Of course, in Banks’ Culture novels, space battles take place at such long distances and high speeds that nothing but an AI can manage it. There’s a narrative of a gunboat making a hit and run attack on a fleet where Banks lists out the calculations and actions of the attack as the ship fires and drops weaponry on its pass, then notes that everything occurred in less than a second.
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Best 2D spaceship combat EVER! The paper-scissors-rock “every ship is good against another and weak against a third” game balance is unparalleled… I actually prefer SC1 to the much-loved sequel (wonderful and seminal though that game absolutely is). Always loved the design and feel of this ship schematic screens too. Great point in a great post sir 
I can still roast’n’toast the Hierarcy/Alliance most times I fire it up. And I can still hear the thwump-thwump-thwump of an Umgah reversing…
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Same in one of the Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga books, where once the large, multi-ship battle starts it’s a contest of who’s ships have the better AI because the reaction speeds and precision required are all too high for humans to be useful.
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The very first shot in Star Wars shows us a pursued craft firing aft at its pursuer.
The rule in Star Wars, more or less, is you can fire backwards but you need a gunner. There’s no automated firing, so if your ship’s too small for two people (X-wings, A-wings, B-wings, TIEs) you can only shoot at what you’re looking at. Snowspeeders, the Falcon, the blockade runner, and Y-wings have a gunner position(s), so you can have turrets. (Y-wings are single-seaters in the movie, but the original design had a gunner, and the turret on the cockpit survived to the final model.)
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My favourite author. Came later to his sci-fi than his “more conventional” works, but still. Nobody, in my opinion, better. (and have now of course blown my cover)
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The Angel’s pencil, if my research is correct, was a ramscoop ship using a reaction drive.
The other thing the Kzin didn’t count on was that humans used orbital lasers in the mult-megawatt range to boost lightsail ships as well…
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Starfury fighters with 360 degree thrusters…
(SpaceDock also nerds out on them in multiple review vids)
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Large ships = naval analog
Small ships = air force analog
Most of the space battle action involves X-wings and TIE fighters (and the Falcon with turret gunners, as you’d have in a WWII bomber).
And I still adore those movies, I’m totally there for those sequences. 
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If you’re jonesing for Banksian-grade good, I’m almost through Paul McAuley’s 'Quiet War series, which starts out Sol-Orbit hard SF, then ascends into the Right Kind of high weird in book 3.
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Also a Niven idea with the Puppeteers hiring humans because they are so fearful of doing anything themselves (or something like fearful that is actually incommensurable with our experience).
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Thanks for that. I have made a note of the name. I have struggled to find anyone as good as Banks. I used to read a ton of sci-fi but left off it for years until Banks relit my interest. The closest I came to any good stuff was with Alastair Reynolds - not read all of his, mind.
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Try Walter Blaire too (free on Kindle Unlimited). Different setting, but similar vibe (and there’s a sneaky super-intelligent Ship lurking that still hasn’t hit the apex of it’s story arc).
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Cool. I did love the intelligent ships with the insane names in The Culture.
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“Excession”
That’s an awesome scene, too.
There’s an even wackier battle in his “Surface Detail” book.
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I liked the space warfare stuff at the end of Season 2 of Discovery. I don’t think it was in any way realistic but it was a much better view on a battle than was presented by Season 8 Episode 3 of GoT which came out at about the same time.
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Except of course for the Chmmr, Ur-quan, and Kor-ah ships that were way OP, esp. the Kor-ah. It took a lot of practice to be able to take out a Kor-ah ship, and usually took 2-3 to whittle it down. Of course the point-buy system of ship ranking helped ameliorate this to some extent.
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Is that the one with theone-person sized battleships in the pond?That’s pretty wacky.
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Yeah, it’s true that in, for instance, Star Wars, many of the fighters bank against vacuum just like jet fighters bank against air…
One show that did this right is Babylon 5. The Starfury design was a neat fighter design. Yeah, weapons only pointed one way – the way the pilot was looking – but the engines were on lever arms that allowed for efficient rotation, and they could fire both forward or backwards. But, more importantly, Newton’s Laws actually applied… meaning that the ships didn’t have to fly in the direction they were pointing. (And, of course, the principle of relativity means that the direction they were flying was a matter of what you choose to measure it relative to!)
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The Kzin used a reaction less drive, IIRC, and were using a magnetic induction system to basically microwave the humans, not understanding until it was too late that the humans ‘primitive’ drive made a very effective weapon.
I’ve read pretty much every Niven book, as well as the shared-universe Man-Kzin Wars books. Many times.
Also Banks’ Culture books, quite a few times as well. I just love the snarky attitude of the Minds, and their ship names as well.
I always read his books with real sadness, that we’re never going to get any more books from him. 
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