One additional thing that might be worth clearing up in this trope's description, since it seems implied but isn't explicitly stated:
This is mostly about space combat drawing on WWI / WWII-era dogfighting tactics, right? I'm hardly an aviator, but I don't think that even modern aircraft generally use tactics like the ones we see in most space shooters.
The trope is, basically, about how Small Reference Pools
mean that everyone uses World War-era movies and media about aerial combat as the reference for what all types of flying-vehicle-combat are like.
When they're not using WWII naval combat
instead. Actually, that's a huge part of this trope, since part of the reason Old-School Dogfighting
shows up in Space Opera is because the association of capital ship = aircraft carrier and fighter = well, fighter! I think it's important to reference Space Is an Ocean
in the description, since the two tropes frequently go together.
(Also, it might need a rename — is it being misused as a general-purpose dogfighting trope outside of its own page?)
I don't think "dogfighting" and "dogfighting IN SPACE" are really distinct tropes — they're played exactly the same.
They're distinct tropes in the way that Space Is an Ocean
compares to naval combat tropes — that is, the mass appropriation of aerial dogfighting tropes for space combat is, itself, a trope. Treating smaller ships as fighter jets or bombers is one of the cultural shorthand ways people use to describe space combat right along side turning larger ships into naval-style battleships and aircraft carriers.
It's how writers make space combat meaningful to readers. You could totally picture a model of space combat that all takes place outrageously far away and which consists mostly of firing and then waiting to see who explodes, but it wouldn't be relatable or interesting.
Well, actually, I've seen that done, usually by using submarine warfare as the comparison — but you get the idea. Perhaps it's part of a larger trope, where writers use some familiar terrestrial modern-day or historical reference to represent futuristic space stuff, in order to get readers engaged in it.
I think most writers know exactly what they're doing with this trope and why they're using it. It's important that the page not show it as an 'error', either. It's a way of telling stories, not a mistake.
edited 29th Jan '12 9:34:37 AM by Aquillion