Discussion Main / OldSchoolDogfighting

Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: What is this, exactly?, started by NativeJovian on Jan 29th 2012 at 3:54:20 AM

I know that wings are for use in an atmosphere, but maybe they have use in space by mounting thrusters on them. On a 2 winged space figher, if there is a thruster on each side of each wing, facing upwards and downwards, those thrusters could make the spacecraft do a lot of the same maneuvers as our current ones.

Ignite the thrusters on the underside, and the spacecraft can go up, or make a loop upwards. Opposite on the upside.

Activate just one thruster can turn the spacecraft on its side and from there both thrusters on the underside can be activated, effectively banking.

Activate one opposite thruster on each wing and the spacecraft can spin around its axis to evade weapons fire.

If potent enough weapons can be mounted on small spacecraft (and they can), then dogfighter sized spacecraft could be far more useful than this article suggests, which would also make combating those fighters an issue and there we have it, dogfighting in space in the same way as in our atmosphere.

Come to think of it, if small spacecraft can carry weapons that can destroy large ones with a single or a few hit(s), then spacefaring civilizations will be far less likely to invest the huge resources needed to produce dreadnaughts and the like, and there would be a LOT of traditional dogfighting, and the dogfighters could be a lot like the ones we have now.

So, maybe it is likely that we'd have a lot of "old-school dogfighting", and this isn't such an unrealistic trope?

What do you guys think?

Due to the unexplored nature of space dog fights and the thoroughly tested technique of regular dog fights i think that early space dog fights will use old school tactics (with varying degrees of success depending on the tactic), for at least the first few encounters. this doesn't mean the tactics will still work, just still attempted.

Should we nuke the aversions in the literature section? The main reason one uses this trope is for visual effect, and literature averts that by not having visuals to begin with.

Unknown Troper: Removed iluvtvtropes' attempt to subvert the "Don't Rant About How Much You Think Space Fighters Suck" notice. Not only did he do that, but he tried to rant about how real-life atmospheric dogfighting is nonsensical (which is really off-base from what this trope is about).

Oh, and he tried to switch the link over at the Space Fighter trope from Star Destroyer to that Atomic Rockets link. I fixed that too.

The stuff in the Real Life section about missiles and modern aircraft no longer fit the purpose of this trope; they've been there for over a year, and back then the trope had serious problems with certain people changing it from a trope about starfighters shooting at each other at gun range to "starfighters and fighter aircraft are terrible and anything using only missiles, big ships, or unmanned drones is awesome."

I'm not deleting it, though. I'm moving it to High-Speed Missile Dodge, as that trope has more to do with the belief that missiles make manned aircraft obsolete more than this trope does.

2 Immortal Hunger: they fixed that bug? ;]