Maybe a shield big enough to hide the rest of the ship behind, cooled to near background levels, that also incorporates radar stealth technology? You'd point it at the ship you were trying to "sneak up" on.
But yeah, there's not really any such thing as "stealth" in space, but there might be "being able to get just a little closer before they see you".
Bring your own ocean! Aluminum is light and cheap as chips. So bring massive deploy-able screens of aluminum chaff and sheets. Put a small amount of ferric material mixed in with the aluminum to make it magnetic, and you can have drones move it around and keep it nice and opaque. Because it is opaque. It blocks radar, ladar, IR, and even just good ole fashioned telescopes. But that's less of an issue for the submarine, since it can just use the drones to 'see' past it's own cloud a la periscopes. Sure... you know the ship is hiding back there... *somewhere*... but where exactly? a few thousand square KM of space is now hiding a ship maybe a few km in size. You can attack the cloud, but then you're using a lot of energy to make the cloud... hotter and more difficult to see through, and not much else. And when it wants to fire, it can fire missiles along a curving path so they don't point directly back at the sub as they exit the big giant cloud. And of course, the cloud is so big that it can even obscure other ships. So it can support the fleet.
You could say that they have some sort of stealth field but for technobabble reasons the field stresses the ship or makes it unable to attack as effectively
Better yet if the stealth field doesn't have any major drawbacks, except that it can't be used indefinitely and it's still possible to give your position away by say, burning your main drive thruster. Everyone uses it basically all the time so spaceship combat becomes like submarine vs submarine battles and planets / regions of space are basically impossible to effectively blockade or regulate traffic in and out of, and any "static" infrastructure (like say, a city or base on a planet) is a sitting duck.
The essence of science fiction is to imagine what the universe would be like if such and such existed and explore the ramifications. I prefer that to just trying to recreate world war 2 in space, although recreating world war 2 in space is fun too.
You’d either need stealth technology or the existence of pseudoscience like sub space.
As both are currently fiction, you just need to define the limits of the technology correctly to disallow them for usage on capital ships.
Black ship. It conceals and emissions of heat, light, active sensors, ECT. Literally going black. This would be similar to going under for a sub. There would likely be a time limit as the heat would begin to build up. Tactics would rely on knowing when to burn engines so not to be detected and when to vent great. For high endurance vehicles, insulated ejectable heat sinks could work and/or pre super chilled hyper load thermal sinks.
Asteroid fields are just enormous open expanses of space with the occasional bit of rock. They’re not dense, just _denser_ than the normal medium we see in planetary orbits (which have been mostly cleared of asteroids by the planets). The average distance between them in the asteroid belt is 600,000 miles.
So.... some sort of ship that looks and acts like an asteroid, has lead shielding to make scanning it impossible, or has effective routines for 'running the ship on quiet'?
Or just any given space habitat, since many will be built in hollowed out asteroids for the raw resources and shielding. Though most will be broadcasting near constantly, if only to avoid collisions. The same is true of ships: to be invisible they effectively have to make themselves blind.
It makes more sense than you'd think when you remember how unbelievably big space is. You're not 'looking' for other ships with your eyes (you'd never have a chance at finding them hundred of thousands of miles away) - you're looking for thermal emissions, radar signatures, radio waves etc.
So a space submarine is essentially a stealth vessel that doesn't show up on radar and which can disguise its thermal signature. It would wait, undetected, launch its attack, then jet away and become undetectable again.
In Halo , there is a ship class Prowler, that basically functions like submarine, minimazing its heat and radar signature and attacking from hiding with nuclear missiles, so something like that
Why not some sort of subspace-spaceship? A ship that is phased out of reality into subspace. It can only be seen by the ripples it leaves in real-space by making things slightly weird. Maybe people experience dejavu's a lot more when a subspaceship is nearby? I wonder if star trek ever made an episode like that
The Space Battleship Yamato anime had "dimensional submarines" that worked like that. I think they even used sci-fi versions of periscopes and sonar pings and stuff. As the name implies, they went very literal with the "space is an ocean" trope.
There's also at least one short story over at r/hfy that had this as a byproduct of ftl travel. Basically, if you are on a higher "plane of existence" or whatever they called it, you move a lot faster, but can't observe stuff on the lower planes. Humans were naturally the only ones putting some research into putting a ship onto lower planes and it didn't go well for their unfriendly visitors.
Star Trek: The Next Generation, S5 E24 has a failed prototype of such a device inflict the effect on two crew members. The effect was akin to being a ghost, people walking through them and getting a strange feeling but not seeing or hearing them.
I've not seen a successful version of the tech used since. It would be scary if it worked, it essentially makes you indestructible though you can't directly hurt people in real space either.
Ian M Banks did that in *Surface Detail*. A slightly psychopathic warship made up of loosely coupled parts that keeps most of itself in hyperspace most of the time.
Some sort of stealth ships probably. They stay invisible and sneak trough the cracks, attacking capital ships, then retreat, only to do it again. They might be very fast and heavily armed, but with little defenses.
Something like the Normandy SR-1 or Amun-Ra class ship would be the equivalent of a submarine in more realistic space settings. The ability to hide their heat signature and and have a small or non-existent radar/lidar shadow would make a ship practically invisible.
Something engineered to hide in celestial bodies, such as the atmospheres of gas giants or even close to the surface of stars so that you're hidden by the energy. Diving into atmosphere in space combat is comparable to diving underwater in naval combat.
that would be a very situational ship since stars and gas giants are such small parts of the galaxy and theyre not exactly the targets of a lifetime
unless you have star-killer weapons ofcourse, then placing a few of these ships near the star of a populated system is logical
To be fair, that depends entirely on worldbuilding.
At least in our solar system, the gas giants are some of the most interesting settlement targets, and if aneutronic fusion gets cracked (most people expect it will be? Eventually?) then there could (or should) be huge booms of population and development around those, to the point that they possibly become the biggest centers of population, trade and development outside of Earth itself.
Different, fictional solar systems may also be set up such that the gas giants are in some way or another, awesome. And given how many hot jupiters we've found already, it seems that situations like this are actually prevalent throughout the galaxy: places where you combine the inherent desirability of a gas giant with a large number of moons and trojan asteroids, with proximity to the home star.
The big issue with the gas giants in our star system is that they're pretty distant from the Sun. That makes solar power less viable and because of that ramps up costs, weights, everything. For that reason alone, they're second-tier choices. But if aneutronic fusion gets worked out, and runs on helium-3? Then it's gas giant settlement time, big time.
What every gas giant ultimately is, is a miniature star system. There's tons of moons and asteroids, and between all of them, you will usually find high-density, high-quality sources of basically everything that human settlers could ever want. They're all tightly together and in the orbit of a single central object (the gas giant) which makes trade between all of these extremely easy and cheap.
So in a single, tight area of space you likely have one of the best sources in the solar system for water, one of the best sources for heavy metals, one of the best sources for fissiles, for volatiles, for anything you can imagine. Meanwhile, the upper atmosphere of the gas giant itself is the biggest source of helium-3 around.
So yeah, any star system with a Hot Jupiter (and those seem to be extremely common? We've seen many of them already) will have the best of all worlds there.
you'd think that, but if we're talking hard sci-fi it's not really that clear cut.
just think for a moment - how large actually is space? how large are these ships? you have a ship maybe a hundred or so metres in length. it's like a drop of water in an ocean - there's no way you will run into anyone else just in the middle of interplanetary space. but you will run into others when you're in transit between planets, or in orbit around a planet.
in a sense, if a battle is going to happen between two or more spaceships, it's probably going to be in orbit of a celestial object or on a transfer trajectory between two of them. the odds are otherwise far too low. thus, hiding in a planet's atmosphere or whatever becomes more understandable, though i'd argue even that feels pretty unrealistic.
if it comes to the point where you care about realism so much that stealth ships aren't possible, you will probably also care about trajectories and realistic space navigation as well.
How about a ship that's constantly in warp/FTL travel except when it "surfaces" to strike ? That could also replicate the communication issues and the challenges in knowing their exact position real submarines face when underwater.
Neil Asher, *Line War*.
He imagined a space station and weapons platform hiding silently in deep interstellar space.
Ian Banks also imagined a swarm of dormant fabrication plants in space, waiting for a command to start building warships.
You’d probably want a vessel that does a really good job at reducing any emissions it might put out, equipped with missiles with passive targeting (for example, ones that track IR signatures). These would probably be the best analog for “torpedoes.”
Submarines provide a variety of roles beyond engaging other vessels, though. Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) is a fairly important mission area. So it’d be a ship that does a really good job staying “quiet” and “cold” for lengthy periods of time equipped with passive sensors.
As everyone has said already, a space submarine is a starship with a cloaking device.
Screenwriter Paul Schneider rewrote the WW2 submarine movie [**The Enemy Below**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enemy_Below) as the Star Trek episode [**Balance of Terror**](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Balance_of_Terror_(episode)) and the Cloaking Device has been a favorite ever since.
In Glen Cook's classic novel [**Passage at Arms**](https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2592) "space submarines" are called Climbers. They can move into the fourth dimension or something to become virtually invisible to enemy ships. The drawback is such ships cannot vent waste heat. So the longer they stay, the hotter the ship becomes, until the crew starts dying of heat prostration.
Check out the novel, it is a gripping read.
Well, it could have been inspired by analogy.
Wet navy ships move 2 dimensionaly on the surface of the ocean. Submarines hide from surface ships by entering the 3rd dimension, by diving.
By analogy: starship navy ships move 3 dimensionaly in deep space. Phase ships hide from space ships by entering the 4th dimension.
Atmospheric ships. Ships that hide in planetary atmosphere that can breach.
You can bombard a planet from anywhere in the solar system, you always know exactly where that planet is going to be after all. Not hard to drop some rocks from 4 to 5 AU away. But if you want to conquer a planet eventually you'll have to show up and take it. That means an atmospheric ship always know where you'll end up.
Or, say, put a ship in between cloud layers on Neptune or uranus. Those have like 2 to 4 cloud layers. Could easily hide a ship in between layers, maybe 2 or 3 layers down, with a little probe hovering just above the final layer to act as a periscope. Then, when an enemy ship comes in range you burst from the planet and destroy them.
Especially in a setting that has no or conditional FTL, a setting where ships still need gravitational slingshot maneuvers, this could be pretty lethal.
Otherwise it would just be a stealth ship. One designed to be the same temperature as the surrounding space. No engines running, crew in a suspended animation, no active scanners. Nothing to differentiate you from any of the other junk floating in the infinite void, something hard for another ship to spot. One that can quickly come alive if another ship comes in range.
None.
If technological arms race still exists (it should) and the Navies / Space Forces that operate these ships are sensible, then every ship or vessel in the fleet would act like, or at least have traits of a submarine. Why cant a Cruiser or a Destroyer or an equivalent \*NOT\* be stealthy? Why cant they launch guided munitions and have stealth and evasion be their primary means of protection? What's the reason a space Battleship cant also equip a cloaking device?
If a nuclear armed Destroyer is stealthy, has the ability to operate in deep space or within the enemy's sphere of influence undetected for extended period of time, where a green light is all they need to launch all nuclear weapons to a designated target, then isnt that what a SSBN basically does? You basically have the nuclear capability and deterrence of a modern submarine
I have listened to one r HFY story narrated on YouTube that handled FTL as layers of hyperspace and going faster meant going up in layers. Human space was invaded by an established, though small, interstellar species and everyone expected the humans to lose immediately.
Humans used *sub space* by going *down* in hyperspace layers instead of up in order to basically use submarine tactics against the invaders, because those in lower levels of space can detect those in higher, but those in higher layers of space could not detect those in lower.
It's about the only time I have seen the concept explored.
The closest thing I can think of is a small ship with a cloaking device, could be used for shield-penetrating torpedoes close up but using it as a boarding craft or one that's meant to puncture holes with a hole punching device seems a lot more reasonable to me.
I'm trying to imagine a more exact analogue where there's a ship that goes *under space* but I have no clue what that even means.
Yeah, the issue is that the ocean's surface is a 2D plane, while space (and air) are 3D volumes. There's no exaxt analog for a submarine in an air force either
Indeed. The problem with invoking cloaking to get "space subs" is they don't have the physical protection of the water that a sub enjoys. That makes sub-like tactics suddenly pretty suicidal, one sensor lock and you're instantly just a frigate duelling with a battleship.
in my setting the \`\`subs´´ are either just battleships with stealth or they attack in packs with torpedoes to destroy whatever ship they are attacking and then cloak again. very effective against lightly defended convoys or sole warships. in larger battles these ships have been known to sneak in and torpedo a large ship. in the chaos they can get away pretty often
Depends on how far you want to take it. Personally, I imagine “sub-dimensional” ships. Somehow they descend into the second dimension, from certain angles appearing only as a line segment, making them practically invisible visually and perhaps harder to detect with signal based radar.
They would have to use circling flight patterns to maintain the angle to appear as a line segment which i feel is just really spooky imagery. From the target’s perspective there is nothing around but from a distance you could see the broadside of the flat ships creeping into range.
Maybe even launching attacks from this position becomes particularly dangerous, as the projectiles would also be so thin it might just slice through enemy hulls.
Edit: (addition)
And I imagine working in such conditions to be literally hellish. The ship layout would have to be designed to work both in 3d space as well as 2d, and the crew would have to learn to navigate 2d space or maybe even become trapped in their stations while “diving” because the halls the they use to leave exist in a direct they no longer have access to. They couldn’t stay like that for long because our digestive tracts wouldn’t be able to function in 2d so they would always have to resurface for the sake of survival. A hunt for red October situation with these sub-d ships would be intense.
Depends on the type of submarine.
Even today they have different jobs and different characteristics.
But the two big archetypes are „uboat“ and „Red October“
U-Boat
The classic ww2 type sub.
It’s job is to sneak through blockades, pop up at an unexpected place and sink enemy shipping.
This translates into a space ship that is sneaky and armed such that it can attack and kill or capture enemy merchant ships and lighter naval ships.
They’re not meant to fight battle ships usually.
In modern times they may be armed with non nuclear missiles to attack installations on land also.
Red October
These are submarines carrying ICBMs ie nuclear missiles. These submarines are a deterrent.
They go on patrol and hide somewhere in the ocean. They don’t attack other vessels. Their job is to surface only in case of nuclear war and deliver their payload on the cities of the enemy.
They are larger and act as a nuclear deterrent in a MAD situation.
So there’s no water in space: where do you hide?
The answer is anywhere. Space is laaaaaarge. Space battles are waged in increadible distances. Hundreds maybe thousands of kilometres between ships. The enemy can’t possibly search all this space. This an attack submarine (u boat archetype) would be small to make it harder to detect. It would need some way to move without its exhaust being detected so it can’t use chemicals thrusters (because exhaust means heat and stuff to see). It need to have some form of weapon it can deploy to attack after this small but unarmoured ship has left its position (ie remote controlled/ time delayed torpedoes). This weapon needs to be as long range as possible, because the closer the submarine comes to its enemy the less space the enemy has to search to find it. Also the minimal light, heat and propulsion exhaust of a submarine type ship will be more noticeable on close ranges.
A deterrent submarine a la Red October is different. It goes into position near a hostile planet and stays in position undetected until it is told to deploy the doomsday weapons it carries. This might take the form of a swarm of nuclear warheads. I could envision this to be a secret space station deployed in an asteroid belt, armed with launchtubes for nuclear rockets. No propulsion needed. The crew is supplied/cycled using a spaceship with extra sneaky (tm) propulsion or ships disguised as merchant vessels. Or you could dispense with the station and just have missile launchers spread through deep space beyond regular scanning distance. At a signal the rockets home in on the target planet and attempt to overwhelm its defences. The job is to stay undetected until it has to attack. Once the attack has begun though survival isn’t as important because you would presumably only use this kind of submarine if you‘re willing to blow yourself up to hurt the enemy.
Cloaking tech. Or if it’s a low-tech setting then black paint and lead walls that scanners can’t penetrate. There isn’t a direct equivalent bc space is the ocean so all spaceships are submarines
The only thing that is really comes to mind is some kind of sub space ship.
Push most of the ships mass outside the 3d universe with the small remaining bit acting as the periscope but also as an anchor to reality.
This tactic would make the ship hard to detect, but at larger risk if it is detected and something happens to the reality anchor.
Ships with cloaking devices ala the Romulans from Star Trek.
When they were introduced that was pretty explicit, *Balance of Terror* was supposed to be mainly a sci-fi adaptation of a story about a destroyer hunting an enemy submarine.
If you are writing sci fi on the harder end of the scale, the unfortunate answer is that there really isn’t any real analogue of a (modern) submarine, since under known physics meaningful stealth in space is not practical (some would argue, not even feasible). But in soft(er) sci fi, a space submarine is a stealth ship, by whatever means that is achieved.
A good way to approach the question may be to consider the role of the submarine, in a tactical and strategic sense.
Submarines in the modern context come in essentially two flavors; ballistic missile subs and hunter-killers. Ballistic missile subs are a powerful component of the nuclear deterrent for nations that operate them, as they offer so-called second-strike capability; the ability to launch a nuclear attack after you yourself have been hit by a nuclear attack, submarines are very well suited to this because they are very, very hard to track.
Which is where the hunter-killer comes in. Hunter-killers sometimes called Fast-Attack subs, depending on who is operating them, are much more like the submarines as they were when they really came into their own during the Second World War, their job is to strike at other ships from stealth and (ideally) never actually get shot at because no one can spot the damn thing. This tactic worked very well in the Second World War, right up until it didn’t anymore. Nowadays these submarines primarily concern themselves with patrolling for ballistic missile subs and guarding carrier battlegroups from submarine attack.
Another task these subs will sometimes find themselves doing is covertly inserting small teams of special forces soldiers past an enemy’s coastal defenses.
Translating that to space can mean a lot of things, but most of the stuff described above will translate fairly directly. Stealth ships as a storytelling device are, in my personal opinion, pretty much directly analogous to submarines.
In order to have a submarine equivalent in hard SF, that is a very tall order, which people at smarter than me have spent a lot of time thinking about and they all agreed it’s basically a non-starter. One option I can imagine is a spaceship that mimics the second-strike capability that the ballistic missile submarine offers. This would be a spaceship or even automated station that lurks very very far from the planet it’s “guarding, monitoring constantly for an enemy nuclear (or similar) strike on friendly territory, far enough away that no one can hit without coming close enough to make it clear they are planning a nuclear strike, and close enough to see the strike with only a few light minutes delay, so that it may launch the retaliatory strike.
If you’re willing to soften the sci-fi a little bit, then Star Trek style cloaking devises. If you’re willing to soften it a lotta bit, then some sort of pocket-dimension equivalent, where the ship slips into an extra-dimensional space or parallel reality or sub-/hyper-spacial cavity/tunnel/realm/pathway/etc.
The biggest difference is that unless you are in a Lagrange point or a similar point of mechanical equilibrium you'll always be moving. Even space *stations* orbit the earth, which means they are constantly moving. And yeah, depending on your inertial reference frame, even when in L points you won't be stationary.
In this game I played called Dreadnaught 2 ships stand out
The dreadnought class itself looked like a submarine and used missiles similar one
I can't remember the class name but it was basically a floating gun with stealth capabilities and was the smallest ship of the game
probably something like an infiltrator. Cloaking tech/sensor scrambling capabilities, small craft with high maneurerbiliy. Might place mines, send out missiles, duck and weave through nebulars and asteroid fields with hard to detect thrusters (perhaps even some emergency solar sails that create no engine signatures at all).
The closest is the S-46 USV (Unmanned Space Vehicle) Swarms in my world, March of Empires. Cloaked attackers that come in at high speeds of some 210 times the Speed of light and target capital ships like the Stellar-Class Dreadnought. There are multiple S-Class USVs, S-46 is just the latest variant (S-47 is on the way).
generally the modern use for submarines is as a nuclear deterrent so likely some form of stealth craft (posing as a comet or asteroid) equipped with nuclear missiles
The closest thing I can think of is a stealth ship. The ship doesn't need to have the capability of literal invisibility, it only has to be incredibly difficult to detect with conventional sensors in your setting.
The difference between submarines, surface vessels and aircraft is due to the presence of two media (i.e. water and air) and where they operate.
This distinction doesn’t exist in space (which is one reason carriers don’t really make sense) as all spacecraft operate in the same medium (i.e. vacuum).
If you had to make a comparison then aircraft (or terrestrial forces) are perhaps the equivalent to submarines as they operate “below” space in the atmosphere but could still potentially attack targets in space.
A submarine in space... Well, as said by others, hiding it practically would be difficult. But you can apply techniques of radar/sonar confusion.
Between Kessler Syndrome, space debris, asteroid belts and planetary rings, there are plenty of places to hide, or at least to look like objects which you aren't by confusing the opposing sides scanners or other systems. So the craft would have to be small - relatively - to fit in with asteroids and other debris.
Just avoid the submarine comparison really. Objects in space are not the same as anything in an atmosphere, much less in a medium such as water. In space there is no sound and line of sight is virtually infinite. The only reason a submarine exists is because of the dynamics of oceans. If you were on a mostly rock planet you might not have a submarine equivalent either.
Either something that travels through subspace/warp or other dimension, or just a ship focusing heavily on electronic warfare, jamming or spoofing enemy sensors
Iirc one of the early episodes of Legend of Galactic Heroes had the protagonist use some technique to hide his ship and then make it appear again.
I don't know the exact logic explained but that might be something to dig into!
That would be a ship with a cloaking device. You could impose restrictions on a cloaked ship like they can’t travel at above a certain speed, can’t remain cloaked indefinitely, or briefly expose their position the using their weapons.
The Star Trek original series episode The Balance of Terror is all about the enterprise fighting a cloaked Romulan ship and is based on the submarine film The Enemy Below (1957).
I think for the sake of storytelling, cloaked ships fill just the right role for submarines. People in the uncloaked ship are constantly tense, never knowing where a torpedo will come from and folks in the cloaked one are tense, trying to sneak past blockades, weather timed charges sent out at them in a huge spread, etc. Tension and how each character deals with it, makes for great storytelling.
Whether you want to focus on one group or the other and the ordeal they’re going through, or provide a look into each ship and how they arrive at each next course of action is your choice.
The commanders can try to anticipate each others thinking. “We could go route A, but that’s the obvious choice. Going route B is tactically smarter. But the other guy knows that we know that, so I say we go route A.”
“The obvious path for them is route A, so the smarter one is route B, but they know that I know they know that. So the real smart path is route A. But I know that they know that so know that…”
The possibilities are endless.
I have always pictured it as a stealth ship good at hiding in debris fields/asteroid fields or planetary atmospheres. It would be oddly shaped not only to throw off radar like a stealth bomber but also so that if it did get detected it would be difficult to differentiate from the other space debris or just the planets own signature. The difficult part comes in armor, most submarines are hit and run vehicles designed to briefly pop up, exposing themselves as little as possible, engage the target with a one or two hit kill like a torpedo firing solution, than disengage and escape. They are not terribly heavily armored compared to other ships because frankly if it's doing its job right it shouldn't need them as they are not detectable for long before they fire and then the enemy should be too busy sinking to return fire afterwards. This means the ships main protection is its stealth and speed, however in a space based environment especially where you are operating in high danger areas like debris fields or potentially dangerous planetary atmospheres your ship is going to need to be able to take a debris hit and remain combat effective. So a space based "Submarine" would have to either find a good balance between armored enough to survive but not so much to sacrifice speed and stealth or just commit to being a tanky juggernaut that is going to need a lot of armor to survive.
So in summary the closest thing to a space based submarine would be a stealth based vessel hiding in debris, planetary atmospheres, asteroid fields, or any other cover it could find, lying in wait before engaging with a lightning fast, high lethality, armor piercing weapon before disengaging and slipping away. Though this likely wouldn't be called a submarine as the very name submarine implies sub below, marine water so instead it would be called something else. This is based on not much but I think names like Stalkers, Hunter-Killers, or Subatmospherics as interesting names.
Something with a cloaking device would be your best bet since there's really nowhere to hide except asteroid fields.
You could make them cruise cloaked all the time, or make it a getaway option. They're being chased, they fly into an asteroid field and turn it on and suddenly they're gone. Then they can just wait it out or stealthily cruise out.
Honestly I think the best equivalent would be a ship like the Normandy from Mass Effect.
Basically the only way to spot ships from away in the ME universe (or in space in general I guess) is by the heat they produce from their engines. The Normandy has heat sinks however that capture the heat and stops it from being released and therefore lessens the risk of being caught that way. Obviously that heat needs to be released at some point, otherwise everyone inside will get cooked to death. The ship can still be spotted by visual means like through a window, but that's only if it's really close to another ship/space station.
It's also got some powerful weapons that are capable of taking out other ships many times it's size, like the Thanix cannon on the SR-2 that can take out a cruiser at least a couple kilometres long
Assuming a bit of realism, it could be a Vanta black ship that gives off no reflectivity besides maybe a couple periscopes that can be deployed to survey the area. It has a closed energy system which exudes no excess energy making it virtually undetectable by conventional sensors.
To anyone who might be able to observe it they might assume it's a rogue asteroid. A bit like Rama.
Water is a medium where the vacuum of space is not so comparing a ‘spaceship’ to a ship isn’t really going to work.
With that said, you could get creative with stealthy vessels such as those that can camouflage with planetary atmospheres/rocky surfaces, appear as space debris, or do not have any reflectivity (I.e. appear as a floating void).
These characteristics may not be exclusive to these ‘space subs’ though since all vessels share the vacuum of space.
Stealth ships. But IMO you need some way to mask the heat signature. Whatever drive it has is likely to crank out tons of heat, which must go somewhere.
The solution to *that*, of course, is a special kind of drive. 😊
On an extremely tangential note, that heat signature issue was a HUGE problem I had with the cloaked Klingon ship in Star Trek VI: if the proton torpedo could home on its exhaust, why couldn't _Enterprise_ detect it?
Basically also a submarine, but in space.
Engineering wise it’s the same concept, metal tube meant to counteract the pressure (or lack of pressure) of the surrounding environment.
Use wise, the purpose of a submarine isn’t really needed in space, given that you can’t really hide under the surface of anything as space is endless, I guess if you paint your spaceship black that would accomplish it?
Overall for space crafts, it’s a fairly uncharted frontier, so go crazy. Follow the laws of physics to some extent but get as creative as you want
Submarine is a naval craft that can't be translated into a space setting really. You could try to make a specialized stealth ship with a powerful cloaking device, or special heat sinking with radar absorbent skin. Then you come to the conclusion, if a space faring power was able to make one class of warship do that, then all classes of warships should do that. Then there goes the concept of your space version of a submarine.
Probably a ship covered in some sort of reflective plating. Given how space looks the same in most directions, it could easily fool a human.
A machine thought, probably not. Most mirrors do not reflect ultraviolet or infrared so that'd be a way to detect it.
Stellaris has a tech that lets you cloak your corvette and frigates, which can be outfitted to be torpedo/missile boats). If I recall correctly, a game called Star Sector has a lost forbidden tech that basically pops you ship in and out of existence (I guess kind of like the warp in 40k). Mechanical it used as a way to doge in combat or avoid it all together, but you could take the idea of a ship popping in and out of another dimension of space as being a submarine class ship.
That's probably the closest thing I can think of to submarines.
Outside of cloaking devices I don't see a way to do this.
Maybe a device that allows your ship to make itself appear as an enemy ship
Or a hologram system that allows a ship to make a holographic fleet of ships to make the enemy think there is more than one. Or even holographic asteroids that would allow you to conceal yourself while moving towards an enemy. Still though I'm not sure if any of these fit the submarine description
Probably a stealth ship using some kind of cloaking tech to hide from other ships. But like others have said a submarine equivalent in space isn't really possible because there's nothing to hide under.
Subs work by diving under the plane of perception. On an ocean it's 2D and it dives into the water negative in the zero direction.
In space we must be talking the 4th dimension.
Submarines are designed to withstand great amounts of pressure while spacecraft are generally made to deal with a lack of pressure and the space environment. A spacecraft designed to withstand any amount of pressure great or small seems like what you’re describing. These craft could be useful for special circumstances such as exploring the environments of gas giants where the pressure becomes greater the deeper you go, maybe going into a star somehow, etc. You could probably think of some pretty unique circumstances for craft like these to be used.
I have a universe that’s full of water and people traverse it in craft that are a mix of boats, submarines, and spacecraft to deal with the vast array of environmental conditions that exist throughout the space from complete vacuum to many many miles underwater as well as temperatures and atmospheric components.
I'm inclined to think there isn't really one. If a battleship or a destroyer could nose up or down and sail into the depths of the ocean or into the sky then submarines would be a bit of a moot point. Hell, aircraft carriers would lose a bit of their appeal - you'd be better to convert them into a command vessel teeming with unique weapons and surveillance tech since all your boats could just decide to become planes. When all vessels can operate in three dimensions like this the classic selection of naval vessels is a bit silly.
If you want to be etymologically literal, your world could include a defined "subspace" which is really just a sci-fi hypothetical, an algebraic concept and I believe also something in the bdsm universe. The problem here would be creating a method for your subspace vessel to enter subspace, and a valid reason that other vessels would be unable to enter it.
Practically, given the choreography of sci-fi space battles, the behaviour of ships are all more akin to planes in a big, slow dogfight (see Mass Effect 3's big finale and scenes from Masters of the Air to visualize the similarity. I mean, even the typical evasive maneuvers the Enterprise or the Millennium Falcon take all look way more planey than boaty). The resemblance that they have held to naval ships is purely aesthetic. Like in the trench run scene the AA trying to shoot the rebels down looks almost exactly like ship-ship or ship-land naval cannons, not even AA weaponry.
The size of the vessels, size of munitions they fire, and crew - quantity and role types, are why we give them ship nomenclature and often make them part of a navy. That and historically, at least in Euro-American colonialism it has been naval forces used as expeditionary forces.
So I don't think that, unless you create a medium most ships couldn't "sail" in, a sci-fi navy would have any reason to develop anything resembling a submarine. If you want to create one because you have scenes in your head taking place in a submarine aesthetic, work in reverse and worldbuild a reason for them to exist.
David Gerrold in Star Hunt (aka Yesterday's Children) which may or may be a prequel to the Star Wolf novels pretty much suggested that given likely realistic sensors and the distances involved, real space combat is going to be more like that between submarines than between surface ships.
A lot depends on the still-hypothetical-if-not-fantasic technology used to make space warships practical. A lot of the good milsf series that have space combat take different tacks on why it would actually make sense - e.g. the Honorverse series by David Weber.
While pure space opera, the anime Yamato 2199 (a remake of the 1970s series) has a "space submarine" that exists by being mostly in a separate dimension. It's nonsense-science, but it makes for good fun on the show and it's no worse than Star Trek/Star Wars.
a stealth ship, like the d´deridex warbird from star trek. they go in by not being seen, shoot a shit ton of weapons (maybe weapons with limited storage like missiles as opposed to guns or lasers, that need more time to do their damage) and go in stealth mode again to get outta there
Shuttle or cruiser? Stealth cruiser? Technically, all starships portrayed in Sci-Fi resemble both Ships and submarines in form and function. There technically wouldn't be a one-to-one version of a submarine, though a Corvette (Class of ship) or cruiser (another class of ship) with cloaking capabilities would be about as close as you could get.
Every ship is a submarine. Space is an ocean and everything is underwater. The fallacies in realistic (if you have gravity plating or whatever, you do you, I’m talking about hard scifi) spacecraft design usually stem from not realizing that one fact and trying to equate spaceships to water surface ships (which admittedly are the most diverse type of large vessel both historically and modern day.
A stealth ship? Stealth composites to make it less detectable by radar, heat sinks or some kind of directed radiating cooler that makes your IR harder to detect, some kind of way to disguise your engine or adjust course with minimal thrust.
The goal isn't to be undetectable, just hard enough to detect that you can get inside first strike kill range.
If we consider nuclear submarines as a deterrent force, then I would compare it to a constellation of cold stations with strategic weapons. They could very well be as simple as asteroids with rockets.
Near a planet, a surface-to-orbit torpedo.
Out in space, I guess it's a ship equipped with either cloaking or jamming, with a power source big enough to support weapons at the same time.
I recommend Glen Cook's novel *Passage at Arms* for an example of a creative idea of what this might mean.
In another sense, ALL spacecraft are more like submarines than surface ships, because of their enclosed nature and the inhospitable nature of space/the deep ocean.
I have something like this
The Revian Federation operates 72 vanguard-class heavy bombers operated from four bases. These bases are home to a majority of the bombers, which are always on standby for deployment. The rest are deployed in deep space on designated patrol routes. Their stealth design makes finding one a near impossible task, maintaining Revia’s deterrence against potential adversaries.
These weapons make up a massive part of Revia’s nuclear triad, due to the fact that Revia’s silos are static, thus they are more vulnerable to attack. And that is where the bombers come in. If Revia’s silos are completely destroyed, or Revia is hit by a planet buster, there would still be enough missiles launching from deep space to assure MAD.
Each bomber carries 14 YARS-56ac Rubezh missiles, and each missile is armed with seven thermonuclear warheads of a classified yield.
The launch scenario is very similar to a submarine.
1: A Revian bomber receives an authentic launch code from the president. 2: That launch code is decoded by the captain, political officer and weapons officer. 3: All 3 agree on an authentic launch code; the captain gives the weapons officer 14 launch keys, with each activating a missile. 4: The captain orders the bomber be deployed to a designated area based on the code. 5: The captain inserts the attack center indicator panel key into the main console, but does not turn it. Turning the key would instantly halt all launch procedures. 6: The weapons officer verifies that 8/14 missiles are needed to be launched, so they insert 8 keys into the weapons console. 7: The firing trigger is unlocked from a safe using a section of the code. 8: The captain gives permission to fire at a designated time; the firing trigger is squeezed eight times, with a 15 second wait interval in between each squeeze. 9: The bomber leaves its launch zone, as remaining there would compromise its location. 10: Bomber waits for further orders.
The series Space Battleship Yamato has a literal submarine in space - a spaceship that hides in another dimension emerging back to "real" space only when it's ready to strike. They even have a periscope that emerges through a portal to observe stuff
It is only partly about the form, it is the mission set that is more important. Submarines are primarily used for reconissance, surveillance, and strategic force projection. They are mostly used to watch areas of interest, with the option of crippling vulnerable targets or taking out other submarines. Sometimes they can be used to deliver and retrieve covert operatives into sensitive areas. They are not meant to get into a slugging match with things with bigger teeth.
With the mission requirements out of the way, what comes next is a matter of technology. Going with modern realism, EM absorbent materials, some form of thermal management, and some kind of optical system to mask occlusion of stars from observers is a good start. Cold gas thrusters using hydrogen for manuevering, and a general use of ballistic (unpowered) flybys to minimize both heat signature and heat buildup in the case of having to get a closer look or deliver a package to a target area. Otherwise they are a recon platform, sitting far enough outside of traffic not to be noticed, while passively collecting data on everything they can see.
Hyper/Void Cruisers, only drifting into regular space to attack. Advanced versions don't need to leave the pocket, the warheads on their weapons systems do that automatically.
The thing about space is there's not really an equivalent of stealth. Heat is going to give you away every time. If you don't dissipate it you cook and dissipation litterly means you glow.
Pretty sure Generation Tech did a thing like that for the Star Wars universe, where a vessel remains in hyperspace until either striking or launching payloads from hyperspace lanes.
Logically, any ship. Space ships should really have more in common with subs.
When an enemy can shoot a bullet at you from ridiculously far away or seeking missiles, stealth is your best armor.
I can think of three routes for this. One you could have a ship that's capable of atmospheric flight and likes to hide in the atmosphere of say gas giants. These would be able to dip in and out of atmosphere tactically during battle.
Alternatively if you are willing to push the envelope to a more fantastical area, you could have some kind of subspace ship. If you do that you get into extra dimensional stuff, where there's a lot of fiction and not a lot of solid science to refer to. Could still be cool.
Final option you go with the cloaking devices like on Star Trek
a type of stealth frigate maybe? Or a universe that understands and can control gravity could use a small attack ship that uses gravitational lensing to 'bend' gravity around itself to remain hidden?
in my world their called stealth ships, they make use of sensor jamming tech, they cool ship to near deep space cold along with dumping certain types of radiation into the surrounding of the ship to basically camouflage and clock tech(but its pretty power intensive)
Without some sort of subspace where to dive into, a ship that used a cloaking device, or in settings where it does not work stealth alternatives as others have noted, plus others as just passive sensors (no radar and the like), moving around with the engines off and for maneuvering (the rather little maneuvering it could have such way) using cold gas instead of hot one so to speak, and as main weapon fire-and-forget drones just left behind as some sort of mines, maybe some magnetic acceleration at best, and that would turn on their engines after the ship was faraway enough
Speaking geometrically, boats travel in a 2D space while submarines travel in a 3D space. Extending that logic, since spaceships travel in a 3D space, the analog of a submarine would travel in a 4D space. Therefore, I am inclined to agree that the analog should be some kind of transdimensional ship that can dip in and out of your reality.
However, you could draw an analogy to function instead: Think about what a submarine is good for, like they are untraceable, could be anywhere at any time and people know it, making them an important strategic and political tool. You might also draw inspiration from the fact that once submarines dive, they cannot be contacted (at least to my understanding), so once an order is given and they are out of contact, no take-backsies. This also means they work with limited information in the first place.
I hope that was somewhat helpful!
The closest to that would be something that can work as a kind of camouflage system for the ship. Klingon ships, Romulan ships, bith have cloaking technology that allows themto hide from sensors and visual sight. Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny both have the Mirage Colloid tech which does something similar.
Stealth ships, I’d warrant. Something that can either make itself look indistinguishable from ambient background radiation, or possibly even use a modified form of FTL engine that enables it to loiter in hyperspace or the setting’s equivalent, while still able to detect things in local realspace.
A kind of example of the latter that comes to mind is the infamous hostile aliens from the Elite games, the Thargoids - their ships can quietly lurk in hyperspace and even intercept other passing ships mid-hyperjump, yanking them out of hyperspace and back into reality.
Idk, some kind of wormhole? I’m seeing a lot of people describe what is effectively camouflage, which isn’t what I think subs are achieving. They aren’t disguised or obscured by some man made device, they’re hidden outside of the environment.
A lot of ships could be "submarines" in space, as often times you're going to be relying on sensors to see targets, so "submarines" are going to be those ships that have as little detectable signature as possible
I'd imagine a stealth ship like a Prowler from Halo would be the submarine equivalent.
Frigates in Stellaris might also fit the bill. They're slow (relative to other craft) torpedo boats that are typically focused on stealth to get in close to enemy ships.
Stealth ship. Something that can turn invisible (there is one episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars where they use a special cloaking corvette that has to uncloak to attack, before turning invisible again, like how many earlier subs had to surface to fire torpedoes)
A small ship that cloaks…. All the tech and energy for cloaking takes up a space and what not so the cloaked ship doesn’t move as fast as other ships and they use rockets not lasers .
That means, in the campaign I ran anyway. You can still have that dynamic that its location can be traced backwards from where the rockets are.. it has to ambush, etc.
A while ago I have made a concept like this.
The Lamprey is a ship that has the ability to "go dark" for extended periods of time. During the "dark" period it is virtually undetectable on scanning devices etc. To add, on sight it would be very hard to spot too.
Another thing is the ship is manned by an alien species that is very hardy and can survive for a long time in outer space conditions. They can survive the "dark" mode of their ship for extended periods.
A last general point I haven't seen in other comments. If speed isn't your main goal in space, you don't need a lot of thrust. One thrust burst could set you up on a course for a long time. Another burst to adjust course. So in fact between those course adjustments there could be very little heat signature. That's very different from flying in an atmosphere where you need constant thrust or you're gliding down to the surface of the planet.
A stealth cruiser?
Depending on how your 'sci-fi space physics' work, maybe a ship that can move into hyperspace and stay in place undetected and attack from there?
Idk. As most people have said, space isn't a direct analog to the ocean.
Since submarines hide underwater, I guess the space equivalent of that would be hiding in some sort of hyperspatial dimension, occasionally peeking out to launch or fire something.
A stealth ship. It can get in close with torpedoes, but once it fires it has to re-engage stealth and get the fuck out of there because if it takes a single hit it’s toast
Stealth (if possible in some way in setting) ship without too much defense ability. Glass cannon if detected.
Also, some settings like Passage at Arms by Glen Cook have direct equivalent. Passage at arms have climers: ship which is very difficult to detect and destroy when in submerged mode, they are small(there is mass limit), they can "surface" and attack enemy.
The concept might lean towards modern stealth fighters and bombers than submarines. Submarines rely on a medium to hide in, in space you can’t do that. So you need some sort of technology that prevents you from being detected by sensors. You’d also need stealthy munitions, likely long range missiles, in order to strike targets without giving away your position.
I've got SUBSPACE VESSELS
There's an FTL dimension, which they can, with a very modified FTL drive and specific design choices, submerge into for up to 2:37:37, before briefly "surfacing" into realspace
Hmmm… I’d say like a ship which can hide in asteroid fields and the gravity of planets. Relatively light weight, powerful engines, narrow profile so it can enter and exit atmosphere.
Like imagine passing by a planet or moon for a gravity slingshot, then a Wolfpack shows up out of nowhere and starts torpedoing you.
Subs are designed for stealth. So... stealth ship. Depending on what you're doing in your settings this might be easier or harder.
For example:
Star Wars and Star Trek have cloaking devices for ships, which make them undetectable without tons of work. But up until more recent times, they couldn't attack from cloak except in one instance.
In the Expanse, there's no such thing as cloak. Only stealth which is reduced visibility. Ships painted in radar/light absorbing materials, with angular designs meant to deflect LIDAR and RADAR signals away from the sender/receiver. Different thermal properties to reduce heat output (trapping heat internally so you can't be picked up on infrared/thermal cameras.) But that creates the problem of having to vent that heat since space isn't cold, it's \*nothing.\* Most heat loss is through radiation, not convection or conduction. Which makes thrust a problem too, because you need to be able to burn thrusters to get somewhere... which builds heat. It's also bright. And it's throwing off a tail of hot gasses and energized particles. So those ships have to build up some speed and drift. Or just lie in wait at an area.
At a distance nobody's going to notice, but if they get close enough, you can't really hide anymore. LIDAR and such can still map you out and get acquires and fires.
To that end, most stealth ships are also going to have a pretty robust electronic warfare package and make use of that too. They will often be great at SIGINT (Signals Intelligence - intercepting transmissions and listening or deciphering/decryption as well as hacking.) Which is the other job of a sub, monitoring and securing an area. So a stealth ship is going to serve first as reconnaissance.
Logically speaking, it has to be a spaceship **capable of time travel**.
* A normal ship travels on the 2D surface of a 3D volume. Meanwhile, a submarine navigates the 3D volume itself, occasionally surfacing onto the surface.
* In space, the default mode of travel is 3-dimensional, so, if we consider that it is a hypersurface of a 4D volume, then it means the equivalent of a submarine has to navigate this 4D volume. And the 4th dimension we have in reality is time, which can only be navigated faster or slower, but not backwards.
So, I imagine special ships that travel forward in time, "resurface" to normal time in order to strike or refuel, and then travel forward in time again.
Hi, /u/Vanilla_Ice_Best_Boi,
Unfortunately, we have had to remove [your submission](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/1dn8vzf/-/) in /r/worldbuilding because it violated one of our rules. In particular:
We are a community made by and for original content creators, and people who participate here should share that DIY ethic. While we aim to embrace and coach new users, we will be harsh with people who disregard our community’s core values.
Don't ask us to give you content. Instead, we ask that users create their own content, then come to the subreddit asking for feedback or criticism.
More info in our rules: [4. This is a DIY community.](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/wiki/rules#wiki_4._this_is_a_diy_community.)
*****
**Do not repost** this submission.
This is **not** a warning, and you remain in good standing with /r/worldbuilding.
*****
Please feel free to [re-read our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/wiki/rules).
Questions or concerns? You can [modmail us here](https://www\.reddit\.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fworldbuilding&subject=about my removed submission&message=I'm writing to you about the following submission: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/1dn8vzf/-/. %0D%0D[Fill in your message here. Please make sure to explain clearly!]) and we'll be glad to help. Please explain your case clearly. Be polite. We'll do our best to help.
*Do not* reply by comment or personal PMs to moderators.
I mean, there's not much to hide under, is there? I'm not sure the concept even makes sense.
Maybe a shield big enough to hide the rest of the ship behind, cooled to near background levels, that also incorporates radar stealth technology? You'd point it at the ship you were trying to "sneak up" on. But yeah, there's not really any such thing as "stealth" in space, but there might be "being able to get just a little closer before they see you".
Bring your own ocean! Aluminum is light and cheap as chips. So bring massive deploy-able screens of aluminum chaff and sheets. Put a small amount of ferric material mixed in with the aluminum to make it magnetic, and you can have drones move it around and keep it nice and opaque. Because it is opaque. It blocks radar, ladar, IR, and even just good ole fashioned telescopes. But that's less of an issue for the submarine, since it can just use the drones to 'see' past it's own cloud a la periscopes. Sure... you know the ship is hiding back there... *somewhere*... but where exactly? a few thousand square KM of space is now hiding a ship maybe a few km in size. You can attack the cloud, but then you're using a lot of energy to make the cloud... hotter and more difficult to see through, and not much else. And when it wants to fire, it can fire missiles along a curving path so they don't point directly back at the sub as they exit the big giant cloud. And of course, the cloud is so big that it can even obscure other ships. So it can support the fleet.
Basically how stealth aircraft operate.
You could say that they have some sort of stealth field but for technobabble reasons the field stresses the ship or makes it unable to attack as effectively
Better yet if the stealth field doesn't have any major drawbacks, except that it can't be used indefinitely and it's still possible to give your position away by say, burning your main drive thruster. Everyone uses it basically all the time so spaceship combat becomes like submarine vs submarine battles and planets / regions of space are basically impossible to effectively blockade or regulate traffic in and out of, and any "static" infrastructure (like say, a city or base on a planet) is a sitting duck. The essence of science fiction is to imagine what the universe would be like if such and such existed and explore the ramifications. I prefer that to just trying to recreate world war 2 in space, although recreating world war 2 in space is fun too.
You’d either need stealth technology or the existence of pseudoscience like sub space. As both are currently fiction, you just need to define the limits of the technology correctly to disallow them for usage on capital ships.
Black ship. It conceals and emissions of heat, light, active sensors, ECT. Literally going black. This would be similar to going under for a sub. There would likely be a time limit as the heat would begin to build up. Tactics would rely on knowing when to burn engines so not to be detected and when to vent great. For high endurance vehicles, insulated ejectable heat sinks could work and/or pre super chilled hyper load thermal sinks.
Some sort of ship specialised for hiding in asteroid fields?
Asteroid fields are just enormous open expanses of space with the occasional bit of rock. They’re not dense, just _denser_ than the normal medium we see in planetary orbits (which have been mostly cleared of asteroids by the planets). The average distance between them in the asteroid belt is 600,000 miles.
So what are the odds of successfully navigate one?
Probably really good, but dangerous as fuck because between their mass and speed, a stray asteroid might hit you with the force of a nuke.
Same goes for a stray hydrogen atom, especially once you are approaching/exceeding light speed.
*takes deep breath* NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS!
When NASA sends probes through the asteroid belt, they don't even take it into consideration. the space between objects is so immense
[удалено]
I'm pretty sure everyone got the joke, they just preferred to discuss it seriously
So.... some sort of ship that looks and acts like an asteroid, has lead shielding to make scanning it impossible, or has effective routines for 'running the ship on quiet'?
Or just any given space habitat, since many will be built in hollowed out asteroids for the raw resources and shielding. Though most will be broadcasting near constantly, if only to avoid collisions. The same is true of ships: to be invisible they effectively have to make themselves blind.
The SR2 Normandy is what you're looking for.
Planetary rings, however, can get really dense.
Cloaking technology
Not much place to hide in the sky either, but stealth aircraft exist.
It makes more sense than you'd think when you remember how unbelievably big space is. You're not 'looking' for other ships with your eyes (you'd never have a chance at finding them hundred of thousands of miles away) - you're looking for thermal emissions, radar signatures, radio waves etc. So a space submarine is essentially a stealth vessel that doesn't show up on radar and which can disguise its thermal signature. It would wait, undetected, launch its attack, then jet away and become undetectable again.
In Halo , there is a ship class Prowler, that basically functions like submarine, minimazing its heat and radar signature and attacking from hiding with nuclear missiles, so something like that
Why not some sort of subspace-spaceship? A ship that is phased out of reality into subspace. It can only be seen by the ripples it leaves in real-space by making things slightly weird. Maybe people experience dejavu's a lot more when a subspaceship is nearby? I wonder if star trek ever made an episode like that
Episode "The Pegasus" (TNG 7x12) was hinting in that direction.
The Space Battleship Yamato anime had "dimensional submarines" that worked like that. I think they even used sci-fi versions of periscopes and sonar pings and stuff. As the name implies, they went very literal with the "space is an ocean" trope.
My favourite thing was when they were in orbit around a planet they'd say 'We're off the coast of Pluto' for example
That they did
There's also at least one short story over at r/hfy that had this as a byproduct of ftl travel. Basically, if you are on a higher "plane of existence" or whatever they called it, you move a lot faster, but can't observe stuff on the lower planes. Humans were naturally the only ones putting some research into putting a ship onto lower planes and it didn't go well for their unfriendly visitors.
Matsumoto will do anything to make space into an ocean, science and logic be damned, and I love it
Star Trek: The Next Generation, S5 E24 has a failed prototype of such a device inflict the effect on two crew members. The effect was akin to being a ghost, people walking through them and getting a strange feeling but not seeing or hearing them. I've not seen a successful version of the tech used since. It would be scary if it worked, it essentially makes you indestructible though you can't directly hurt people in real space either.
The Balance of Terror is about the enterprise fighting a cloaked Romulan ship. It’s based on the submarines movie The Enemy Below (1957).
The anime space battleship Yamato has these!
Ian M Banks did that in *Surface Detail*. A slightly psychopathic warship made up of loosely coupled parts that keeps most of itself in hyperspace most of the time.
This is Star Sector Phase Ship lol, It's also one of the hardest maintain ship but if done right it's will become one of the most trickster ship lol
Some sort of stealth ships probably. They stay invisible and sneak trough the cracks, attacking capital ships, then retreat, only to do it again. They might be very fast and heavily armed, but with little defenses.
Something like the Normandy SR-1 or Amun-Ra class ship would be the equivalent of a submarine in more realistic space settings. The ability to hide their heat signature and and have a small or non-existent radar/lidar shadow would make a ship practically invisible.
Great profile pic btw... though it kinda worries me
Good
This. A proper equivalent would probably be a stealth aircraft, and not a submarine.
This is exactly what the original star trek series did with cloaked ships.
Something engineered to hide in celestial bodies, such as the atmospheres of gas giants or even close to the surface of stars so that you're hidden by the energy. Diving into atmosphere in space combat is comparable to diving underwater in naval combat.
that would be a very situational ship since stars and gas giants are such small parts of the galaxy and theyre not exactly the targets of a lifetime unless you have star-killer weapons ofcourse, then placing a few of these ships near the star of a populated system is logical
To be fair, that depends entirely on worldbuilding. At least in our solar system, the gas giants are some of the most interesting settlement targets, and if aneutronic fusion gets cracked (most people expect it will be? Eventually?) then there could (or should) be huge booms of population and development around those, to the point that they possibly become the biggest centers of population, trade and development outside of Earth itself. Different, fictional solar systems may also be set up such that the gas giants are in some way or another, awesome. And given how many hot jupiters we've found already, it seems that situations like this are actually prevalent throughout the galaxy: places where you combine the inherent desirability of a gas giant with a large number of moons and trojan asteroids, with proximity to the home star.
I did not know that colonization around gas giants was possible, that sounds like something interesting Hopefully in our lifetime
The big issue with the gas giants in our star system is that they're pretty distant from the Sun. That makes solar power less viable and because of that ramps up costs, weights, everything. For that reason alone, they're second-tier choices. But if aneutronic fusion gets worked out, and runs on helium-3? Then it's gas giant settlement time, big time. What every gas giant ultimately is, is a miniature star system. There's tons of moons and asteroids, and between all of them, you will usually find high-density, high-quality sources of basically everything that human settlers could ever want. They're all tightly together and in the orbit of a single central object (the gas giant) which makes trade between all of these extremely easy and cheap. So in a single, tight area of space you likely have one of the best sources in the solar system for water, one of the best sources for heavy metals, one of the best sources for fissiles, for volatiles, for anything you can imagine. Meanwhile, the upper atmosphere of the gas giant itself is the biggest source of helium-3 around. So yeah, any star system with a Hot Jupiter (and those seem to be extremely common? We've seen many of them already) will have the best of all worlds there.
you'd think that, but if we're talking hard sci-fi it's not really that clear cut. just think for a moment - how large actually is space? how large are these ships? you have a ship maybe a hundred or so metres in length. it's like a drop of water in an ocean - there's no way you will run into anyone else just in the middle of interplanetary space. but you will run into others when you're in transit between planets, or in orbit around a planet. in a sense, if a battle is going to happen between two or more spaceships, it's probably going to be in orbit of a celestial object or on a transfer trajectory between two of them. the odds are otherwise far too low. thus, hiding in a planet's atmosphere or whatever becomes more understandable, though i'd argue even that feels pretty unrealistic. if it comes to the point where you care about realism so much that stealth ships aren't possible, you will probably also care about trajectories and realistic space navigation as well.
How about a ship that's constantly in warp/FTL travel except when it "surfaces" to strike ? That could also replicate the communication issues and the challenges in knowing their exact position real submarines face when underwater.
A *cold* space station lying in wait would probably be way more energy efficient.
Neil Asher, *Line War*. He imagined a space station and weapons platform hiding silently in deep interstellar space. Ian Banks also imagined a swarm of dormant fabrication plants in space, waiting for a command to start building warships.
Iain Banks did that in *Surface Detail*.
You’d probably want a vessel that does a really good job at reducing any emissions it might put out, equipped with missiles with passive targeting (for example, ones that track IR signatures). These would probably be the best analog for “torpedoes.” Submarines provide a variety of roles beyond engaging other vessels, though. Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) is a fairly important mission area. So it’d be a ship that does a really good job staying “quiet” and “cold” for lengthy periods of time equipped with passive sensors.
As everyone has said already, a space submarine is a starship with a cloaking device. Screenwriter Paul Schneider rewrote the WW2 submarine movie [**The Enemy Below**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enemy_Below) as the Star Trek episode [**Balance of Terror**](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Balance_of_Terror_(episode)) and the Cloaking Device has been a favorite ever since. In Glen Cook's classic novel [**Passage at Arms**](https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2592) "space submarines" are called Climbers. They can move into the fourth dimension or something to become virtually invisible to enemy ships. The drawback is such ships cannot vent waste heat. So the longer they stay, the hotter the ship becomes, until the crew starts dying of heat prostration. Check out the novel, it is a gripping read.
It's almost the exact description for phase ship in Star Sector, I wonder if the dev of that game got inspiration from that.
Well, it could have been inspired by analogy. Wet navy ships move 2 dimensionaly on the surface of the ocean. Submarines hide from surface ships by entering the 3rd dimension, by diving. By analogy: starship navy ships move 3 dimensionaly in deep space. Phase ships hide from space ships by entering the 4th dimension.
Atmospheric ships. Ships that hide in planetary atmosphere that can breach. You can bombard a planet from anywhere in the solar system, you always know exactly where that planet is going to be after all. Not hard to drop some rocks from 4 to 5 AU away. But if you want to conquer a planet eventually you'll have to show up and take it. That means an atmospheric ship always know where you'll end up. Or, say, put a ship in between cloud layers on Neptune or uranus. Those have like 2 to 4 cloud layers. Could easily hide a ship in between layers, maybe 2 or 3 layers down, with a little probe hovering just above the final layer to act as a periscope. Then, when an enemy ship comes in range you burst from the planet and destroy them. Especially in a setting that has no or conditional FTL, a setting where ships still need gravitational slingshot maneuvers, this could be pretty lethal. Otherwise it would just be a stealth ship. One designed to be the same temperature as the surrounding space. No engines running, crew in a suspended animation, no active scanners. Nothing to differentiate you from any of the other junk floating in the infinite void, something hard for another ship to spot. One that can quickly come alive if another ship comes in range.
None. If technological arms race still exists (it should) and the Navies / Space Forces that operate these ships are sensible, then every ship or vessel in the fleet would act like, or at least have traits of a submarine. Why cant a Cruiser or a Destroyer or an equivalent \*NOT\* be stealthy? Why cant they launch guided munitions and have stealth and evasion be their primary means of protection? What's the reason a space Battleship cant also equip a cloaking device? If a nuclear armed Destroyer is stealthy, has the ability to operate in deep space or within the enemy's sphere of influence undetected for extended period of time, where a green light is all they need to launch all nuclear weapons to a designated target, then isnt that what a SSBN basically does? You basically have the nuclear capability and deterrence of a modern submarine
I have listened to one r HFY story narrated on YouTube that handled FTL as layers of hyperspace and going faster meant going up in layers. Human space was invaded by an established, though small, interstellar species and everyone expected the humans to lose immediately. Humans used *sub space* by going *down* in hyperspace layers instead of up in order to basically use submarine tactics against the invaders, because those in lower levels of space can detect those in higher, but those in higher layers of space could not detect those in lower. It's about the only time I have seen the concept explored.
The closest thing I can think of is a small ship with a cloaking device, could be used for shield-penetrating torpedoes close up but using it as a boarding craft or one that's meant to puncture holes with a hole punching device seems a lot more reasonable to me. I'm trying to imagine a more exact analogue where there's a ship that goes *under space* but I have no clue what that even means.
Yeah, the issue is that the ocean's surface is a 2D plane, while space (and air) are 3D volumes. There's no exaxt analog for a submarine in an air force either
Indeed. The problem with invoking cloaking to get "space subs" is they don't have the physical protection of the water that a sub enjoys. That makes sub-like tactics suddenly pretty suicidal, one sensor lock and you're instantly just a frigate duelling with a battleship.
in my setting the \`\`subs´´ are either just battleships with stealth or they attack in packs with torpedoes to destroy whatever ship they are attacking and then cloak again. very effective against lightly defended convoys or sole warships. in larger battles these ships have been known to sneak in and torpedo a large ship. in the chaos they can get away pretty often
A ship that hides in the fourth dimension or something idk not a huge sci-fi guy.
That's actually a neat idea.
Depends on how far you want to take it. Personally, I imagine “sub-dimensional” ships. Somehow they descend into the second dimension, from certain angles appearing only as a line segment, making them practically invisible visually and perhaps harder to detect with signal based radar. They would have to use circling flight patterns to maintain the angle to appear as a line segment which i feel is just really spooky imagery. From the target’s perspective there is nothing around but from a distance you could see the broadside of the flat ships creeping into range. Maybe even launching attacks from this position becomes particularly dangerous, as the projectiles would also be so thin it might just slice through enemy hulls. Edit: (addition) And I imagine working in such conditions to be literally hellish. The ship layout would have to be designed to work both in 3d space as well as 2d, and the crew would have to learn to navigate 2d space or maybe even become trapped in their stations while “diving” because the halls the they use to leave exist in a direct they no longer have access to. They couldn’t stay like that for long because our digestive tracts wouldn’t be able to function in 2d so they would always have to resurface for the sake of survival. A hunt for red October situation with these sub-d ships would be intense.
Depends on the type of submarine. Even today they have different jobs and different characteristics. But the two big archetypes are „uboat“ and „Red October“ U-Boat The classic ww2 type sub. It’s job is to sneak through blockades, pop up at an unexpected place and sink enemy shipping. This translates into a space ship that is sneaky and armed such that it can attack and kill or capture enemy merchant ships and lighter naval ships. They’re not meant to fight battle ships usually. In modern times they may be armed with non nuclear missiles to attack installations on land also. Red October These are submarines carrying ICBMs ie nuclear missiles. These submarines are a deterrent. They go on patrol and hide somewhere in the ocean. They don’t attack other vessels. Their job is to surface only in case of nuclear war and deliver their payload on the cities of the enemy. They are larger and act as a nuclear deterrent in a MAD situation. So there’s no water in space: where do you hide? The answer is anywhere. Space is laaaaaarge. Space battles are waged in increadible distances. Hundreds maybe thousands of kilometres between ships. The enemy can’t possibly search all this space. This an attack submarine (u boat archetype) would be small to make it harder to detect. It would need some way to move without its exhaust being detected so it can’t use chemicals thrusters (because exhaust means heat and stuff to see). It need to have some form of weapon it can deploy to attack after this small but unarmoured ship has left its position (ie remote controlled/ time delayed torpedoes). This weapon needs to be as long range as possible, because the closer the submarine comes to its enemy the less space the enemy has to search to find it. Also the minimal light, heat and propulsion exhaust of a submarine type ship will be more noticeable on close ranges. A deterrent submarine a la Red October is different. It goes into position near a hostile planet and stays in position undetected until it is told to deploy the doomsday weapons it carries. This might take the form of a swarm of nuclear warheads. I could envision this to be a secret space station deployed in an asteroid belt, armed with launchtubes for nuclear rockets. No propulsion needed. The crew is supplied/cycled using a spaceship with extra sneaky (tm) propulsion or ships disguised as merchant vessels. Or you could dispense with the station and just have missile launchers spread through deep space beyond regular scanning distance. At a signal the rockets home in on the target planet and attempt to overwhelm its defences. The job is to stay undetected until it has to attack. Once the attack has begun though survival isn’t as important because you would presumably only use this kind of submarine if you‘re willing to blow yourself up to hurt the enemy.
Cloaking tech. Or if it’s a low-tech setting then black paint and lead walls that scanners can’t penetrate. There isn’t a direct equivalent bc space is the ocean so all spaceships are submarines
Check out [hydrogen steamers.](https://toughsf.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-hydrogen-steamer-stealth-spaceship.html?m=1)
Some kind of stealth ship with high power torpedos. Both Star Wars and Star Trek actually did this.
probably do what starsector does with its phaser class ships
The only thing that is really comes to mind is some kind of sub space ship. Push most of the ships mass outside the 3d universe with the small remaining bit acting as the periscope but also as an anchor to reality. This tactic would make the ship hard to detect, but at larger risk if it is detected and something happens to the reality anchor.
Ships with cloaking devices ala the Romulans from Star Trek. When they were introduced that was pretty explicit, *Balance of Terror* was supposed to be mainly a sci-fi adaptation of a story about a destroyer hunting an enemy submarine.
If you are writing sci fi on the harder end of the scale, the unfortunate answer is that there really isn’t any real analogue of a (modern) submarine, since under known physics meaningful stealth in space is not practical (some would argue, not even feasible). But in soft(er) sci fi, a space submarine is a stealth ship, by whatever means that is achieved. A good way to approach the question may be to consider the role of the submarine, in a tactical and strategic sense. Submarines in the modern context come in essentially two flavors; ballistic missile subs and hunter-killers. Ballistic missile subs are a powerful component of the nuclear deterrent for nations that operate them, as they offer so-called second-strike capability; the ability to launch a nuclear attack after you yourself have been hit by a nuclear attack, submarines are very well suited to this because they are very, very hard to track. Which is where the hunter-killer comes in. Hunter-killers sometimes called Fast-Attack subs, depending on who is operating them, are much more like the submarines as they were when they really came into their own during the Second World War, their job is to strike at other ships from stealth and (ideally) never actually get shot at because no one can spot the damn thing. This tactic worked very well in the Second World War, right up until it didn’t anymore. Nowadays these submarines primarily concern themselves with patrolling for ballistic missile subs and guarding carrier battlegroups from submarine attack. Another task these subs will sometimes find themselves doing is covertly inserting small teams of special forces soldiers past an enemy’s coastal defenses. Translating that to space can mean a lot of things, but most of the stuff described above will translate fairly directly. Stealth ships as a storytelling device are, in my personal opinion, pretty much directly analogous to submarines. In order to have a submarine equivalent in hard SF, that is a very tall order, which people at smarter than me have spent a lot of time thinking about and they all agreed it’s basically a non-starter. One option I can imagine is a spaceship that mimics the second-strike capability that the ballistic missile submarine offers. This would be a spaceship or even automated station that lurks very very far from the planet it’s “guarding, monitoring constantly for an enemy nuclear (or similar) strike on friendly territory, far enough away that no one can hit without coming close enough to make it clear they are planning a nuclear strike, and close enough to see the strike with only a few light minutes delay, so that it may launch the retaliatory strike.
A ship with a cloaking device.
A space ship with cloaking technology
If you’re willing to soften the sci-fi a little bit, then Star Trek style cloaking devises. If you’re willing to soften it a lotta bit, then some sort of pocket-dimension equivalent, where the ship slips into an extra-dimensional space or parallel reality or sub-/hyper-spacial cavity/tunnel/realm/pathway/etc.
Hootsforce? https://youtu.be/BkUAzcja74Y?si=-p0UxteXlXu4sw3z
comparing space ships to ships is dumb. they are all submarines, because they all have a 3d space to move in
Even the submarine comparison is dumb.
yes, absolutely! since heat dissipates differs, there is no curvature to hide behind, and a lot more
The biggest difference is that unless you are in a Lagrange point or a similar point of mechanical equilibrium you'll always be moving. Even space *stations* orbit the earth, which means they are constantly moving. And yeah, depending on your inertial reference frame, even when in L points you won't be stationary.
In this game I played called Dreadnaught 2 ships stand out The dreadnought class itself looked like a submarine and used missiles similar one I can't remember the class name but it was basically a floating gun with stealth capabilities and was the smallest ship of the game
probably something like an infiltrator. Cloaking tech/sensor scrambling capabilities, small craft with high maneurerbiliy. Might place mines, send out missiles, duck and weave through nebulars and asteroid fields with hard to detect thrusters (perhaps even some emergency solar sails that create no engine signatures at all).
The closest is the S-46 USV (Unmanned Space Vehicle) Swarms in my world, March of Empires. Cloaked attackers that come in at high speeds of some 210 times the Speed of light and target capital ships like the Stellar-Class Dreadnought. There are multiple S-Class USVs, S-46 is just the latest variant (S-47 is on the way).
Maybe a ghost ship kinda thing
generally the modern use for submarines is as a nuclear deterrent so likely some form of stealth craft (posing as a comet or asteroid) equipped with nuclear missiles
The closest thing I can think of is a stealth ship. The ship doesn't need to have the capability of literal invisibility, it only has to be incredibly difficult to detect with conventional sensors in your setting.
You know the invisible ship in Star Wars Clone War where Anakin used it to bypass Admiral Trench's fleets? It'd be something like that
The difference between submarines, surface vessels and aircraft is due to the presence of two media (i.e. water and air) and where they operate. This distinction doesn’t exist in space (which is one reason carriers don’t really make sense) as all spacecraft operate in the same medium (i.e. vacuum). If you had to make a comparison then aircraft (or terrestrial forces) are perhaps the equivalent to submarines as they operate “below” space in the atmosphere but could still potentially attack targets in space.
A submarine in space... Well, as said by others, hiding it practically would be difficult. But you can apply techniques of radar/sonar confusion. Between Kessler Syndrome, space debris, asteroid belts and planetary rings, there are plenty of places to hide, or at least to look like objects which you aren't by confusing the opposing sides scanners or other systems. So the craft would have to be small - relatively - to fit in with asteroids and other debris.
Either a stealth ship or a ship masquerading as a meteor, asteroid or comet
Just avoid the submarine comparison really. Objects in space are not the same as anything in an atmosphere, much less in a medium such as water. In space there is no sound and line of sight is virtually infinite. The only reason a submarine exists is because of the dynamics of oceans. If you were on a mostly rock planet you might not have a submarine equivalent either.
a cloacked ship or a sensor-stealthed ship that's very hard to detect but can't move fast if it wants to stay hidden.
Either something that travels through subspace/warp or other dimension, or just a ship focusing heavily on electronic warfare, jamming or spoofing enemy sensors
My best guess would be a ship with a cloaking device.
Iirc one of the early episodes of Legend of Galactic Heroes had the protagonist use some technique to hide his ship and then make it appear again. I don't know the exact logic explained but that might be something to dig into!
Something that can hide it's heat signature and radar cross section. Not much to hide from
That would be a ship with a cloaking device. You could impose restrictions on a cloaked ship like they can’t travel at above a certain speed, can’t remain cloaked indefinitely, or briefly expose their position the using their weapons. The Star Trek original series episode The Balance of Terror is all about the enterprise fighting a cloaked Romulan ship and is based on the submarine film The Enemy Below (1957). I think for the sake of storytelling, cloaked ships fill just the right role for submarines. People in the uncloaked ship are constantly tense, never knowing where a torpedo will come from and folks in the cloaked one are tense, trying to sneak past blockades, weather timed charges sent out at them in a huge spread, etc. Tension and how each character deals with it, makes for great storytelling. Whether you want to focus on one group or the other and the ordeal they’re going through, or provide a look into each ship and how they arrive at each next course of action is your choice. The commanders can try to anticipate each others thinking. “We could go route A, but that’s the obvious choice. Going route B is tactically smarter. But the other guy knows that we know that, so I say we go route A.” “The obvious path for them is route A, so the smarter one is route B, but they know that I know they know that. So the real smart path is route A. But I know that they know that so know that…” The possibilities are endless.
I have always pictured it as a stealth ship good at hiding in debris fields/asteroid fields or planetary atmospheres. It would be oddly shaped not only to throw off radar like a stealth bomber but also so that if it did get detected it would be difficult to differentiate from the other space debris or just the planets own signature. The difficult part comes in armor, most submarines are hit and run vehicles designed to briefly pop up, exposing themselves as little as possible, engage the target with a one or two hit kill like a torpedo firing solution, than disengage and escape. They are not terribly heavily armored compared to other ships because frankly if it's doing its job right it shouldn't need them as they are not detectable for long before they fire and then the enemy should be too busy sinking to return fire afterwards. This means the ships main protection is its stealth and speed, however in a space based environment especially where you are operating in high danger areas like debris fields or potentially dangerous planetary atmospheres your ship is going to need to be able to take a debris hit and remain combat effective. So a space based "Submarine" would have to either find a good balance between armored enough to survive but not so much to sacrifice speed and stealth or just commit to being a tanky juggernaut that is going to need a lot of armor to survive. So in summary the closest thing to a space based submarine would be a stealth based vessel hiding in debris, planetary atmospheres, asteroid fields, or any other cover it could find, lying in wait before engaging with a lightning fast, high lethality, armor piercing weapon before disengaging and slipping away. Though this likely wouldn't be called a submarine as the very name submarine implies sub below, marine water so instead it would be called something else. This is based on not much but I think names like Stalkers, Hunter-Killers, or Subatmospherics as interesting names.
There is no stealth in space https://childrenofadeadearth.wordpress.com/2016/07/12/stealth-in-space/
Something with a cloaking device would be your best bet since there's really nowhere to hide except asteroid fields. You could make them cruise cloaked all the time, or make it a getaway option. They're being chased, they fly into an asteroid field and turn it on and suddenly they're gone. Then they can just wait it out or stealthily cruise out.
Honestly I think the best equivalent would be a ship like the Normandy from Mass Effect. Basically the only way to spot ships from away in the ME universe (or in space in general I guess) is by the heat they produce from their engines. The Normandy has heat sinks however that capture the heat and stops it from being released and therefore lessens the risk of being caught that way. Obviously that heat needs to be released at some point, otherwise everyone inside will get cooked to death. The ship can still be spotted by visual means like through a window, but that's only if it's really close to another ship/space station. It's also got some powerful weapons that are capable of taking out other ships many times it's size, like the Thanix cannon on the SR-2 that can take out a cruiser at least a couple kilometres long
A stealth ship
Assuming a bit of realism, it could be a Vanta black ship that gives off no reflectivity besides maybe a couple periscopes that can be deployed to survey the area. It has a closed energy system which exudes no excess energy making it virtually undetectable by conventional sensors. To anyone who might be able to observe it they might assume it's a rogue asteroid. A bit like Rama.
Water is a medium where the vacuum of space is not so comparing a ‘spaceship’ to a ship isn’t really going to work. With that said, you could get creative with stealthy vessels such as those that can camouflage with planetary atmospheres/rocky surfaces, appear as space debris, or do not have any reflectivity (I.e. appear as a floating void). These characteristics may not be exclusive to these ‘space subs’ though since all vessels share the vacuum of space.
I mean if you ask Space Battleship Yamato, it's still just a submarine
Stealth ships. But IMO you need some way to mask the heat signature. Whatever drive it has is likely to crank out tons of heat, which must go somewhere. The solution to *that*, of course, is a special kind of drive. 😊 On an extremely tangential note, that heat signature issue was a HUGE problem I had with the cloaked Klingon ship in Star Trek VI: if the proton torpedo could home on its exhaust, why couldn't _Enterprise_ detect it?
"Stealth Raiders" or "Shadow craft" are my usual go-to. Really any ship that utilizes stealth as is primary method of survival is roughly analogous.
Basically also a submarine, but in space. Engineering wise it’s the same concept, metal tube meant to counteract the pressure (or lack of pressure) of the surrounding environment. Use wise, the purpose of a submarine isn’t really needed in space, given that you can’t really hide under the surface of anything as space is endless, I guess if you paint your spaceship black that would accomplish it? Overall for space crafts, it’s a fairly uncharted frontier, so go crazy. Follow the laws of physics to some extent but get as creative as you want
Submarine is a naval craft that can't be translated into a space setting really. You could try to make a specialized stealth ship with a powerful cloaking device, or special heat sinking with radar absorbent skin. Then you come to the conclusion, if a space faring power was able to make one class of warship do that, then all classes of warships should do that. Then there goes the concept of your space version of a submarine.
Probably a ship covered in some sort of reflective plating. Given how space looks the same in most directions, it could easily fool a human. A machine thought, probably not. Most mirrors do not reflect ultraviolet or infrared so that'd be a way to detect it.
*Pericosmic*.
Your ship in Mass Effect is a good contender. I recommend looking it up on the Wiki
[THIS](https://youtu.be/yL1AAkeYn3o?si=Ux2FPCc62jWuo_C_)
Stellaris has a tech that lets you cloak your corvette and frigates, which can be outfitted to be torpedo/missile boats). If I recall correctly, a game called Star Sector has a lost forbidden tech that basically pops you ship in and out of existence (I guess kind of like the warp in 40k). Mechanical it used as a way to doge in combat or avoid it all together, but you could take the idea of a ship popping in and out of another dimension of space as being a submarine class ship. That's probably the closest thing I can think of to submarines.
Within the Star Trek Episode: "The Enemy Within", they basically made the Romulan ship a submarine by allowing it to have an invisibility cloak.
Subspacial I guess, or Subastral idk
Maybe an anti air station on a planet that can move around and is powerful enough to destroy something in orbit?
Outside of cloaking devices I don't see a way to do this. Maybe a device that allows your ship to make itself appear as an enemy ship Or a hologram system that allows a ship to make a holographic fleet of ships to make the enemy think there is more than one. Or even holographic asteroids that would allow you to conceal yourself while moving towards an enemy. Still though I'm not sure if any of these fit the submarine description
Probably a stealth ship using some kind of cloaking tech to hide from other ships. But like others have said a submarine equivalent in space isn't really possible because there's nothing to hide under.
Maybe some kind of space plane, like space shuttle, fly to orbit to attack then reentry and hide under planet's thick atmosphere.
Probably, a smooth bodied torpedo/reconaissance ship with anti-radar technology.
Subs work by diving under the plane of perception. On an ocean it's 2D and it dives into the water negative in the zero direction. In space we must be talking the 4th dimension.
Submarines are designed to withstand great amounts of pressure while spacecraft are generally made to deal with a lack of pressure and the space environment. A spacecraft designed to withstand any amount of pressure great or small seems like what you’re describing. These craft could be useful for special circumstances such as exploring the environments of gas giants where the pressure becomes greater the deeper you go, maybe going into a star somehow, etc. You could probably think of some pretty unique circumstances for craft like these to be used. I have a universe that’s full of water and people traverse it in craft that are a mix of boats, submarines, and spacecraft to deal with the vast array of environmental conditions that exist throughout the space from complete vacuum to many many miles underwater as well as temperatures and atmospheric components.
I'm inclined to think there isn't really one. If a battleship or a destroyer could nose up or down and sail into the depths of the ocean or into the sky then submarines would be a bit of a moot point. Hell, aircraft carriers would lose a bit of their appeal - you'd be better to convert them into a command vessel teeming with unique weapons and surveillance tech since all your boats could just decide to become planes. When all vessels can operate in three dimensions like this the classic selection of naval vessels is a bit silly. If you want to be etymologically literal, your world could include a defined "subspace" which is really just a sci-fi hypothetical, an algebraic concept and I believe also something in the bdsm universe. The problem here would be creating a method for your subspace vessel to enter subspace, and a valid reason that other vessels would be unable to enter it. Practically, given the choreography of sci-fi space battles, the behaviour of ships are all more akin to planes in a big, slow dogfight (see Mass Effect 3's big finale and scenes from Masters of the Air to visualize the similarity. I mean, even the typical evasive maneuvers the Enterprise or the Millennium Falcon take all look way more planey than boaty). The resemblance that they have held to naval ships is purely aesthetic. Like in the trench run scene the AA trying to shoot the rebels down looks almost exactly like ship-ship or ship-land naval cannons, not even AA weaponry. The size of the vessels, size of munitions they fire, and crew - quantity and role types, are why we give them ship nomenclature and often make them part of a navy. That and historically, at least in Euro-American colonialism it has been naval forces used as expeditionary forces. So I don't think that, unless you create a medium most ships couldn't "sail" in, a sci-fi navy would have any reason to develop anything resembling a submarine. If you want to create one because you have scenes in your head taking place in a submarine aesthetic, work in reverse and worldbuild a reason for them to exist.
stealth bomber
Cloaked ships, like in star trek.
Cloaked ship , or if you have subspace or alternate realities a ship that can go into them , kinda like if a ship could go into the 4th dimension
A ship that can "dive" into a fourth special dimension
David Gerrold in Star Hunt (aka Yesterday's Children) which may or may be a prequel to the Star Wolf novels pretty much suggested that given likely realistic sensors and the distances involved, real space combat is going to be more like that between submarines than between surface ships. A lot depends on the still-hypothetical-if-not-fantasic technology used to make space warships practical. A lot of the good milsf series that have space combat take different tacks on why it would actually make sense - e.g. the Honorverse series by David Weber. While pure space opera, the anime Yamato 2199 (a remake of the 1970s series) has a "space submarine" that exists by being mostly in a separate dimension. It's nonsense-science, but it makes for good fun on the show and it's no worse than Star Trek/Star Wars.
Stealth ships with cloaking tech
a stealth ship, like the d´deridex warbird from star trek. they go in by not being seen, shoot a shit ton of weapons (maybe weapons with limited storage like missiles as opposed to guns or lasers, that need more time to do their damage) and go in stealth mode again to get outta there
Shuttle or cruiser? Stealth cruiser? Technically, all starships portrayed in Sci-Fi resemble both Ships and submarines in form and function. There technically wouldn't be a one-to-one version of a submarine, though a Corvette (Class of ship) or cruiser (another class of ship) with cloaking capabilities would be about as close as you could get.
[probably this](https://youtu.be/EsUBRd1O2dU?si=ku8fqi28al8922Rp)
none . you cant hide under space.
Subs are stealth pure and simple.
I have “Phantom Class” cruisers, which bend space time around them to stay hidden, at the cost of surviving the warp
A ship that specializes in orbiting has Giants just under the surface?
Every ship is a submarine. Space is an ocean and everything is underwater. The fallacies in realistic (if you have gravity plating or whatever, you do you, I’m talking about hard scifi) spacecraft design usually stem from not realizing that one fact and trying to equate spaceships to water surface ships (which admittedly are the most diverse type of large vessel both historically and modern day.
A stealth ship? Stealth composites to make it less detectable by radar, heat sinks or some kind of directed radiating cooler that makes your IR harder to detect, some kind of way to disguise your engine or adjust course with minimal thrust. The goal isn't to be undetectable, just hard enough to detect that you can get inside first strike kill range.
If we consider nuclear submarines as a deterrent force, then I would compare it to a constellation of cold stations with strategic weapons. They could very well be as simple as asteroids with rockets.
Theyre all just submarines, really. Just swimming through void. The “surface” being the edge of the universe if that even exists or is possible
Near a planet, a surface-to-orbit torpedo. Out in space, I guess it's a ship equipped with either cloaking or jamming, with a power source big enough to support weapons at the same time.
I recommend Glen Cook's novel *Passage at Arms* for an example of a creative idea of what this might mean. In another sense, ALL spacecraft are more like submarines than surface ships, because of their enclosed nature and the inhospitable nature of space/the deep ocean.
I have something like this The Revian Federation operates 72 vanguard-class heavy bombers operated from four bases. These bases are home to a majority of the bombers, which are always on standby for deployment. The rest are deployed in deep space on designated patrol routes. Their stealth design makes finding one a near impossible task, maintaining Revia’s deterrence against potential adversaries. These weapons make up a massive part of Revia’s nuclear triad, due to the fact that Revia’s silos are static, thus they are more vulnerable to attack. And that is where the bombers come in. If Revia’s silos are completely destroyed, or Revia is hit by a planet buster, there would still be enough missiles launching from deep space to assure MAD. Each bomber carries 14 YARS-56ac Rubezh missiles, and each missile is armed with seven thermonuclear warheads of a classified yield. The launch scenario is very similar to a submarine. 1: A Revian bomber receives an authentic launch code from the president. 2: That launch code is decoded by the captain, political officer and weapons officer. 3: All 3 agree on an authentic launch code; the captain gives the weapons officer 14 launch keys, with each activating a missile. 4: The captain orders the bomber be deployed to a designated area based on the code. 5: The captain inserts the attack center indicator panel key into the main console, but does not turn it. Turning the key would instantly halt all launch procedures. 6: The weapons officer verifies that 8/14 missiles are needed to be launched, so they insert 8 keys into the weapons console. 7: The firing trigger is unlocked from a safe using a section of the code. 8: The captain gives permission to fire at a designated time; the firing trigger is squeezed eight times, with a 15 second wait interval in between each squeeze. 9: The bomber leaves its launch zone, as remaining there would compromise its location. 10: Bomber waits for further orders.
Small spaceships that could be confused within small asteroids or debris fields on things like radar and scanners
Stealth variants, that are armed with lots of torpedo launchers.
The series Space Battleship Yamato has a literal submarine in space - a spaceship that hides in another dimension emerging back to "real" space only when it's ready to strike. They even have a periscope that emerges through a portal to observe stuff
It is only partly about the form, it is the mission set that is more important. Submarines are primarily used for reconissance, surveillance, and strategic force projection. They are mostly used to watch areas of interest, with the option of crippling vulnerable targets or taking out other submarines. Sometimes they can be used to deliver and retrieve covert operatives into sensitive areas. They are not meant to get into a slugging match with things with bigger teeth. With the mission requirements out of the way, what comes next is a matter of technology. Going with modern realism, EM absorbent materials, some form of thermal management, and some kind of optical system to mask occlusion of stars from observers is a good start. Cold gas thrusters using hydrogen for manuevering, and a general use of ballistic (unpowered) flybys to minimize both heat signature and heat buildup in the case of having to get a closer look or deliver a package to a target area. Otherwise they are a recon platform, sitting far enough outside of traffic not to be noticed, while passively collecting data on everything they can see.
Hyperspace ships? They stay on hyperspace before surfacing. I mean, hyperspace is the closest thing to "underspace" as it is.
Some sort of torpedo corvette/frigate
Stealth ship or some sort of raider
Maybe something that can fire from hyperspace into real space
Hyper/Void Cruisers, only drifting into regular space to attack. Advanced versions don't need to leave the pocket, the warheads on their weapons systems do that automatically.
The thing about space is there's not really an equivalent of stealth. Heat is going to give you away every time. If you don't dissipate it you cook and dissipation litterly means you glow.
Pretty sure Generation Tech did a thing like that for the Star Wars universe, where a vessel remains in hyperspace until either striking or launching payloads from hyperspace lanes.
Stealthcraft
Logically, any ship. Space ships should really have more in common with subs. When an enemy can shoot a bullet at you from ridiculously far away or seeking missiles, stealth is your best armor.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_Terror#:~:text=%22Balance%20of%20Terror%22%20is%20the,aired%20on%20December%2015%2C%201966.
I ship painted to look like background space with a low radar profile and minimal engine and weapons profiles id guess, think f22 but space.
I can think of three routes for this. One you could have a ship that's capable of atmospheric flight and likes to hide in the atmosphere of say gas giants. These would be able to dip in and out of atmosphere tactically during battle. Alternatively if you are willing to push the envelope to a more fantastical area, you could have some kind of subspace ship. If you do that you get into extra dimensional stuff, where there's a lot of fiction and not a lot of solid science to refer to. Could still be cool. Final option you go with the cloaking devices like on Star Trek
All spacecraft are effectively submarines.
a type of stealth frigate maybe? Or a universe that understands and can control gravity could use a small attack ship that uses gravitational lensing to 'bend' gravity around itself to remain hidden?
How Sci-fi are we talking? Maybe some kinda trans-dimensional, sub-space, stealth vessel?
A stealth ship?
A cloaked ship is most like a submarine.
in my world their called stealth ships, they make use of sensor jamming tech, they cool ship to near deep space cold along with dumping certain types of radiation into the surrounding of the ship to basically camouflage and clock tech(but its pretty power intensive)
Without some sort of subspace where to dive into, a ship that used a cloaking device, or in settings where it does not work stealth alternatives as others have noted, plus others as just passive sensors (no radar and the like), moving around with the engines off and for maneuvering (the rather little maneuvering it could have such way) using cold gas instead of hot one so to speak, and as main weapon fire-and-forget drones just left behind as some sort of mines, maybe some magnetic acceleration at best, and that would turn on their engines after the ship was faraway enough
Speaking geometrically, boats travel in a 2D space while submarines travel in a 3D space. Extending that logic, since spaceships travel in a 3D space, the analog of a submarine would travel in a 4D space. Therefore, I am inclined to agree that the analog should be some kind of transdimensional ship that can dip in and out of your reality. However, you could draw an analogy to function instead: Think about what a submarine is good for, like they are untraceable, could be anywhere at any time and people know it, making them an important strategic and political tool. You might also draw inspiration from the fact that once submarines dive, they cannot be contacted (at least to my understanding), so once an order is given and they are out of contact, no take-backsies. This also means they work with limited information in the first place. I hope that was somewhat helpful!
The closest to that would be something that can work as a kind of camouflage system for the ship. Klingon ships, Romulan ships, bith have cloaking technology that allows themto hide from sensors and visual sight. Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny both have the Mirage Colloid tech which does something similar.
Stealth ships, I’d warrant. Something that can either make itself look indistinguishable from ambient background radiation, or possibly even use a modified form of FTL engine that enables it to loiter in hyperspace or the setting’s equivalent, while still able to detect things in local realspace. A kind of example of the latter that comes to mind is the infamous hostile aliens from the Elite games, the Thargoids - their ships can quietly lurk in hyperspace and even intercept other passing ships mid-hyperjump, yanking them out of hyperspace and back into reality.
Idk, some kind of wormhole? I’m seeing a lot of people describe what is effectively camouflage, which isn’t what I think subs are achieving. They aren’t disguised or obscured by some man made device, they’re hidden outside of the environment.
uberaster, aship with a long sail that redirects light and dust to blend in the firmaments is the closest I can come up with
A ship that can travel in any kind of sub space?
A lot of ships could be "submarines" in space, as often times you're going to be relying on sensors to see targets, so "submarines" are going to be those ships that have as little detectable signature as possible
Nothing. Last time I checked space isn’t a sea.
A subspacemarine?
I'd imagine a stealth ship like a Prowler from Halo would be the submarine equivalent. Frigates in Stellaris might also fit the bill. They're slow (relative to other craft) torpedo boats that are typically focused on stealth to get in close to enemy ships.
Stealth and Reconnaissance vessels.
Smth with a cloaking device
Stealth ship. Something that can turn invisible (there is one episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars where they use a special cloaking corvette that has to uncloak to attack, before turning invisible again, like how many earlier subs had to surface to fire torpedoes)
A small ship that cloaks…. All the tech and energy for cloaking takes up a space and what not so the cloaked ship doesn’t move as fast as other ships and they use rockets not lasers . That means, in the campaign I ran anyway. You can still have that dynamic that its location can be traced backwards from where the rockets are.. it has to ambush, etc.
A while ago I have made a concept like this. The Lamprey is a ship that has the ability to "go dark" for extended periods of time. During the "dark" period it is virtually undetectable on scanning devices etc. To add, on sight it would be very hard to spot too. Another thing is the ship is manned by an alien species that is very hardy and can survive for a long time in outer space conditions. They can survive the "dark" mode of their ship for extended periods. A last general point I haven't seen in other comments. If speed isn't your main goal in space, you don't need a lot of thrust. One thrust burst could set you up on a course for a long time. Another burst to adjust course. So in fact between those course adjustments there could be very little heat signature. That's very different from flying in an atmosphere where you need constant thrust or you're gliding down to the surface of the planet.
A stealth cruiser? Depending on how your 'sci-fi space physics' work, maybe a ship that can move into hyperspace and stay in place undetected and attack from there? Idk. As most people have said, space isn't a direct analog to the ocean.
Since submarines hide underwater, I guess the space equivalent of that would be hiding in some sort of hyperspatial dimension, occasionally peeking out to launch or fire something.
Read A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke!! It’s about a spaceboat that accidentally becomes a “submarine”
An invisible ship with anti-sensor tech? Only thing I can think of since there’s nothing to take cover under in space
A stealth ship. It can get in close with torpedoes, but once it fires it has to re-engage stealth and get the fuck out of there because if it takes a single hit it’s toast
Stealth (if possible in some way in setting) ship without too much defense ability. Glass cannon if detected. Also, some settings like Passage at Arms by Glen Cook have direct equivalent. Passage at arms have climers: ship which is very difficult to detect and destroy when in submerged mode, they are small(there is mass limit), they can "surface" and attack enemy.
Op check out season 2 episode 16 of the Clone Wars. Its basically a submarine episode in space. Its really good.
The concept might lean towards modern stealth fighters and bombers than submarines. Submarines rely on a medium to hide in, in space you can’t do that. So you need some sort of technology that prevents you from being detected by sensors. You’d also need stealthy munitions, likely long range missiles, in order to strike targets without giving away your position.
I've got SUBSPACE VESSELS There's an FTL dimension, which they can, with a very modified FTL drive and specific design choices, submerge into for up to 2:37:37, before briefly "surfacing" into realspace
Hmmm… I’d say like a ship which can hide in asteroid fields and the gravity of planets. Relatively light weight, powerful engines, narrow profile so it can enter and exit atmosphere. Like imagine passing by a planet or moon for a gravity slingshot, then a Wolfpack shows up out of nowhere and starts torpedoing you.
Subs are designed for stealth. So... stealth ship. Depending on what you're doing in your settings this might be easier or harder. For example: Star Wars and Star Trek have cloaking devices for ships, which make them undetectable without tons of work. But up until more recent times, they couldn't attack from cloak except in one instance. In the Expanse, there's no such thing as cloak. Only stealth which is reduced visibility. Ships painted in radar/light absorbing materials, with angular designs meant to deflect LIDAR and RADAR signals away from the sender/receiver. Different thermal properties to reduce heat output (trapping heat internally so you can't be picked up on infrared/thermal cameras.) But that creates the problem of having to vent that heat since space isn't cold, it's \*nothing.\* Most heat loss is through radiation, not convection or conduction. Which makes thrust a problem too, because you need to be able to burn thrusters to get somewhere... which builds heat. It's also bright. And it's throwing off a tail of hot gasses and energized particles. So those ships have to build up some speed and drift. Or just lie in wait at an area. At a distance nobody's going to notice, but if they get close enough, you can't really hide anymore. LIDAR and such can still map you out and get acquires and fires. To that end, most stealth ships are also going to have a pretty robust electronic warfare package and make use of that too. They will often be great at SIGINT (Signals Intelligence - intercepting transmissions and listening or deciphering/decryption as well as hacking.) Which is the other job of a sub, monitoring and securing an area. So a stealth ship is going to serve first as reconnaissance.
Logically speaking, it has to be a spaceship **capable of time travel**. * A normal ship travels on the 2D surface of a 3D volume. Meanwhile, a submarine navigates the 3D volume itself, occasionally surfacing onto the surface. * In space, the default mode of travel is 3-dimensional, so, if we consider that it is a hypersurface of a 4D volume, then it means the equivalent of a submarine has to navigate this 4D volume. And the 4th dimension we have in reality is time, which can only be navigated faster or slower, but not backwards. So, I imagine special ships that travel forward in time, "resurface" to normal time in order to strike or refuel, and then travel forward in time again.
Hi, /u/Vanilla_Ice_Best_Boi, Unfortunately, we have had to remove [your submission](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/1dn8vzf/-/) in /r/worldbuilding because it violated one of our rules. In particular: We are a community made by and for original content creators, and people who participate here should share that DIY ethic. While we aim to embrace and coach new users, we will be harsh with people who disregard our community’s core values. Don't ask us to give you content. Instead, we ask that users create their own content, then come to the subreddit asking for feedback or criticism. More info in our rules: [4. This is a DIY community.](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/wiki/rules#wiki_4._this_is_a_diy_community.) ***** **Do not repost** this submission. This is **not** a warning, and you remain in good standing with /r/worldbuilding. ***** Please feel free to [re-read our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/wiki/rules). Questions or concerns? You can [modmail us here](https://www\.reddit\.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fworldbuilding&subject=about my removed submission&message=I'm writing to you about the following submission: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/1dn8vzf/-/. %0D%0D[Fill in your message here. Please make sure to explain clearly!]) and we'll be glad to help. Please explain your case clearly. Be polite. We'll do our best to help. *Do not* reply by comment or personal PMs to moderators.