron, and that comes out to 1760 credits for the whole squadron, as opposed to 1280 for the unarmored squadron.[[/labelnote]] This is ''especially'' important in the campaign.

* FantasticRacism: Everyone toward everyone. Special mention goes to the Alliance, who hate anyone with less than six legs and an endoskeleton. The Outcasts actually got their name after a thousand years of violent conflict between the cybernetic half of their species and the baseline organic half. It only ended when the cybernetic half nuked the rest from orbit and then set out to rid the galaxy of other baseline organic life.

* GlassCannon: Most frigates can be this way; even their most powerful shields can be swatted down fast by most cruisers, and they get absolutely torn apart by fighter swarms. On the other hand, they can do a ''ton'' of damage at low cost, they move fast for their size, and only frigates can mount ion cannons, EMP rockets, disruptor bombs, and anti-fighter missiles.

** The Alliance's ships all have bonuses to armor and few hardpoints, making them great at soaking damage but slower to dish it out. It's very possible to build an Alliance fleet with enough armor on each ship to shrug off most weapons that aren't beam lasers.

* TacticalRockPaperScissors: A fairly complex one, as nearly every combination of weapons/ships/modules has a counter. Missile-heavy fleet? Slap on some guidance scramblers, point-defense, or a bunch of fighters. Frigate-heavy fleet that's using cruisers as screens? Gratuitously-fast rocket fighters are your friends. Having trouble closing with that plasma/beam fleet before they rip your ships to shreds? Time load up on [=EMP=]s. Enemy using an annoying amount of [=EMP=]s on ''you''? That's why they made EMP shields. Coming up with the right balance of firepower, ship types, and defenses to beat your opponent's fleet is at the core of this game's challenge.

* TractorBeam: Frigates and Battleships can be mounted with (blue) Tractor Beams, slowing the pesky-deadly fighters down to the point where slow tracking beams and missiles can kill them.

** The latest faction mod, [[https://www.moddb.com/mods/deadblots-trifecta Deadblot's Trifecta]], adds three factions with each of them having a capital ship that takes CDM UpToEleven by making them so large that it only can be used in some larger maps, as well as including a few powerful weapons that have damage level of three to four digits.

* 2DSpace: A given considering the top-down perspective. You can even notice that in both the deployment screen and in combat, frigates and cruisers cannot fully overlap one another (under normal circumstances). Fighters seem to be exempt from this, though, as they can fly over other ships and fighters with no problems.

* {{Roboteching}}: A mass of missiles can fly off at angles to the target and then all converge on the vessel at the last moment.

* ArtificialStupidity: Ships and fighters generally target the closest enemy ship unless given specific orders otherwise. This has resulted in the use of "tank cruiser" strategies where one of more cruisers are positioned ahead of the fleet, using [[SuperToughness massive amounts of armor, shields, and repair systems]] to [[DrawAggro soak up fire while allowing the rest of the fleet to fire around it]]. This can be particularly devastating against fighter-oriented fleets, as the entire fighter force will try to swam the shielding ship and get ripped apart by the rest of the fleet. Any fleet not specifically oriented toward destroying the "tank cruisers" quickly will be torn apart.

* CriticalExistenceFailure: Zigzagged. On the one hand, a ship can be reduced to little more than a slowly moving hulk, billowing flames from holes that seem to make up most of the ship, but so long as it doesn't take one more shot and shave off that last point of hull, it won't explode. On the other hand, a ship's hull integrity is composed of the collective HP of its modules, and as a result modules can be damaged and destroyed individually, directly reducing a ship's performance in battle as it takes damage.

* CriticalExistenceFailure: A ship can be reduced to little more than a slowly moving hulk, billowing flames from holes that seem to make up most of the ship, but so long as it doesn't take one more shot and shave off that last point of hull, it won't explode.

** One of the most potent weapons in the game is the humble but efficient cruiser laser turret. Few weapons in the game can match its damage output, ability to penetrate shields and armor (by DeathOfAThousandCuts), and especially its fire rate. Its only weakness is slow tracking speed (making it poor against fighters and fast frigates) and relatively short range. Its not a huge glowey death beam and doesn't have the impressive visual ''smack-boom'' of a detonating plasma torpedo, and you're not going to see a hojillion glowing contrails of outgoing missiles, but ''nothing'' tears apart cruisers and frigates more efficiently. Of course, you get enough cruisers pouring on the laser bolts, and you ''do'' get [[BeamSpam another breed of visual awesome....]]

* JackOfAllStats: The Federation is a middle-ground faction with small bonuses to many stats and no penalties. This makes them a good all-around faction to start off with, and flexible enough to run with many strategies and configurations.

** TheEmpire specializes in this; they even get a special frigate hull named the "Weapons Platform" that has minimal modules but eight hardpoints (by comparison, that's more than many ''cruisers'' get), and is designed to either have little to no engine capability....but with the sheer number of hardpoints and low cost, the platform is able to inflict a ridiculous amount of damage-per-cost.

* PlasmaCannon: A weapon available to cruisers and frigates, firing long-ranged blobs of plasma. While they're not as good at tracking targets as missiles nor as good at armor-busting as lasers, they're decent at melting through shields and armor alike.

** About the sole exception is the Nomads, who don't hate everyone else, they're just (literally) killing time until they finally find a planet they'd like to settle down on.

* MoreDakka: Ships can mount rapid-fire weapons, including cruiser lasers and quicker-firing plasma weapons. Frigates can load up on rapid-fire ion cannons to chew up shields. Fighters can mount faster-firing pulse lasers, and there's a mod to add a "fighter gatling gun" that amplifies the fighter fire rate to insane degrees.

* StoneWall: Strategy du jure of the Tribe, who have a race wide penalty to shields and armor but ''double'' the hull points of other races and a race-exclusive repair module that works better than everyone else's. Tribe ships will spend more or less the whole battle with flames pouring out of them, but rarely actually detonating.

* TacticalRockPaperScissors: A fairly complex one, as nearly every combination of weapons/ships/modules has a counter. Missile-heavy fleet? Slap on some guidance scamblers, point-defense, or a bunch of fighters. Frigate-heavy fleet that's using cruisers as screens? Gratuitously-fast rocket fighters are your friends. Having trouble closing with that plasma/beam fleet before they rip your ships to shreds? Time load up on [=EMP=]s. Enemy using an annoying amount of [=EMP=]s on ''you''? That's why they made EMP shields. Coming up with the right balance of firepower, ship types, and defenses to beat your opponent's fleet is at the core of this game's challenge.

* {{Tractor Beam}}s: Frigates and Battleships can be mounted with (blue) Tractor Beams, slowing the pesky-deadly fighters down to the point where slow tracking beams and missiles can kill them.

--> '''Rebels:''' The rebel creed is to reward success rather than punish failure. We will leave that to you. [[LeaveBehindAPistol Here is a laser pistol with one charge. Try not to make it too messy.]]\\

* ArmorIsUseless: Generally averted; you want some armor on your cruisers and frigates to stop them from getting mauled by shield-bypassing fighters, and heavier armor on cruisers, when combined with repair systems, can allow them to shrug off a truly [[IncrediblyLamePun gratuitous]] amount of fire from almost anything. One may still want to skimp on armor for fighters, however, as even basic ablative armor will add up when the upgrade is being spread across an entire squadron of fighters, and any heavier armor will result in a speed loss and ''decrease'' the fighters' survivability[[labelnote:+]]For example, if you have a basic fighter design that only costs 80 credits per ship, and add a basic ablative armor upgrade, that'll tack on about 30 extra credits to each fighter - now multiply that by 16 fighters in your squadron, and that comes out to 1760 credits for the whole squadron, as opposed to 1280 for the unarmored squadron.[[/labelnote]] This is ''especially'' important in the campaign.

** Armor plating. No shiny shields surrounding your warship, but the armor will deflect most fighter-mounted and other low-powered weapons and can save a cruiser that would be otherwise gutted by heavy weapons.

* DeathInAllDirections: Entirely possible, depending on your ships' loadouts.
** AtomicHate for the Order and their nuclear misslies and cannons that fire blobs of radioactive material.
%%** BeamSpam
** ChargedAttack although it's entirely visual, a beam weapon specific to the Swarm first fires multiple lasers into a point to gather together into one beam; much like a certain iconic [[Franchise/StarWars space station]].
** KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter for the Tribe and their close range autocannons.
** MacrossMissileMassacre. Most launchers have one explosive round and three decoys. Only the multiple missile launcher has four real missiles.
** MoreDakka for the Nomads with a beam weapon much like the one mentioned in BoringButPractical, but with a much faster firing rate.
** ShockAndAwe can apply to the Alliance, since they have a weapon specific to their faction that fires a huge bolt of electricity.

* TheEmpire: Ancient, oppressive, and ruled by a thousand-year old Emperor who is officially "under the weather."
** [[TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} Why does that sound so familiar?]]

* HopelessWar: For just about everyone. The Rebels are locked in a permenant struggle with the Empire for freedom, and with everyone else for simple survival. The Empire is bent on conquering the galaxy, the Alliance and the Order are on genocidal rampages to wipe out everyone else, the Swarm are just doing what they've been doing for eons since, and the Tribe are killing everyone because they've realized the only way the galaxy will be at peace is if everyone else is dead, the Parasites need new hosts, the Outcasts have a boiling hatred for organic life, and the Nomads are killing everyone because, well, they're bored. And ''everyone'' owes the Federation money, and they're coming to collect.

* YouHaveFailedMe: Some defeat quotes have shades of this toward the player. [[NotSoDifferent The Rebels and Empire, curiously, tend to have this in common.]]

* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Each faction has a design/color combination to make them highly distinctive, save the Alliance and Nomads, who lack a uniform color scheme but still follow a distinct design pattern.

* FragileSpeedster: The Swarm have a faction-wide 15% speed boost, but have 5% penalties to shields, armor and hull integrity, making their ships this. Finally, many frigates and all fighters are like this in general, being fast but frail; fighters generally use their speed ''as'' their defense method though, while frigates... don't.

* HordeOfAlienLocusts: The Swarm are a nomadic species of birdlike creatures who have apparently spent countless eons roaming the galaxy, doing nothing but conquering civilizations and destroying everything in their wake. And there are a ''lot'' of them. Ironically, the Alliance - the race most likely to contain actual alien locusts - doesn't quite fall under this category.

* PrivateMilitaryContractors: The Federation's fleet is made up of mercenaries who enforce the merchant association's contracts, and individual ship captains are billed for ammunition and paid by the kill.
* ProudWarriorRaceGuy: '''Everyone'''. Even the Federation's mercenary troops are extensively trained, highly-motivated, and willing to give their lives for their contracts.

* StealthInSpace: With no explanation given or [[RuleOfFun needed]].

* AffectionateParody

** Many races have a Cruiser hull specialized to this end, such as the Federation's Panther or the Tribe's Utopia. They will feature a higher number of weapon hardpoints in exchange for much fewer subsystems, which will be almost entirely focused on meeting the huge power and crew demands for their vast weapon arrays.

* TheHorde: The Swarm are a nomadic species of birdlike creatures who have apparently spent countless eons roaming the galaxy, doing nothing but conquering civilizations. And there are a ''lot'' of them.

* MartialPacifist: The Tribe really, honestly would like the universe to be at peace and have no one be harshing anyone else's mellow, it's just that they've come to the conclusion peace can only be achieved by killing the living daylights out of everyone else.

* SpaceFighter: A strong fighter fleet can be a game-winner. Each fighter only has handful of slots and a tiny powerplant, often having to do without shields or armour. However, you can have ''lots'' of them: even mighty battleships can be worn down by a ravening horde of fighters.

* StoneWall: Strategy du jure of the Tribe, who have a race wide penalty to shields and armor but ''double'' the hull points of other races. Tribe ships will spend more or less the whole battle with flames pouring out of them, but rarely actually detonating.

* AmbiguouslyHuman: The Federation is the first race you get to play as, has the standard blue color scheme associated with humanity and, color aside, fits the ISOStandardHumanSpaceship design pretty well. But they're never explicitly named as humans. No one is, for that matter.

** AtomicHate for the Order and their nuclear missles and cannons that fire blobs of radioactive material.

* DamageIsFire: Damaged or destroyed modules on a ship will be presented as being glowing, burning pits in the hull of the ship in question. Realistically, the flames aren't very intense, and instead glow with radiated heat.

%% * DesignItYourselfEquipment

* ThemeNaming: Each faction has ships named after a particular theme. TheFederation's ships are named after terrestrial animals, the Alliance's fleet is named after aquatic predators, TheEmpire's ships are named after Ancient Roman military terminology, and the Rebels' ships are named after Norse mythology. The Tribe draws their names from terms regarding tranquility and transcendence, the Order has names drawn from the Catholic church, and the Swarm is based on ancient Egyptian mythology. Nomad ships have names that sound vaguely Arabic, and the Parasites take names from taxonomic classifications. Outcast ships are named after metallic elements.

** The Rebels have arrow-like, boxy gunmetal-gray ships, also somewhat reminiscent of ''their'' [[StarWars namesake]].

** BeamSpam
** ChargedAttack although it's entirely visual, a beam weapon specific to the Swarm first fires multiple lasers into a point to gather together into one beam; much like a certain iconic [[strike:moon]] [[StarWars space station]].

''Gratuitous Space Battles'' is a game about [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin armed conflict taking place]] [[ExpospeakGag beyond any planet's atmosphere without any given reason]]. It was developed by Positech Games in 2007 and is available for download and purchase at [[http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/ their website]].

** The Federation has blue ships that look like throwbacks to classic 50's sci-fi spaceships, though with a strong Franchise/StarTrek element harking back to their namesake.

* StandardHumanSpaceship: Though [[AmbiguouslyHuman no species is explicitly human]], the Rebels and Federation both delve into this. The Rebels go for boxy, gunmetal grey ships, while the Federation paints theirs blue and has a more StarTrek, retro feel.

* TheMario: The Federation is a middle-ground, JackOfAllStats faction with small bonuses to many stats and no penalties. This makes them a good all-around faction to start off with, and flexible enough to run with many strategies and configurations.

* LaResistance: The Rebels, a group of breakaway races whose members didn't want to spend the rest of their life fighting for the Empire. [[{{Irony}} Therefore, they've devoted their lives to fighting against it instead]].

A [[http://www.gratuitousspacebattles2.com/ sequel]] is now in development.

* ArtificialStupidity: Ships and fighters generally target the closest enemy ship unless given specific orders otherwise. This has resulted in the use of "tank cruiser" strategies where one of more MightyGlacier cruisers are positioned ahead of the fleet, using massive amounts of armor, shields, and repair systems to soak up fire while allowing the rest of the fleet to fire around it. This can be particularly devastating against fighter-oriented fleets, as the entire fighter force will try to swam the shielding ship and get ripped apart by the rest of the fleet. Any fleet not specifically oriented toward destroying the "tank cruisers" quickly will be torn apart.

* MightyGlacier: Most cruisers fall under this variety, and a properly armored/shielded cruiser with good point defense and/or EMP weapons can be an extremely effective tank for frigates or other cruisers.
** TheEmpire actually specializes in this; they even get a special frigate hull named the "Weapons Platform" that has minimal modules but eight hardpoints (by comparison, that's more than many ''cruisers'' get), and is designed to either have little to no engine capability....but with the sheer number of hardpoints and low cost, the platform is able to inflict a ridiculous amount of damage-per-cost.
** The Tribe, too. The Tribe's ships get a 100% boost to hull integrity and ''really'' good repair systems. As a result, the Tribe's cruisers can take an incredible beating and keep going.
** The Order's ships move very slowly, generally having a substantial speed penalty, but their power generation is such that they can afford to stack shields and powered armor and tons of weaponry on their cruisers.

** The Tribe's ships are green and gray, with rounded and organic-looking hulls, and the Order features bright red-painted ships that seem to be held together by some kind of weird energy/tractor beams that seem impractical but ''[[RuleOfCool looks totally freaking awesome.]]''