Tell me of the great space wars of your setting

In the Energeos setting the greatest war so far was probably The Antimatter War, a full scale interstellar conflict between anti-matter driven ships fielding anti-matter based weapons. Member States of the Incorporated States and the Ryujin Empire came to blows without direct approval of their central authorities. Entire star systems burned, glassed, planetoids shattered, solar storms ignited on purpose and leaving solar systems uninhabitable for years to decades... but it's a setting without profitable anti-matter production. As in, as much power as it takes to produce anti-matter, it only ever returns 75% of that power back at best. So eventually anti-matter stockpiles began running out and they were about to make it simply fusion powered conventional conflict. Around then is when the central authorities of both governments finally stepped in to talk peace, telling both of their member states to knock it the hell off before they drag the entire galaxy into it.

Both sides still field "Survey Cruisers', basically anti-matter powered warships on long patrol. But anything like having huge stockpiles of anti-matter available for throwing at people is not something that occurs anywhere under the authority of either of the two super powers, with a squinty eye at anyone that does build up or hold anti-matter in case they use it for anything other than major space construction.

Might write an "Anti-Matter War" supplement for people to play in that region and time period.

You can have RKKV with only solar sail, so we already can make them.
What make them useless is habitable space stations. You can send RKKV to every planet in galaxy, but spacefaring civilization don't need planets, and you can't sterilize every corner of space with RKKV.

not totally effective != useless

They're still the bad guys.

That sounds a little insane.

How original

How about you share a few of yours?

Million-strong ships are common because everybody uses Dyson Swarms and large scale nanotech and automation.

I have to ask, at that point, why would you bother? Sounds like they won science so hard they might as well try and ascend, even if for the lelz.

After the self-destruction of the earth, the brave colonists of space slowly rebuild and repaired. The Lunar-and-Earth-Orbit-Alliance has gained control of the areas its name implies and established a presence around Venus and Mercury. Formed heavily of peoples from Eastern Europe, the Near East (Greece, Turkey, Levant, Armenia) the Chinese Republics, and Japan, it slowly fell under a primarily Japanese and Greek hegemony and operates as a fairly loose but often authoritarian collection of orbital habitats and the mighty city-states of Luna. They've built the Apollo program in reverse to re-establish mining and resource gathering on the ruined Earth to establish a near monopoly on certain materials vital for space trade and travel.

Against them, building from the Post-Collapse ashes of Mars, is the Kian Union. Formed of mostly Indian, South and North American, and Northern European peoples, the endless fighting of the Martian Dome-Cities over scare resources was finally ended by the might and wisdom of Carlos Barrum, who formed a socialist revolution around him that soon overtook all of Mars. He took his workers back to the stars and never stopped pushing them forward until his death at nearly 90 years old. The party council that has taken over since has done its best to continue his endless drive, but the Lunars pose a massive threat with their larger population, access to Earth, and more importantly, contagious and dangerous economic views.

When the Jupiter Tritium conglomerates starting moving on on Saturnian habitats, the Cold War goes HOT, and all the system shall burn for it.

Space Nippo-Makedonian Empire vs filthy Martian Pinkos. You know you want it.

You always need more resources. Also, your freedom ends where ours begin.

The largest and most important recorded space battle to ever occur within the Sanctum was sparked by a rag time group of individuals aboard a single cargo ship retrofitted with a hacked droid signal. Using the signal they managed to gain the attention of the Droid Supercarrier "All Father" and divert it from its original route and down the Big Dipper Central Lane. After a week of cat and mouse with All Father the group finally led the Droid Supercarrier to their intended target: A gathering fleet of mercenaries organized by the United Trade League that was getting ready for a surprise attack. Numbering nearly 8000 strong, All Father's threat recognition deemed the fleet to be of critical levels and issued an automatic warning. Unfortunately for the mercenaries they were unready for the appearance of the supercarrier and were unable to respond quick enough to the droid's strict warning.

The ensuing battle resulted in a 80% causality rate among the United Trade League's mercenaries. There was the total destruction of nearly 6900 ships and 4 stations. Of the ships 11 of them were super dreadnaughts. All Father survived the encounter with severe damage and later docked at the nearest droid depot for repairs and restock of drones.

The sheer loss of manpower and investment made by the United Trade League left them crippled, presenting a massive opportunity to its enemies who quickly seized the moment. In just a year the UTL went from a Sanctum super power to a puppet integrated within the Empire's borders. However because of All Father's damage sustained by the fight it was unable to quickly return to its original mission of combating the Star Child's infestation of Sanctum. This delay resulted in the complete loss of the Droid Command Ship "Proclamation" and several sectors.

(Pic related as the setting takes place in a Blame inspired super station that encompasses several galaxies in size)

My freedom is a box containing myself and the personal universe I'm creating and observing/living in/godding over. If I give you some CPU power will you fuck off?

The setting is as close to hard sci as i can get with the McGuffin power added. At this point in history, humanity has created their first (Known) child as a species and have only just started setting up regular manned trips to mars.

The first space battle was between the ATIMA (The name given to united earth government that got set up after WW3 and 4. It's a benevolent 'dont be a dick and we will leave you be' sorta deal) and the Aspect of humanity (Ai) 'Divergent'.

Divergent was the first aspect to gain proper sapience as well as the settings Mcguffin Power (effectively taping into a 4rth dimensional thingamabob and able to use 'magic' which is just 4d energy fucking with physics and whatnot) becoming able to turn it's programming into a sort of spirit that could posses and reproduce. It hung outside our scanners in the asteroid belt and was the result (as are all other 4d attuned sapience's in existence actually) of a failed/extremely successful experiment fucking with a quantum singularity.

Humans had like 25 ships to their name, mostly large mining vessels and a couple cruiser classes. The Ai had tiny needle like ships that were not very effective.

It'ss mostly the humans shooting at long range and outruning the needle ships. After that is a sort of tech race until the AI shatter mars.

The Second AI war pits humans, AI's and cyborgs against a violent child of divergent known as the "Embodiment of War'. He learned how to program reality, and embedded his 'code' into a humans DNA. The results are terrifying.

This is all like a couple millennia past tho, humans are the precursors who decided to spread thier seed into the galaxy in the most delayed of ways (and extremely rare, most likely never meeting another pure blood from outside their colony in their lifetime).

Space battles are rare too, as they amount to 'ships firing hyper long range missiles at ships firing hyper long range missiles until one fucks up

Travel is slow, though due to the MvGuffin powers a techniology comes about that's basically humans saying 'fuck you' to relativity and spacial mechanics, it just requires them to get there the first time by the slow way.

as a result Humanity sort of spread out after the AI wars, devising a stupid awesome human way of dealing with teraforming and population. The shattered bits of mars (and later the other rockey planets) were turned into a generational space ships, with enough space to house a minimal but viable population (genetically diverse wise) and a completely abundant ecosystem. They are not small ships is what i'm saying.

They kept making then, out of every bit of solid matter in our solar system (over the course of millennia) eventually using up earth, building the main anchor for the Webway System out of earths core, and basically going to sleep until someone got tho where they were going.

The human empires soon started cropping up in various sections of the galaxy, wherever life could thrive. Few other sapient races were found, and only one was at something similar to humanities level, but lack the 4d thingamabob.

Basically, we were first, and we made a long lasting emprie out of it, spreading our AI laced tech all over the universe, making new discoveries and then accidentally the whole thing.

We created the Beast. No one sure what it actually is, but it's humanities greatest threat and pretty much wipes them out before the setting takes place.

The battles between them are kinda like Nid's tear through slightly better armed and armored guard. Except humans never win. ever. they are pretty much wiped out by the end of it, living on traveling world ships being dicks.

The biggest battle humanity won against the Beast resulted in three stars being obliterated, had lasted about 3 generations of humans growing up fightan (space is big yo) and there was over 30 years of fightans on the human ship itself.

My fluff is strange...

First battle of Nova Terra: During the colonial war of independence, Earth launched an all-out attack against the colony of Nova Terra, where the headquarters of the rebel forces were located. However, the rebel forces had been forwarned and gathered every ship they could to meet the invading fleet. The Earth fleet won the battle, but with far higher casualities than expected, and rather than demoralise the rebels the attack only incited more colonies to join the rebellion. This led to the board of directors of the United Corporations of Earth agreeing to grant colonies their independence as dragging the war on would be a massive waste of resources.

Battle of Novaya Zemlya: After a hostile interstellar empire known as the Demosian Hierarchy declared war on humanity, they invaded the colony of Novay Zemlya close to their border. The first major battle of the Demosian war involved humanity and their allies launching a counteroffensive to reclaim the planet. A large fleet was assembled to engage the Demosian fleet orbiting the planet and drawing them away in order to allow transport ships carrying ground troops to land.

Second battle of Nova Terra: After the battle of Novaya Zemlya and several smaller skirmishes, the Demosian advance was stalling. In order to end the war quickly, the Demosian armade launched a direct attack on Nova Terra, the capital of the Terran Colonial Federation. The fleets stationed in the system, despite being outnumbered, managed to slow down the Demosian invasion by preventing their ships from starting orbital bombardment long enough for reinforcements to arrive. The largest space battle in recorded history, lasting several weeks as the opposing sides clashed around the system. Eventually the Demosian armada was destroyed and an armstice was declared between the two powers. Since then the Federation and the Hierarchy have been locked in a cold war, but neighter side has yet launched another attack on the other.

There are several wars going. The massive difference in technological development between some of the powers means that the more powerful factions are fighting it out with smaller powers scurrying around them fighting their own wars while trying not to be crushed underfoot.

Settled space where most of the setting takes place is known as the salient. The berserkers, self-replicating drone weapons dedicated to exterminating all life and destroying all potential sources of life, have been steadily expanding through the galaxy. The salient is a pocket of space that has managed to hold out against them, thanks to the efforts of an extremely advanced alien empire.

In the protected shadow cast by the empire, other, less advanced species and nations have cropped up. These people refer to the conflict between the empire and the berserkers as "the war in heaven," because it essentially goes on far above their heads. It's a conflict between powers that could easily crush them, and if the empire ever loses they all die so they try not to think about it too much in order to avoid crippling existential dread. In the mean time, they're constantly fighting among themselves over territory, resources. The empire is usually too busy with its life or death struggle with the berserkers to even notice the lesser powers, let alone think about them.

However, occasionally fragments of the empire have broken away and turned their attention inward on the lesser powers of the salient. These breakaways, little more than bits of shed skin from the empire's perspective, are monstrously powerful by the standards of the lesser powers, and require massive coalitions to fend them off.

Occasionally, the empire does turn its attention inward. The only thing that allows it to stand against the berserkers is its technological advantage, and in order to preserve that it needs regular "injections" of "new blood." The empire picks out less advanced species from the salient and forcibly absorbs them into the empire. They bring with them new perspectives which help keep the empire advancing at a breakneck pace.

However, the uplift process also slowly assimilates that species into the main body of the empire, meaning that any benefit is only temporary. To keep going, the empire must constantly consume species as their previous "recruits" become less and less different from the rest of the empire. After many rounds of uplift, the original two species that founded the empire have had their cultures almost totally subsumed into the body of the empire, and with only a few exceptions basically no longer exist as distinct entities.

This is the reason why the empire seeks to preserve the species of the salient and it refers to other intelligent species as its "strategic reserve." Pre-spaceflight species like humanity are seen as part of a stockpile of new blood that they can consume for a temporary boost in technological development.

While uplift by the empire brings with it a whole host of new technology, it also involves being conscripted into the war in heaven and the destruction of a species' cultural distinctiveness for a temporary advantage in a grinding war with no end in sight. The lesser powers generally despise the thought of being uplifted by the empire because it means the end of their own story. They'd be nothing more than a scrap of food consumed by a titan in order to keep it going in its eternal brawl against another titan.

Humanity's first contact with alien life consists of the empire deciding that they will be the next batch of conscripts for the war in heaven and conquering Earth.

Under the empire, humanity spreads out across many systems. Some of those systems desire independence, while others a more onboard with being a part of the empire. Eventually a sudden surge in berserker activity forces the imperial military to send up everything it has to the front, giving the human worlds an opening that many of them exploit.

Like other imperial breakaways, the independent human systems turn their attention toward the lesser powers of the salient. With imperial technology, they have a massive military advantage and begin a campaign of conquest. Alien resistance is stiffening, however, as they band together as they have against past imperial breakaways. On top of that, the independent humans have been waging a war against the imperial-aligned human to unify humanity under their rule.

At the same time, the empire has tasked the human worlds that remained loyal with bringing their wayward kin back into the fold. Since the uplift processes wasn’t entirely complete when the breakaway occurred, the empire has been able to provide the imperial humans with technology surpassing their independent counterparts in order to counteract the independent humans’ numerical advantage.

So the empire is fighting the berserkers, as they always have. At the same time the independent humans are fighting to conquer the lesser powers of the salient. And then the imperial humans are fighting the independent humans to force them back into the empire.

They are useless as a weapon of war. They work fine as a weapon of terror, as user made comparison to 9/11 up thread, but they would never be able to do significant damage to even a stellar civilization.

If he's being realistic, they probably are uploads, doesn't mean they shouldn't still be stockpiling matter into black holes for when the universe runs out to prolong their own existence.