What scifi tropes do you love/hate/feel indifferent to?

What scifi tropes do you love/hate/feel indifferent to?

>love
earth is still inhabited but isn't the most important/significant planet for humanity
>hate
all "good"/friendly and sapient alien races are humanoids
>indifferent
obligatory collectivist/space communist society

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I love me some space opera.
>everyone speaks same language
>aliens are just sexy humans with different colour
>it's basically repainted fantasy
>space elves
>space orcs
>space humans

> love
When alien races are actually alien

> hate
Humanity is portrayed as the good guys and aliens are bad guys

> indifferent
Green space babes.

>love
humans aren't the diplomats or jack of all trades, nice mix of rubber forehead/sexy blue aliens and more eldritch things, space fightercraft

>hate
psychic bullshit, technobabble

>indifferent
everything else

>technobabble
yeah, trying to explain things that don't actually work is real turn off for me. It's better to just go with "it works because scifi".

>It's better to just go with "it works because scifi".
My favorite example of this was the Farscape episode where they encountered shrinking technology.
One character, sikozu or however you spell it, actually explained exactly how it was physically impossible and therefore couldn't be happening.
Rygell basically calls her a twat with more Int than Wis and not enough life experience to know a fact when one hits her in the face.
He adds that he's old enough to know that the universe doesn't conform to his predisposed expectations.
Another episode Crighton actually repeatedly yells at a guy to shut up explaining the technobabble, nobody cares.

>love
Alien aliens: Only humans kinda bores me and humans with "x" aliens are bad

>hate
Space Nazis
When Voyager did the Nazi episodes, someone involved in the production said in an interview that "Nobody has every really done Nazi's in Space before."
I remember this because my roommate and I laughed long and hard at that.
Evil space empires are fine, but no more space nazis.
Maybe keep the uniforms.

>indifferent
social commentary
Star Trek did it well.
I don't care.
I enjoy sci-fi because I want what I can't see in real life, not because I need my social commentary filtered through alien cultures so it doesn't offend me.

>love

If it's done with some depth, the "revival" of ancient earth cultures. Your space persians, space polynesian, space french.

>indifferent

ww2-style battles
In a soft scifi setting, of course.

It's unimaginative but to be fair you have tons of interesting shit to copy from that war.

>hate

Technology officialy bad, but actually pretty good (if not overused).
Fuck this. It's just a foil for painting bad guys. Too easy: show me the real horrors of technology, or nothing.

>love
Entire race of sexy slutty aliens that would bang anyone or anything.

>hate
Aliens treating humans as the young, naive and stupid race

>indifferent
Human supremacy, aliens are like [blank] culture but with blue people.

>love
Whenever anyone remembers space is 3D. I'm not saying that submarine/naval battles aren't fun but ignoring all the cool shit you can do in a fully 3D environment is pretty lame.

>hate
Replacing existing terminal/awful diseases with new future diseases that then have to be explained. Having cancer is so 21st century, all the cool kids have Lakes syndrome these days.

>BONUS HATE ROUND
Making things unnecessarily different for no other reason than to be different and remind the audience (who are presumably cretins who otherwise wouldn't notice) that it's the future/an alternate reality/whatever. Cymbals on a drum made of green perspex or cutting the corners off paper, dumb shit like that.

>MORE HATE
Ludicrously designed non-ergonomic guns and tools. Stargate was especially bad for this. Just because a gun is a laser gun doesn't mean that it should look like a hedge trimmer and obviously be difficult to use. Staff weapons get a free pass on this because they actually explain it but the non Goa'uld human worlds have literally no excuse for designing their guns like spastics.

>indifferent
Mono-culture aliens. I get that alien races being homogenised is pretty boring but trying to think up one culture for a group of aliens can be hard enough expecting them to be as varied as humanity is a big ask so I can let this one slide. You can actually get bonus points if you subvert this and make humanity's unique trait that they aren't all them same like the aliens are.

>>love
>Entire race of sexy slutty aliens that would bang anyone or anything.
That's funny, because that's something I hate.

if they're not exclusively female than I'm indifferent

>humans and aliens co-existing and having stories together in one installment
>by last installment, alien stories are in one corner and humans are in another, having largely separate stories
Fuck Mass Effect 3

Asari are basically a lonely kissless virgin nerd's nightmare.

>Cymbals on a drum made of green perspex
I'm flashing back to a specific episode of TNG

Love:
>humans are a force to be feared when it comes to warfare
>sexy alien grillz
>hard science technology and FTL travel (i.e. none except warp/wormholes)
>huge as fuck space trucks
>far future Earth
>Earth held as sacred/protected, access restricted

Hate:
>Star Wars-levels of random mook alien races
>"× threatens the entire galaxy" - no, it fucking doesn't. Do you have any idea how big the galaxy is?

Indifferent:
>utopian future societies

So you like 40k?

>love

Space opera. This guy gets it.
Psionics.
Aliens. Alien aliens, humanoid aliens, doesn't matter.
Green Alien Babes, like this post. What can I say? TOS was a big influence on my early childhood.
Bionics/Transhumanism.
Sword and Planet.

>hate

WW2 in spaaace.
Space Nazis.
Technology = bad.
Technobabble.
Space fighters.
Space stealth.
Uplifted animals.
AI solves everything/becomes God.
On a similar not, god-like/demigod aliens.
Bioships (not that I hate the idea entirely, since I love FarScape, but I'm not sold on warships being effective).

>indifferent

Humanity is the only sapient/spacefaring species.
Probably a lot of things I can't think of at the moment.

Hilariously, no. But I can see why you'd think so.

Yuuzhan Vong had a big enough force to fuck over a large percentage of the Galaxy, including Coruscant so what the heck you on about boy

>Caring at all about the Vong and shitty EU, what with things like Darksaber and the Suncrusher.

>hating on the suncrusher
and everyone knows the best superweapon is Centerpoint Station

Hate:
>chromatic alien space babe
>extreme delta-v
>mono-cultural species

Don't you mean dream?

>love
robots with The Feels

>hate
All of humanity is always the good guys

>indifferent
actually surviving floating in space without a spacesuit.

>love
lower tech levels
hard scifi
form that follows function
alien aliens

>hate
unified Earth government
technobabble and infodumps, thinking that tech is more important than a good story
psychic powers
ancient aliens that controlled the galaxy and created intelligent life but then mysteriously disappeared
furry/anthro aliens, especially uplifted Earth animals
Cold War in space
WW2 in space
American Revolutionary War in space

>Love
Humans only
>Hate
Aliens are humans with rubber foreheads
Aliens are incomprehensible unknown oogaboogas
Aliens
Aliens
Aliens
>Indifferent
Anything else

>hate
>chromatic alien space babe
So people like you actually exist.

Are those some Eon dice?

I'm with him, it's just bland as shit.

I also hate monster girls for that same reason though I love female monsters.

The human with funny ears thing just pisses me off and I don't get a boner for my trouble either.

>Humanity is portrayed as the good guys and aliens are bad guys
I simply refuse to believe someone can be such a huge cuck.

>Love
Diamond hard sci-fi where any conflict off of Earth is extremely rare.
Aliens that are entirely different from humans, but still make you root for them
Astronauts, and by extension humanity/all sapient species, fighting against the indifference of the universe to survive another day.
Spiritual sci-fi like Tarkovsky's version of Solaris

>Hate
Fake hard sci-fi that spews out technobabble for tech that's not even close to even being theoretical
Hard sci-fi where everyone is just as stupid and dickish in the future as they are now. (Words can barely describe how much The Expanse disappointed me)

>Indifferent
Everything not listed here

>Hard sci-fi where everyone is just as stupid and dickish in the future as they are now.

Why do you hate realism?

>ancient, lost precursor civilization did everything better
It's not a terrible trope in itself, but it's in every single goddamn sci fi or fantasy setting ever. Once, just once, I'd like to see a setting without it.

Also why do so many sci fi settings have cat people?

I sense a man who appreciates Captain Harlock

I can easily believe that people who throw around the "cuck" meme unironically exist but I don't like you.

I'm with Aliens are better when they aren't just humans with halloween makeup. Games like Traveller and 2300AD manage to make the aliens think differently than humans which is great.

Things like Pentapods or Hivers are truly alien, not only because of the way they look but by the way they think. Creatures like Aslan are more humanlike but their culture creates a completely different kind of concept of "honour" that makes them infuriating to deal with occasionally but not impossible.

And yeah, "humans good guys aliens bad guys" is just boring. It's not like you HAVE to play an alien if you play scifi but making all the aliens enemies to humanity makes that either impossible or so rare that allowing it is problematic. (Think of any 40k rpg. Yes, technically the xenos and Chaos forces can occasionally ally with Imperial factions, but it's really rare and likely to get the player characters branded as traitors and heretics. Meanwhile in a setting like Star trek/wars you can have alien characters, all-alien party or merely an all-human party and still have diplomacy with aliens.)

>Love
Psionics, Earth is the most important planet for ONE human space nation, there are more than one though.
80s cyberpunk overtones
Railgun based spacecombat

>Hate
Muh telepathic floating amoeba races.
NOT a 80s cyberpunk/scifi colored space.
Garish skin color for different reaces. Stick with neutral hues, please.

>Indifferent
lasers.
Assexual races

Because almost every time somebody tries to make a setting with "gritty realism" for the characters it's just a code word for "I'm a hack who can only write scenes with heavy interpersonal conflict".

>love
-Space Magic. I know it's almost always silly pseudoscience bullshit and I don't even care.
-AIs going insane. It happens every time. Always. And that's okay, because they're great.
-Space Ninjas

>Hate
-Space illnesses that jump alien species. Unless these races have been living together for literal millenia, it's unlikely any would have mutated to infect eachother.

I bet you would let an Ay Lmao fuck your wife, if you had one.

>The human with funny ears thing just pisses me off

If you mean if I got them when I bought Eon? No, because I have never bought Eon, and have only played one session of it. I got them from a friend who loves it though. The photo is from a session of Mutant: Undergångens Arvtagare.

>Boy, I do love this story of different types of people getting over their shit, learning teamwork, and fighting the BBEG.
>ME3, what are you doing?
>ME3, what is this Jesus complex shit?
>WTF did this ever have to do with our relationship to technology?
>Why is Shepard Jesus/toaster/god?
>ME3, stop

*Which means it's possible it's Eon dice.
Missed a sentence, my bad.

>Love
Humans are the bad guys who conquer other planets for resources and dismiss alien life as little more than animals

>Hate
Alien life being viewed as peaceful things that do not even know what fighting or war is. They would still be fucking microbes at this point then.

>In different
Whether or not FTL travel exists.

>love
Space is just another shitty workplace, and a spaceship is a home. Think Planetes, Alien, Firefly etc. Also there's no sound in space.
>hate
The Ancients invented everything. Space is two dimensional. Space elves (including Vulcans).
>indifferent
Nearly every sci fi setting has cat people, for some reason. Magic is science fiction if we call it psychic powers instead. Godlike beings.

I genuinely can't think of any other Space Nazis though
I know of a lot of people who may use nazi uniforms, but I cannot think of anyone who uses much in the way of Nazi ideology to create a species or race

Star Trek had literal Space Nazis twice, not counting aliens who had Nazi vibes.

Star Wars. Star Trek. Doctor Who. Starship Troopers. Macross. Probably a lot more.

>muh epic HFY maymay

Hate: Scifi setting where all the aliens look down on humans for being savage, racist barbarians even though they're no fucking better. It's like saying
>>you fucking niggers are so racist

> love
Planets colonised by different ethnic groups from Earth. I want the planet where everyone speaks Thai dialects of Swahili goddammit.

> hate
The good guys are always democratic federation of some sort and the bad guys are always an autocratic empire.

> indifferent
Artificial gravity, FTL communication and other incidental details not being fully explained.

>Mono-culture aliens.
I think if we entered a space-age right now and met aliens, it is most likely they will perceive western-culture as the dominant human culture.
It's fine to have monocultural aliens as long as you explain how their current culture became dominant and you remember they aren't really monocultural.

That is funny because I fucked yours already.

Love:
Knightly space honour and the rage of righteous fury, think Picard.
Slow space battles, nothing is more cool than the slow and inevitable death.
The captain sitting in his command chair, while the ship burns and groans, desperately trying to cover the escape pods. ( Obligatory red lamps, because there is not enough power for the normal ones, but somehow we can still fire the death lazers.)
Hard sci-fi, soft sci-fi. Just be consistent, make it believable. Nothing breaks my sci-fi boner more than inconsistency.

I've always wondered if the races most like us would be the ones we have the most problems. I mean, lets say there's a race of carbon based humanoids that come from a planet not that different from Earth, and a race of some weird silicon squids that live in gas giants.

We wouldn't be competing with the squids over resources. They prefer totally different planets and we do. They wouldn't want to colonized that earth-like planet anymore than we'd set up shop inside a gas giant. Asteroid belts and such might be where we'd clash, if there's resources we both preferred, but other than that, it's just live and let live.

But then there's those other assholes, who wanna colonized that earth-like planet as well. Now you got a finite resource and competition over it. Surely we'd be fighting with them way more than with the squids, who would probably just sell arms to both parties, because fuck it, what you gonna do, invade a gas giant?

Well, we wouldn't compete over habitable planets but other resources might still cause conflict. Or there could be theological reasons why one or both sides wish to kill the others or perhaps the squids think that they get to rule the galaxy and humans disagree.

One thing I can rely on is that there will be plenty of excuses for conflict if you look for them. For example, maybe they don't like Skub.

>liking Skub
Pleb.

>other resources might still cause conflict

Sure. But if we fought over a planet where one side can has to wear heavy protective gear and it's not their natural habitat, then it's not much of a fight. You get in water with a shark and you're fucked. Drag that shark to dry land and you can just wait. Unless there's some super important future material we both need, there's really not going to be that much fighting over the same planets.

>there could be theological reasons why one or both sides wish to kill the others or perhaps the squids think that they get to rule the galaxy and humans disagree.

But if we're not in contact with one another, would we even care? I mean, something like the crusades had a lot to do with both parties wanting the Holy Land for themselves. Of course there were parties that wanted the other side gone and prove that their cause was just, but without Jerusalem, there wouldn't really have been reason to to and kick their ass the way they did. Equally Catholics and Protestants aren't killing each other across the globe, but put them both right next to each other, and shit starts to happen.

Of course the squids or we could try and subjugate the other to serve our or their cause, but it's still a bit like subjugating the fish of the deep to do our bidding. We don't even think about them that much. They're there and they're not bothering no one.

>Like
Impractical space warships. Ones that are slow as balls and need to directly aim the hull at target kind of things.

>hate
time travel/alternate dimensions. It's basically the "it was only a dream" of sci-fi.

>Indifferent
aliens being rubber face humans

>>Like
>Impractical space warships. Ones that are slow as balls and need to directly aim the hull at target kind of things

My brother of African descent.

>Love
- Used future; space travel is commonplace, but everything is held together with duct tape and constantly on the verge of breaking down
- Robots that have humanoid qualities, but are not just chrome-covered humans; think Star Wars robots
- Sword fights in space alongside pew pew lasers
- Both aliens that look like aliens and chromatic space babes
- Mutants and inexplicable space weirdness
- Augmentations and robot limbs
- Space travel through unstable wormholes that can result in some colonies getting "lost" and regressing to medieval technology (Vorkosigan Saga is great for this)

Why yes, OT Star Wars did have a huge impact on my childhood! However did you guess?

>Hate
- Humans are the super special race, despite being the furthest behind/youngest race in every possible metric
- Science that is so hard it becomes bland (though I'm not knocking those that do enjoy it)
- Random insertion of psychic powers on a wide scale, unless it's an extreme case of space weirdness or done through technical augmentation
- Robots that are just humans with chrome skin
- AI is always bad

>Indifferent
- Lotsa stuff

>I simply refuse to believe someone can be such a huge cuck.

It's 2116. I can't even right now.

>Love
Fedoralord technocracies
Mormon galactic explorers

>Hate
Lost super-cultures that spawned all life in the galaxy but turn out to be super evil

>Indifferent
Mechs

>love
space opera, free-thinking AI, spaceflight ocurring in 3-dimensions instead of every craft aligned on the same plane

>hate
large space dictatorships building planet-destroying weapons in order to fight a decentralized rebellion, like goddamn George Lucas, what the fuck were you thinking? At least the Yuuzhan Vong would be a good reason for having a Death Star since they turn entire planets into living shipyards but you just said they're non canon. For real George Lucas, get it together.

>indifferent
PC's who use swords instead of projectile weapons - it's infuriating to see That Guy roll up a space samurai with a thousand year old cursed katana, but you feel a lot better when he gets blown to pieces 10 minutes into the campaign

>Love
sci-fantasy, space operas, cyberpunk, grimdark, gritty harsh environments where everything is dangerous, fighters/dogfights, over the top empires and civilizations, space politics, robotics, psychic powers/force, augmentation/genetic engineering, swords in space, humans are the main race in the galaxy, 3d space, explorations of philosophy, sexy aliens, bug devourer type aliens, old race leaving ancient, but powerful tech around, warp travel, dark humor (laughing in the face of death or doom), last stands against insurmountable odds, surprise attacks, outwitting other commanders, aliens are not so different from us, robots fight for human rights civilly though could be forced to war with humans, funny/quirky like hitchhikers guide or men in black, puppet aliens, focus on a protagonist, strange fashions and art

>Hate
aliens so weird and different from humans or from worlds so adverse to life that they would never have had the chance of evolving into something intelligent, complete atheism in space, completely Utopian societies, humanity is the 'peaceful' good race, completely out there technology in an otherwise hard sci-fi setting, doing stupid shit despite being the 'wise leaders' see jedi council, funny gag characters or funny overpowered characters (sly marbo), humanity is the evil conquerors of the delicate alien society, magic from tribal races with no explanation as to how (some farscape episodes), ghosts in space, stupid sounding generic made up materials like plasteel or unobtainium, aliens that have no vices, strong independent girl that looks like typical teen girl

>Indifferent
fantasy copied races in space like elves or orks, the idea that augmentation is something to aspire to, AI rising and gaining sentience, AI is better than humanity, giant single thinking monolithic AI goes for domination, super large space craft, old one race created the lesser races, FTL travel, low brow humor in my hard sci-fi, the space mechanic know it all

> love

Space piracy, mecha, cool alien cultures regardless of whether they're crazy starfish aliens or rubber-forehead, AI that's genuinely inhuman and interesting because of it (when he's well-written Data is amazing, same for the more human-like but fundamentally Other robots in Asimov's fiction.)

> hate

AI that acts like a human trapped inside a computer, or just a generally irrational emotion-driven being without a lot of explanation. I find it's usually lazy and uninteresting. Referencing Firefly, it was a fun show but goddamn just let it go already. Military sci-fi, where the only thing the authors can think to do with the endless expanse of the universe is write "World War II/Vietnam, but the enemy is a bug monster so we can wage genocidal war against it with a clean conscience."

>indifferent

FTL. I really don't have a preference one way or another if ships get around via warp or wormhole or whatever.

>>Why is Shepard Jesus/toaster/god?
I just wanted to say that I haven't played ME3 yet, and I won't until I have the time to waste and I can play it for free.
I honestly didn't think my expectations could have been lower than they already were.
Thank you user.

Because of the Kzinti. And to be fair, the Kzinti are awesome, and I can see why people tried to emulate them or reference them (the Kilrathi in Wing Commander are nod to Larry Niven and his influence on SF), but it's gotten massively out of hand.

Alternately, the other reason is furries. And there's the fact that a lot of SF writers are just lazy and it's easy to just take an animal, but inexplicably apelike, give it human level sapience, and base their entire culture on things you think that animal would do or think or feel.

One of my favorite human-like aliens is the Atevi from C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner novels. They look enough like us into fooling us that we can just assume they think and feel like we do... but that's the trap. They don't. They don't have words like "friend" or "love" in their language because they have an evolved biological imperative that keeps the fabric of their society and social networks together called man'chi.

And man'chi, though it closely resembles (and translates to) duty and obligation to equals and superiors, is not exact. Atevi don't "choose" their man'chi. They feel it. And they can become conflicted about it (and their literature and dramas are usually about conflicting or secret man'chi that are revealed at the climax of the story, which causes reversals, betrayals, and bad fortune for those involved).

If you haven't checked Cherryh, you really should.

>Love
Space travel being incredibly arduous (IE you just don't hop in your personal spaceship and fly from earth to Mars, it's a large undertaking and logistical challenge to move objects between celestial bodies or past planetary orbit)
Low tech scifi settings with hard science
Space setting still having some attachment to real life (Such as human thought not being so divorced from our own).

>Hate
Aliens are pretty reskinned humans.
Aliens being simplistic representation of complex species (IE Space Chinese, Space Jews, etc, instead of independent societies and casts within their species.)
Homogenous societies with only species dividing them (Seriously, I don't think nation states and small enclaves are going to go away in favor of United Earth once we reach that point, we're going to be killing ourselves far beyond our homeworld until the end of time)

>Indifferent
Fantasy settings IN SPACE

You know, that's a good way to put it. I can buy that if we get to space, it won't be every culture all at once and probably a singular culture will either be at the forefront of space travel and discovery or an entirely new one will develop based on the people who choose that sort of life.

In one of the Apocalypse Troll by David Weber, the aliens humanity is at war with believe that they were made in the image of their god and that other sapient beings are the creations of their devil figure. This is partly because two sapient species arose on their planet, and they won by exterminating their "devil-made" cousins.

Fast forward to them finding other species, and they basically just genocided anyone they came across. They miscalculated with humans because they'd never encountered a species with as advanced technology as us, and when they were able to return for the extermination, we had atomic powered rockets and weren't going to be the pushover they assumed.

Their religion makes it impossible to negotiate. You aren't even a real person to them. You're a creature the devil made to kill or trick them, and you deserve to die in the most expedient way possible.

>I genuinely can't think of any other Space Nazis though
see

To be fair (even though I shouldn't, George), Lucas didn't make the EU non-canon. He sold Star Wars to Disney, and they declared the EU non-canon so they could make their own.

I've never been fond of "aliens hold muh honor above reason" as the defining trait of a species, it usually comes across as kinda forced in a way that's hard to describe.

What do you guys mean by WW2 is space?

Man'chi in this instance isn't honor. An Atevi feels man'chi toward their parents, their lover, their direct social superiors, and their children. An Atevi can act against man'chi, but it causes them emotional distress, just like it would be for a human to betray their loved ones or their principles.

Furthermore, the Atevi are obsessed with numbers and math, and are better at it than humans. However, they also have superstitions about felicitous numbers and can get hung up one whether or not a given design or computer is "good" or not. Humans, in contrast, just figure if it works 9/10 it's a good design. More so if time has proven it to work for the job it was built for.

Humans encounter the Atevi while the Atevi are just building steam engines and have had gunpowder for a few hundred years. I do recommend giving the first book a try, at the very least.

I think people expect too much from fanatics. Nazis were perfectly fine to let Asians, Arabs, Africans, etc. live in their corners of the world, they just wanted their own dominion to be free of sub-humans. Crusades were often to claim land from the wrong people, not to go and eliminate them all from the face of the Earth. Even such beliefs have an understanding what's feasible and where to extend their resources. Excluding, of course, the totally nutty, but they're often mere tools for the powerful.

>Apocalypse Troll by David Weber

That story sounds like the people of Krikkit, who, upon realizing there's a whole universe out there and their little world is not the only one, proceeded to wipe the universe clean of all other life, so that their world view would not falter. It's a fun thought experiment, but I find it a bit simplistic view on things.

I guess that's my >hate for this thread: Groups who are evil because.

Star Wars, basically. But more to the point, anything that involves space carriers with space fighters, and has space battleships that broadside things (see also 40k).

Space fighters, for a number of real life reasons are pointless and wouldn't help much. I can't speak for all of us who dislike the trope, but for me, I prefer my SF to be harder and to take into account that space combat would take place at light minute to light hour ranges, rather than less than a light minute. Because at less than a light minute, you could literally have the reflexes of a Jedi and you'd still die from a proper laser because it's faster than you in all ways.

There's also power to mass ratio issues where space fighters are concerned.

Speaking of homogeneous alien cultures, there's a scene in the first season of Babylon 5 where aliens with a single religion are introduced to dozens of Human religions to showcase our race's diversity. I know it was intended to be an emotional scene but it always felt super cringey to me because it's clearly a result of not developing the Minbari culture beyond "a warrior-monk race that unanimously worships Valen the Space Jesus" who's in fact Commander Sinclair who travelled back in time and saved the entire Minbari race from the evil alien space bugs, because HUMANS ARE SPECIAL.

youtube.com/watch?v=uvmtHGwRSuQ

>simplistic

That's pretty much Weber's stories in a nutshell.

Note that I didn't say it was a good book. I picked it up some years ago at a used book store, read it once, and gave it to a friend. Recently found another copy for a $1 at another used book store, figured I'd read it again.

40k is really age of sails broadsides. I'd say WW2 in space has the fighters as the main focus. Star Wars, wing commander, etc. Where carriers and fighters duke it out with some large battleships with big guns in the midst. Fighters preferably at pew-pew-pew dogfighting range from one another. Missiles for destroying big things, not chasing down fighters.

>fighters

>stealth

>short-range engagments

>ships that are like ships and not rockets

>2D (mostly)

>friction

Yeah. I don't mind humans having something for them, but being teh bestest is jarring. I liked something like Valerian, where humans had time travel, but were still quite shit in the galactic arena and in some cases trying way too hard to party with the big boys. I don't even remember what happened to the human empire. I seem to remember that at some point they had all manner of shit but I guess some time travel freak accident erased that future or something. It's the problem with time travel settings, where shit comes and goes.

>>Hate
>Lost super-cultures that spawned all life in the galaxy but turn out to be super evil

Samaar Federation from Xenoblade Chronicles X?

>this is the exact sort of thing I like

>cutting the corners off paper, dumb shit like that.
It's like you want the toasters to genocide is all, user

And there's nothing wrong with that user.

I can see your point, though 40k does have fighter craft. I don't know how effective/important they are in Battlefleet Gothic though.

A proper example would be Battletech's aerospace fighters, I suppose. Though the Aerotech jump ships are slightly harder SF rockets with gravity being provided by the ship's acceleration.

But the warships are battleships, carriers, and submarines essentially.

>though 40k does have fighter craft

Sure, but in terms of space battles they're nothing. Like fighters are massive. The Imperial fury interceptor is over twice the size of a thunderhawk (70m vs. 30m) and has a crew of several people. They're not really little dogfighters, rather than gun boats. And they do shit against large ships, mostly just chase bombers and torpedoes. Bombers can launch salvos of torpedoes at ships, but are easy pickings for anything with a gun. Boarding craft are just to transport dudes and can't really fight. Thunderhawks act as fighters and boarding craft, so they're a bit more useful, but can't hurt capital ships by shooting.

To me a WW2 setting would call for the fighters to be the focus. Like Star Wars or Wing Commander. Fighters are what gets shit done. Big ships do their part, but it's the fighters dogfighting that does the key parts of a battle, be it a bombing run on a space station or kamikaze into the bridge of a dreadnought. Likewise carriers are important for the fighters to launch off of. Battleships got big guns, but aren't like star trek ships that do fancy maneuvers, nor like 40k cruisers that fire broadsides.

Often the events of the Pacific War, but transported to space. Usually involves a strategic shift from lumbering old-fashioned gun-armed battleships to carrier based combat. Common events include treacherous (or brilliant) surprise attacks on naval installations, dogfighting between nimble single pilot craft, desperate bombing runs towards tiny exhaust ports protected by flak guns, and, after a fighter has been crippled, heroic (or cowardly) kamikaze attacks that somehow manage to blow up the enemy's capital ships. Capitals ships without escorts rarely stand a chance against fighters in such a setting.

Also possible are stealthy submarine analogues that prey on civilian shipping, and armed Q-ships disguised as merchant vessels.

Along with Star Wars, Mass Effect's a good example of Space WW2. After the Treaty of Farixen, the construction of dreadnoughts was limited to a ratio of 5:3:1 (Turians : other council races : minor races). But humans are ingenious and start building dreadnaught-sized carriers to circumvent the treaty, which makes the fleets of the Earth Alliance quite formidable. Basically the Washington Naval Treaty (IN SPAAACE!).

>love
Stupid/Evil loses because it's stupid/evil not because it wears certain "gang colors" - Difficult to pull off as the author has to have a point without making it an Aesop. (Asimov and Heinlein usually do it well though.)

>hate
"humanity" wins because,
1. I'm a shitty author
2. I had to pander to my audience
Pluck or party without purpose does not produce plausible prose.

"Hive minds" - they inevitably end up being written as tyrannies/queens etc... (The Borg became this without any explanation except the audience is dumb. That's the line between speculative fiction and outright fantasy.)

>indifferent
Telepathy - can be good if integrated with the setting, usually bad because the opposite. (Done well, 40k, Babylon 5. Done poorly, TNG [which I otherwise enjoy but for this wasted trope])

Consider me informed. Thanks. And yes, Wing Commander is definitely WW2 in space.

I can't believe I missed the bit about the dreadnought ratio in ME.

>Ludicrously designed non-ergonomic guns and tools.
This, poorly designed guns triggers my /k/ 'tisms

>Love
Space Westerns
The waifu mechanic
stories that take place on a single ship
that sweet sweet tech porn (vehicles and cybernetics especially)
When HFY is done well/subtle
unusual aliens (especially super big or super small)

>Hate
magic tech
getting real tired of Progenitors and Forerunners
sterile future
big brother/AI dystopia

>Indifferent
single biome planets