War never changes.

That's not really true. It can change quite a lot. We used to line men up on the battlefield, armed with whatever weapons and armor they could personally procure, and fling them at each other. It was a test of resources, manpower, and morale. Technology mattered very little in early tribal conflicts.

In the classical age, it started mattering more. Morale, organization, and other human concerns were still by far the biggest factor in, say, a battle between Rome and some neighboring barbarians. But none dispute that the Roman's superior weapons, armor, and organizational technologies played a part.

And of course, as history progressed, technology became ever more an important factor. Until the World War I, it didn't matter so much; sure, the rich countries easily dominated the poor, but in rich-vs-rich, it was simple enough for all the Great Powers to keep apace of one other with technology. The delta from one technology to the next was too minor to significantly affect a war in progress.

WWI and WWII definitely bucked this trend. War technologies surged ahead, a thousand times faster than in peacetime, during the very durations of the wars. Individual theaters, campaigns, and even battles would shift when one side made a technological breakthrough.

Inevitably, we developed nuclear weapons. This soon resulted in Mutually Assured Destruction, an effective stalemate that put an end to warfare between great powers. As nukes and other WMDs became easier to make, the threshold above which a nation need not fear invasion lowered. By the early 21st century, America, with the world's most powerful military, feared to invade a nation as small as Iran or North Korea. Clearly, nukes were a turning point.

Early 21st century combat continued a trend that began in Vietnam and even earlier conflicts; war was shifting back to the small scale. Not that small-scale war ever disappeared--while great powers in the Age of Imperialism clashed greatly, tribes and small nations still scuffled as they would do again in the 21st century--but the sudden disappearance of grand-scale war made it seem as if warfare was de-evolving.

Iraq and Afghanistan proved that even the mightiest of powers must scale back to the simplest units of warfare--infantry and small vehicles, just as were used 1000 years prior--and focus once again on things like morale, organization, and manpower. Like it was for ancient Rome, America's wars in the 21st century had little to do with technology, and more to do with military tradition.

What does this mean for space combat?

Essentially, there is no point to advancing the technology of space combat. Here's a quick explanation as to why:

• There's no point to fielding a wide variety of combined arms, i.e. capital ships, medium ships, fighters, bombers, landing craft, marines, etc (as much fun as those would be). Why?
  • Maneuverability doesn't matter in space. Propulsion and inertia aside, any vehicle with a human inside is bound by certain limitations (let's just boil it down: max acceleration = 10g). With computer-assisted targeting, a technology mastered 80 years before the colony ships even launched, it is effortless to hit a ship with such maneuverability.
  • At a few hundred meters, you could paste a ship, even with such acceleration, with high-speed bullets, a dirt-cheap technology. At a few kilometers, you could easily take them down with missiles, which boast even better maneuverability. At a few hundred kilometers or more, not only would missiles still be just as good, but lasers and railguns could make the distance seem like a Planck unit.
  • And lest we forget, at any range, maneuverability barely matters when consequence-free nukes exist. Got a fighter problem? Just nuke 'em. The only defense against nukes is to be so close to your enemy that he would nuke himself...in which case, as mentioned above, you could be pasted by the simplest of weapons.
  • So if maneuverability doesn't matter, then there's no point in having small ships. Instead, everyone will have big ones, which give you more bang for your buck in every department besides maneuverability. Thus, no variety--bigger is better.
• Even though everyone is flying giant ships around, offense is still easier than defense, a golden rule of combat since the gun was invented.
  • You might say "but wait, doesn't the defender have the advantage, even more so in a world of guns?". Yes, but only if he can dig in, build forts, hide in trees, set up ideal sniper spots, etc. You can't do that in space. There's no cover, no terrain, no uphill, no weather, none of the factors that defenders must harness to achieve their advantage.
  • And lest we forget the humble nuke, which annihilated all concept of digging in, fortifying, and otherwise achieving a defender's advantage. If you're willing to nuke the enemy, you win, period, unless he nukes you first.
• Thus, this contradicts the advantage of flying big ships. Essentially, there is no advantage to being small or big, because whoever gets hit first dies.

Thus, space combat is exactly like the barbaric battlefields of the classical world: everybody is standing around, wielding a weapon that instantly kills whoever he hits it with, and himself able to withstand only one hit from anyone else's weapon. Essentially.

So the only truly important factors become morale, organization, and manpower.

You can see why everyone is afraid of the Dekorrans. They breed excessively, build cheap ships en masse, and have berserker morale. And they aren't afraid to carry nukes.

What do you do against that? Suppose 10,000 Dekorran fighters are coming at you with nukes. What are you going to do? Put up your shields? Use a repulsor array? It's a wall of steel shooting streams of lead at you. They're firing nukes like London fired flak against the Luftwaffe. They're going to take the battlefield or die trying. And you can't run--they're raiders, attacking your homeworld, and if you run, they're just going to rape your family to death and burn your house down.

You fight, and you pray that your slim advantage in technology and organization overcomes their manpower and morale. And just like ancient Rome, the stakes are civilization as you know it. If you win, you get to live another day, until the next wave comes, nastier than the first. If you lose, game over; civilization ends.

It's no wonder Abel figured the best solution was a Final Solution and decided to try to wipe them out entirely.

So the real question is: how did this evolve?

Well, something interesting arose. In ancient Rome, as well as the medieval kingdoms that would follow, meeting the minimum requirements to do war required resources well outside the grasp of peasants. The existence of iron armor and horses meant that some block with a pitchfork was no real threat to a proper soldier. Thus, only wealthy landowners (equestrians, knights, what-have-you) were actually participating in this combat.

Much as one expects that in a land-bound civilization, no common person can possibly build his own spaceship, arm it, and take off into space to defend his world. It requires an expensive space fleet, no doubt with only a tiny fraction of the population actively manning its battle stations.

With luck, the first few bloody, barbaric wars don't result in the end of civilization. Those who survive analyze the results, and decry the pointlessness and dehumanizing nature of war, preferring a more civilized solution. This happened with medieval societies, who, especially toward the end of the medieval period (and of course far more later on) at least vocally deplored the concept of all-out war in favor of more small-scale, honorable conflict.

Many instances of human history, including some examples of isolated cultures like Japan, show that humans will tend toward small-scale, honorable (or at least ideological) combat when there exists no clear technological (or other) advantage that would allow them to easily and simply wipe their enemies off the map. And even when that is an option, some cultures too used to the concept of honor (and whatnot) refuse to exercise said advantage, such as America vs. minor powers in the 21st century. (You know...so far)

Thus, one imagines space combat would follow the same model. The civilized worlds would decry the use of "uncivilized" tactics and weapons, banning nukes, kamikaze attacks, and possibly even AI and other overt computer assistance. Of course, even the most "civilized" powers will break their own rules when the stakes are high, so the idea is to keep them low: another technology of the medieval period--albeit probably an accidental discovery. By warrior not for rape and pillage, or total domination, but rather squabbling over minor provinces and matters of honor, one keeps the stakes relatively low, reducing the incentive to fall back on "uncivilized" measures.

And so, the age of Space Chivalry began. The Homeworlds focused on building and maintaining a fleet of reasonable size, and letting most issues be resolved with space combat. The threat of a manpower war still loomed, but the Abelites had a clever enough strategy: using underhanded diplomacy in times of peace, and small, clever sniping tactics in times of war, they goaded the Dekorran clans into fighting one another, wasting their manpower on internal strife.

Inevitably, civilization advanced to the levels of industrial capacity needed to sustain WWI/II style armies. Most particularly the Union, with its backbone of Neo-Terran industry, started building bigger and bigger ships, as pure size seemed to be the only feasible defense against powerful weapons. Soon, warfare became more about resources, and the age of Chivalry was doomed.

But like many doomed things, it was at its height just before the end.

In the age of the great dreadnoughts, the Homeworlds' space chivalry had reached its zenith. The vast majority of war material produced was never used in conflict. Dreadnoughts became the ICBM of the future: indestructible titans of defense that made it impossible to contest one of the great empires in any territory for which they were willing to build one.

And naturally, as there were still conflicts to be resolved, they turned to a more chivalrous option: fight on the small scale. Fighters came into use again, single-seat craft with just enough power to destroy one another, but virtually no threat to a dreadnought. In any conflict where each side's dreadnought strength was evenly matched (which was most), the battle was decided by a few fighters "jousting" against one another, a term both indicative of the sport-like manner in which it was conducted, and also descriptive of the physical reality of fighter combat in space.

In brief: without the aid of "dishonorable" weapons like nukes, auto-aim lasers, and guided missiles, fighters must close with one another and engage with simpler weapons like machine guns. As two fighters engage, lacking any gravity or air resistance to define a complex theater, they simply accelerate toward each other, firing away, focusing all defenses forward (like a shield) to deflect the other fighter's attacks, while trying to maneuver their own around their opponents defenses. Inevitably, they pass each other in a near miss at high speed, the moment the most likely to result in a hit (and subsequent "unhorsing"). They coast past each other, decelerating, only to come to a near-simultaneous, relative stop, turn around, and repeat until one fighter is victorious.

This curious battle scenario is laughed at by students of military history today, but was seen as essential in its time as a measure of the morale, skill, and commitment of the enemy soldiers, for, lacking any lasting and meaningful technology, manpower, or resource advantage, everyone knew that was what the war would come down to. Better to measure your opponent and honorably yield (or demand he do so) than to needlessly fight it out, inflicting horrible casualties and collateral damage in the process, and ultimately arriving at the same conclusion.

Of course, this all came to a screeching halt when the Earthgate War broke out. Drones don't really play by the rules.

So what's the take-home here?

Well, until recently, there existed a Code of Chivalry that guided conduct in warfare and in personal disputes. There is such a thing as a "nobleman", especially in the colonies and the DMZ, where it is easy to become the landlord of a vast resource pool with a sufficiently impressive initial capital investment. Even on mighty Karma, there exist lords and ladies, for without traditional incentives of money and property, the Karmans needed another way to reward national service. The Collective owned all the land, but parceled it out to the most responsible stewards--a system not unlike feudalism, albeit with more civil rights.

And so the Code of Chivalry began, bolstered by the unintentional but necessary small-scale nature of early wars between the Homeworlds. Those first few battles were resolved by displays of valor and capability, lacking the industrial might to really finish off an enemy WWII-style. And that tradition carried forward, gelling nicely with the Dekori sensibilities of personal honor and glory.

There exist knights in the Homeworlds, anointed in special and newly ancient ceremonies by one of several knightly orders. They are bound to a code of personal honor, but enjoy special priveleges, at least in areas where their status is observed. Time was, every commander and even fighter pilot of note would have been a knight, though the Earthgate War changed that. Now, they're something of a relic, a historical curiosity that is kept for its cultural value. The Foundation's democratic ideals are more appealing to the post Earthgate generation.

A few points about the Code of Chivalry:

• It was, at least before the Foundation, the Homeworlds equivalent of the Geneva Convention. Among its tenets, virtually all of which survive in the Pact of Concordia:
  • In all warfare, from large scale to personal, a yielding opponent must be spared. The opponent becomes a prisoner, who is bound to willingly serve his captor, in exchange for good treatment, and the captor is bound to accept a reasonable ransom for his return.
  • Honor being the most precious currency to any knight or nobleman, it is the right of same to demand satisfaction when said honor is impuned. The demand for a duel is a legally binding responsibility upon the accused. He or she may forfeit, requiring loss of property, rights, or other honors as determined by a Council of Justice, or he may accept the duel, and in so doing gains the right to determine terms, such as weapons and location. Duelists must report to the duel, fight according to all agreements, and accept the consequences with honor and dignity. It is acceptable to yield in a duel.
  • Weapons and tactics which cannot be countered in kind are inherently cowardly; to wit, it is dishonorable to wield weapons such as poison or toxins, large-scale explosives (except to destroy materiel or terrain), or firearms of unwieldy size. In practice, this meant that nobles preferred personal weapons such as swords and pistols, and vehicle arms of similar affect, such as railguns and non-repeating cannons. This tendency has largely vanished from military tradition, but continues among the lords and knights of the Homeworlds.
• It states that lords and knights have limited protection from ordinary laws. None of these ancient rights are respected by the Foundation, who treats every citizen of the Homeworlds as equal before law, but the old rights are commonly observed in the DMZ and colonies, and even sometimes in the Core Worlds. Examples:
  • On matters of official business to their liege or state, knights and lords may not be impeded by ordinary restrictions. In other words, diplomatic immunity to traffic laws, parking fees, search and seizure, etc. A fun privilege often abused.
  • Lords, being crucial and necessary pillars of society, shall not be unduly inhibited by ordinary corrective judicial measures. Instead, they have the right of 'weregilt', essentially to pay off their crimes (in some cases, up to and including murder) with money, lands, etc. This right is specific to crimes committed by nobility (and their families) against non-nobility. It does not extend directly to knights, but a knight's lord (if he has one) can extend his "umbrella of protection" in this manner.
  • No lord may be stripped of title, privilege, lands, or likewise without his case being heard by a council of his peers. Whichever liege or state to which the lord owes allegiance has limited power to directly censure the lord; they may suspend current duties, such as command of a military unit, or payment of tax in a given region, but even those suspensions can be challenged after a certain time. To cast down a lord, a liege or state must win the appeal in a court of his peers.
  • Any lord or knight, on trial by his peers and at risk of loss of title, privilege, or even life, always has the right to demand trial by combat. The accuser must honor the request, and either personally attend the trial, or appoint a champion; the accused may do the same. Unlike a duel, there is no way out of the trial for the accuser, save victory or death.
• Most of these notes are specific to Karman culture and its descendants. The other cultures vary.
  • The NTC, notably, rejects all noble titles, but enshrines corporate titles in virtually the same way, albeit with far more nuance and many more levels of hierarchy. It is difficult to argue that the civil injustice possible with their system is not far worse than the "Old Rights" of the Karmans.
  • The Mandate of Zion has a strict caste system, rigidly defining the rights and responsibilities of everyone therein. They do honor most Karman noble traditions, and expect the same in kind with their own.
  • The Dekori and Arcori both have a concept of nobility, although it tends to be more fluid. They have noble houses, but virtually all of them belong to one. The general rule is: the leader of a house is the absolute monarch of that house. Internal matters are hers to resolve without interference from any other house (although certain rights are inalienable, such as the right to trial by combat). Inter-house conflicts are usually resolved several levels up the chain, with internal punishments being meted out privately. The exception to this rule is Vendetta, a state of virtual war between houses, wherein they combat each other directly, usually in a sporadic series of small-scale conflicts. Really, their social traditions are a fascinating topic, far too massive for this list, and deserve their own treatment elsewhere.
  • The Abelite Imperium does not recognize the existence of "nobility", but typically honors whatever customs other peoples hold, when in peaceful situations. However, their social structure is also fairly rigid, with most Abelites required to follow a Life Path ordained by computations, which are usually fairly accurate in finding the best path possible, so they don't have much reason to complain about it.
  • The DMZ hosts innumerable worlds and cultures, with widely varying opinions on nobility. Many worlds are lorded over by literal lords, who enforce their ancient rights by maintaining a control of force, whether military or economic. Others are staunchly independent, promising to ignore--perhaps violently--any claim to special rights or privileges by foreigners. YMMV. Generally, don't go flashing the noble cred in the DMZ and expecting it to work.