Are space games analogous to sea games?

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It may not quite be a one-to-one ratio, but I think that the appeal that many space games, and science fiction stories with the setting in space in general, have upon people is due to the same cause as the affinity for stories of sea travel and adventures and warfare. During the era of starting with discovery of the "West Indies" by Columbus, the Age of Exploration and the Age of Conquest began. The voyages and adventures on the seas, fighting with pirates, exploring, conquering, and colonizing previously unknown lands, all of these aspects of the history from the 1400's up to WWII have been rehashed in various forms in science fiction works. Even monsters have often shown up in Sci-fi (as a preferred thing to kill, or be killed by if not fast enough). In one commentary upon the second season of Star Trek the Next Generation, when Jonathan Frakes showed up unshaven, Roddenberry said he should keep the beard because it "had a nautical appearance". So, at least for some amount, I think that much of the appeal of space-based science fiction is actually due to an affinity for the sea.

I'd certainly say that there's some crossover appeal. However, in my opinion Sci-fi is superior. There are more possibilities, and the genre has the added bonus of the technology aspect, which I find fascinating.

The similarity is more the institutions attendant on slow travel and communication which are mostly missing from the modern world. Postulating slow (but usually not realistically slow) space travel and alien worlds which can be colonised allows that frontier setting to be used.

A literal "space is like the sea" approach is the domain of those with no sense of scale.

We have made a natural transition of naval terminology into space settings. It makes sense that such fleets of space "Ships" would be organised in such a way.

I think actually the key differance between a sci fi setting and an age of exploration/sail setting is one mainly of romance. Although you do get romance in science fiction it tends to be the interaction of alien and human interaction or the characters involved in the story. In an age of sail setting there is a kind strange romance and appeal in the era. I imagine you would find more woman interested in that kind of fiction then in science ficiton precisely because of the social myths and romanticism we have created around pirates and dangerous sea voyages and exotic island locations. The protagonists of such stories tend to be charasmatic free born individuals who have broken free of their oppressive european old world socities. The theme of freedom, adventure, exotic locations and of challenging the established status quo of the politics of the time. Also such history and locations and characters are present in our world to see today in terms of the relics they have left us and the myths surrounding historical characters who are portrayed as robin hoods of the sea so to speak.

In sci fi its quite difficult to create a world that people can relate too. So what most sci fi does is use a template and translate it into a science fiction setting. So for example you have biblical themes in saga's such as star wars and deep space 9. Greek tales re-interpreted. I think when you have a genuine attempt to create an alien future it actually is quite difficult for people to relate too. And even then there are referances to concepts from our own human history.

Fantasy author - "I'm going to write about ships IN SPACE!" - sci fi.

Science fiction author - "I'm going to write about space ships" - science fiction.

Space is fundamentally unlike the sea, and it takes considerable buggering around on the part of a writer to make it so; David Weber has a good try with the Honor Harrington books. Generally speaking the more ignorant of science the writer is, the more their "space" will resemble an Ocean. As most screen skiffy is written by people who are staggeringly ignorant of science, most screen skiffy space ships resemble sea ships closely...

Blimey the naval forces of the various factions in that universe are all based off real world naval doctrines in that one. I play a game that takes a lot of inspiration from that universe and it details space combat in huge distances over star systems. In my current game I have a small exploration ship on the far side of a binary star system which is observing a vast space battle between two alien races I have yet to identify. At the moment my ships sensors can only detect the pulses of nuclear exploisons or the detonation of a ships engines or reactor's because i am so far from the battle if i load up the game quickly....I am currently near a jump point on the edge of the system observing from a distance of 27,547,000,000 kilometers which appears to be a minor skirmish taking place on the edge of the main battle which is centered around two inner planets of the primary star which are even further from my location.

Were it not for the combatants using fusion based weapons that are creating EMP and thermal blasts of great magnitutde that my explorer ships basic sensors could detect I could have travelled through this star system completly oblivious to this conflict taking place. The scale of star systems, particular when you get into binary, trinary and quad systems are to scale of real life star systems. The bottleneck

Its surely a matter of scale and military technique/tradition. The Space shuttle operates in a similar manner to a large plane (albeit one as aerodynamic as a wet brick.) It has a form of cockpit, and most of the crew seem to stay in there and operate systems remotely, or at least from close stations. It makes sense that it would be run in an "Air Force" type manner, with a Pilot/Captain, especially as at least some of its journey is in "The Air." Assuming a military usage for such a machine, or several of them, an "Air Force" system would probably be adequate. Something smaller (a single man fighter say) would likewise be analogous to the sky-bound variety.

When you start to introduce BIG ships, the closest military analogy is Naval. A large vessel controlled from a central bridge, which may have a great distance between various vital areas such as weapons, or engine rooms. The fact that space itself is BIG lends itself to a "Naval" combat style of sitting a long way away lobbing munitions and smaller craft at each other.

Space shares more sea-like qualities than it does anything else. A large mostly empty area punctuated with small areas of solid ground = Islands/Planets. It just exists in a few more directions than the sea, is all.

Space may be fundamentally unlike the sea, but it is more like the sea than it is the sky or the land.

I guess since the invention of missiles and the introduction of aircraft and ever increasing advances in electronics and guidance systems the modern navy is more similair to a space navy in terms of the distances. You may never even physically see the opposing fleet let alone get up close and personal like the various naval engagements of 18th to early 20th century naval battles were fought. Although instead of miles in scale your talking in terms of millions of kiometers or Astronomical units for inner system transit. Depending on the nature of the FTL travel used in the setting it determines the way the ships evolve in function.

I find with science fiction they tend to create artificial aerodynamics in the way spacecraft are designed and propelled through space. In a zero g environment ships don't have to resemble that kind of shape at all unless you are wishing to design one capable of landing on a planets with gravity and atmosphere. For some reason we find the shapes of old battleship designs more asthetically pleasing. When actually the more logical ship design would probably resemble a borg cube IRL.

I like how in the Battletech universe for example the warships are built with the decks in a vertical direction. So looking "up" is the front facing of the vessel. And that unless the vessel is in long distance transit between jump points and the inner star system they dont expend fuel to generate artificial gravity. Due to the nature of FTL in that universe the jump points at the Nadir and Zenith of a star system are the bottlenecks for any defense of a star system, but la grange points can be a means of by-passing this bottleneck though it holds considerable risk for the jumpship which attemps it as potentially the point can disappear due to the movement of the planetary bodies or be miscalculated and end up with the ship jumping into soid matter etc

I actually came across a TV Tropes page while back on this subject. (I take no responsibility of any addiction to this site)
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceIsAnOcean
The terminology in a lot of space fiction has come from that of the sea, such as ships, captain, marines and I have even heard ships position being described by things like starboared.

That's don't mean the ships are not cool.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRwwiDEWzAo&feature=related[/youtube]


For more realistic designs; http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3ap.html

Yeah. I was treating the question too personally. Though the link between space itself and the sea itself shouldn't be made, it is anyway, and the link between spacefarers and seafarers can be made and is. And giant shiny space dreadnoughts firing broadsides above Coruscant or whatever are undeniably cool.

Well, if you read C. S. Forester, you may notice that scientific concepts happen to be more relevant to the setting of the Napoleonic war ships, than in most of science fiction. Also, the protagonist is probably an aspie (just a note).

I liked David Weber's take, and I find it to be one of the better representation of space warfare as space warfare, even with the recycling of Forester's themes in space.

The two kinds of games are similar because both involve exploration of unknown "lands" in a sense. Also, the social structure on board a large space ship would have to be similar to one on an old ship at sea because they both involve long journeys.

Long journeys in hostile environments at that. For trade with India and the rest of the Orient, it took months. With current technology, it also takes months to merely travel between Earth and Mars. If we were to use nuclear propulsion on a star-ship to travel to one of the closest star systems, it would take decades still. Short enough to possibly live to see the destination, but long enough to go stir crazy times infinity divided by approximately zero.

Sure, and the parallels can be made between the two scenarios, i.e. long journeys at sea and long journeys in space, allowing us to imagine such a story with a similar atmosphere.

I would say that submarines are similar it space craft in that the allow travel though a hostile environment, its funny you mentioned this as I had noticed a similarity between Das Boot and the Star trek episode Balance of Terror