Carriers in space
can make sense, it's just that realistic 'space fighters' would be much better analogues to Age of Sail gunboats or modern missile boats than actual aircraft. While they wouldn't have significantly better maneuverability because they operate in the same medium, a space fighter/gunboat could dispense with things like extended life support, heavy protection or high delta-V in favour of better acceleration and more firepower compared to ships which have to have more endurance. There's a few hard (or relatively hard) science fiction universes that make use of ships like that, such as C. J. Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe and David Weber's Honorverse.
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Originally Posted by the_tyrant
You know, this does raise a really good question. Usually when we think of assaulting planets, we think of either sending down the troops (Star wars attack of the clones, Avatar, Halo, etc). I mean, it is simply more dramatic to see massed infantry marching in a 19th century style.
It is also much more dramatic to see the use of a death star like superweapons. you get lasers shot from space, nuclear weapons from space, etc.
However, wouldn't the most efficient method for bombarding a planet be simply dragging an asteroid over, and "throw rocks down"?
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The problem with threatening a planet with orbital bombardment or asteroid strikes is that if you're actually forced to follow up on those threats in the end you will do some very serious damage to the planet that you are (presumably) trying to take. If the planet refuses to surrender when you control the orbitals and you want both it and its infrastructure intact, you'll have to land troops in order to take control of it.