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[JackOSpades]

Ether they are more technologically advanced than you and enslave you/exterminate you like insects at their whim.
or your more technologically advanced than them and you enslave you/exterminate them like insects at your whim.

[Fayrik]

Honestly, fighting in space seems pretty pointless right now. We have two technologies that could possibly work as weapons, and none of it involves any dogfighting.

Option A has been stated a few times already, though I'm going to go over it just to show how the similarities line up with B.
A: You have a spaceship equivalent of a Frigate or Destroyer that can fire slug projectiles out of a rail gun. The battle would probably play out like a regular ship battle, the two trying to line each other up while trying to dodge the opposing side's shots.
B: You use low wield nuclear cruse missiles. This, I imagine, is probably the more effective method of fighting in space. You fire a missile, it conveniently places itself in the other ship's parking orbit then synchronizes itself until it's in range to detonate. The issue with this is the fact that, while the missile can adjust itself for miscalculations, if the other ship spots it, they can very easily evade.
That said, I tried developing a small game on this concept. Sort of, battleships in space.

[Loud Whispers]

A: You have a spaceship equivalent of a Frigate or Destroyer that can fire slug projectiles out of a rail gun. The battle would probably play out like a regular ship battle, the two trying to line each other up while trying to dodge the opposing side's shots.

This is not how regular ship battle works ;-;

[PTTG??]

Ether they are more technologically advanced than you and enslave you/exterminate you like insects at their whim.
or your more technologically advanced than them and you enslave you/exterminate them like insects at your whim.

Humans tend to fight other humans a lot too.

[RedWarrior0]

A: You have a spaceship equivalent of a Frigate or Destroyer that can fire slug projectiles out of a rail gun. The battle would probably play out like a regular ship battle, the two trying to line each other up while trying to dodge the opposing side's shots.

This is not how regular ship battle works ;-;

Well, nowadays, regular ship battles involve airplanes going over and blowing ships up. Old-time ship battles, except that here it's a single main weapon rather than a broadside, which makes sense: A broadside might have been enough to sink or decommission an enemy vessel, and two probably would. A single cannon shot would need to get lucky. With a space vessel, the damage from a single shot would more likely than not utterly unmake an enemy ship upon impact.

[misko27]

A: You have a spaceship equivalent of a Frigate or Destroyer that can fire slug projectiles out of a rail gun. The battle would probably play out like a regular ship battle, the two trying to line each other up while trying to dodge the opposing side's shots.

This is not how regular ship battle works ;-;

Well, nowadays, regular ship battles involve airplanes going over and blowing ships up. Old-time ship battles, except that here it's a single main weapon rather than a broadside, which makes sense: A broadside might have been enough to sink or decommission an enemy vessel, and two probably would. A single cannon shot would need to get lucky. With a space vessel, the damage from a single shot would more likely than not utterly unmake an enemy ship upon impact.

Then a fleet of powerful, disposable ships seems to be a good idea then.

[Flare]

I've reconsidered my coffee cup comment. After holding one I realized that there may not be enough mass for it to obliterate a metropolis what with it weighing a few grams.

It has to be filled with coffee first.

[Itnetlolor]

A: You have a spaceship equivalent of a Frigate or Destroyer that can fire slug projectiles out of a rail gun. The battle would probably play out like a regular ship battle, the two trying to line each other up while trying to dodge the opposing side's shots.

This is not how regular ship battle works ;-;

I'd say it would work more like a 10^10x10^10x10^10 game of battleship.

[Loud Whispers]

A: You have a spaceship equivalent of a Frigate or Destroyer that can fire slug projectiles out of a rail gun. The battle would probably play out like a regular ship battle, the two trying to line each other up while trying to dodge the opposing side's shots.

This is not how regular ship battle works ;-;

I'd say it would work more like a 10^10x10^10x10^10 game of battleship.

And each ship, plane, commando, submarine and everything in between gets a simultaneous turn. The rules also are written entirely in its own language.
The language changes every hour.

[Scoops Novel]

Can anything survive a relativistic impact which actually has something to be hit?

[RedKing]

Can anything survive a materialistic impact which actually has something to be hit?

I'm assuming you meant relativistic. And barring some kind of advanced defensive mechanism, unlikely. Though with small enough projectiles, it's potentially possible. A 1m-diameter iron sphere travelling at 299,000 km/s (0.9974c) would have an impact energy of roughly 44,000 megatons. A ship is going to be dust after a hit like that. A planet with an atmosphere, not so much, although it's going to make one hell of an airburst.

The bigger question is whether the energy required to accelerate a 1m projectile to 0.9974c would be worth a 44,000 megaton impact, or whether there might be a more efficient use for all that energy. Not to mention the problem of missed shots, as immortalized by the Gunnery Chief in ME2:

GUNNERY CHIEF
This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferrous slug. Feel the weight. Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3 percent of light speed. It impacts with the force of a 38-kilotomb bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space. Now! Serviceman Burnside! What is Newton's First Law?

FIRST RECRUIT
Sir! A object in motion stays in motion, sir!

GUNNERY CHIEF
No credit for partial answers, maggot!

FIRST RECRUIT
Sir! Unless acted on by an outside force, sir!

GUNNERY CHIEF
Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this husk of metal, it keeps going till it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you're ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait for the computer to give you a damn firing solution! That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it!" This is a weapon of mass destruction. You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip!

[10ebbor10]

Oh my god particles. Elementary particles at 0.99c entering the athmosphere. That's a single proton packing the same kinetic energy as a baseball(at 100km/h).

Nevertheless, we survived plenty of those.

[PTTG??]

Whenever people talk about space combat, they pretend that war is all about the total wattage you can apply to the enemy force. In some senses, it is, but it's only a small part of the equation. Just because the US can apply 10k times the wattage of the average camel-riding hick, doesn't mean that that hick can't hide someplace for a decade.

One potential space war consists of basically blowing up shrapnel bombs in geosynchronous orbit... or backwards geosynchronous orbit.

Then, while every GPS device on the planet dies, you get a rowboat full of "x" into some tactically significant place "y".

[TheBronzePickle]

Deception is, once again, a lot harder to do in space. It's really hard to camouflage yourself when you're essentially glowing. Electronic Warfare will probably be nastier than ever.

As for projectiles, we'll hardly need relativistic speeds to make projectiles that can kill enemy ships, so we probably won't bother. At one thousandth of the speed of light, we could probably shoot someone inside NORAD through the mountainside, and I'd imagine we'll be using hunks of metal a lot bigger than bullets.

[Flare]

Deception is, once again, a lot harder to do in space. It's really hard to camouflage yourself when you're essentially glowing. Electronic Warfare will probably be nastier than ever.

Yeah, hiding won't be much of an option if you want ships that actually do something. Avoiding a lock or getting hit is by far much easier though. To quote another webpage:

And don't think that lasers will automatically hit their targets either. There are many factors that can cause a miss. Off the top of his head, Dr. John Schilling mentions:

Uncertain target location due to finite sensor resolution
Uncertain target motion due to sensor glint or shape effects
Sensor boresight error due to finite manufacturing tolerances
Target motion during sensor integration time
Analog-to-digital conversion errors of sensor data
Software errors in fire control system
Hardware errors in fire control system
Digital-to-analog conversion errors of gunlaying servo commands
Target motion during weapon aiming time
Weapon boresight error due to finite manufacturing tolerances
Weapon structural distortion due to inertial effects of rapid slew
Weapon structural distortion due to external or internal vibration
Weapon structural distortion due to thermal expansion during firing
And we haven't even begun to include target countermeasures...