Trope-a-Day: Ominous Floating Spaceship

Ominous Floating Spaceship: It’s certainly possible (see, for example, all the examples of how it’s done under Floating Continent).  It’s almost never done, however, because (a) putting all the equipment to make it hover, and the power budget to power said equipment into a combat spacecraft makes it a pretty crappy combat spacecraft for its class; because (b) making your expensive combat spacecraft hang in the air at point-blank range for the ground defenses and the orbital defense grid both, with limited ability to maneuver, is not generally considered a career-enhancing tactical move; and because (c), putting your expensive spacecraft anywhere where a power failure (probably the one that’s about to result from (b), actually) will cause it to fall out of the sky, destroying both itself and the also expensive real estate you were trying to acquire, is even less so.  Although at least you probably wouldn’t survive (c) to be court-martialed.

One thought on “Trope-a-Day: Ominous Floating Spaceship

  1. They use this trope in the video game Killzone 2 for PS3. The ISA cruisers and Helghast cruisers hover in the sky to provide close fire support. Later in the game the Helghast board the lead ISA ship to steal nuclear launch codes. The Commander of the ship makes a Heroic Sacrifice by crashing the ship into the main power grid supplying energy to the Helghast’s network of Arc Towers (lightning guns) clearing the way for the assault on Scolar Visari’s Palace.

    This trope really bites them in the butt in Killzone 3 when the Helghast reveal massive walking artillery platforms called MAWLRs armed with enormous Arc Cannons that start shooting the ISA Cruisers out of the sky.

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