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[Amperzand]

Yep.

It's also worth noting that fighters are very unlikely to be a good idea, simply by being overwhelmingly expensive for the purpose of defeating PD, while not being able to mount heavy enough weapons to be worth getting them close in the first place. Seems to me smarter missiles might be more useful, since any fighter with a reasonable hope of being useful at all isn't going to have an organic pilot regardless, meatbags being too squishy for the needed acceleration.

To be clear, I would consider gravity/inertia manipulation to be far beyond the scope of the settings I talk about, they give you capabilities that render most anything other than grav-weapons close to obsolete.

[Amperzand]

Yep. Rail/gauss guns with maneuvering thrusters on the projectile to let them deviate from their paths once launched.

If you allow really crazy velocities, KKVs can outdo antimatter for energy-to-target, but that's like .85c, so not really doable in a lot of settings.

[GiglameshDespair]

I have no idea about battlestars, what they are, what they can do, so I can't help you there.

With lasers, remember you'd have to be able to power them - and disperse the heat. Heat is a limiting factor in space battles, because it's very difficult to get rid of it. Lasers have notoriously low effeciency, and they diffract like a bastard over distance, so you may not be able to make effective laser weapons at range. A laser works by heating, so enemies with armour protective against lasers - whether ablative, reflective, or both - might not give a merry damn about your lasers for the most part.

Conventional projectiles and missiles, while slower than lasers, can carry a lot of energy with them that won't really decrease. Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space, yadda yadda.
An analogy I've seen is comparing conventional, lasers, and missiles to a policeman's revolver, shotgun, and dog respectively. The revolver is more likely to miss, the shotgun loses effectiveness over distance but is more likely to hit, and the dog will get unless you shoot it (i.e point defence) before it gets to you. No analogy is perfect, but I like that one.

Ninja'd by a lot of people. I probably shouldn't have got distracted.

Mass Effect handled that one well: Due to blooming, lasers are only employed in GARDIAN point-defence systems. They can utterly demolish fighters and missiles, but the issues come from them being overwhelmed and consequentially overheating. As a result fighters and missiles tend to be employed in veritable swarms so as to induce overheating fast as possible. The fighters also carry interesting short-range missiles that work by constantly producing gravitational fluctuations, allowing them to basically pierce through shields. The issue is that the constant increases and decreases in mass produced by such a system cause them to be rather bad over a longer distance.

All the while, railguns tend to be employed as long-range weapons. It's stated by a certain gunnery sergeant that an Everest-class dreadnought can accelerate a 20 kilogram slug to 1.3% light speed (partially helped by the use of the same gravitational effects that the above missiles exploit), and as a result they tend to engage at extreme ranges, and often against other dreadnoughts that aren't terribly manoeuvrable. The more manoeuvrable ships tend to engage in close distances and can easily avoid the slugs from a dreadnought because of the fact they're too fast to hit. The smallest ships engage at distances of roughly 50km, where GARDIAN point-defence systems can actually be employed in ship-to-ship combat.

Basically: Lasers make great point defence until overheated, fighters are used in swarms to overheat them, use gravity missiles to get past shields, and railguns are used by all ships, but the largest ones are used exclusively for whacking other large ships that can't get out of the way fast enough.

Also the Reapers make use of a railgun that shoots a relativistic beam of molten metal, so if a planetary fortification is too hardened for them to breach it, they can instead just bury it.

Not technically blooming, just diffraction - blooming is the laser interacting with an atmosphere.

Pretty sure the reaper thanix cannon didn't bury things, it just killed the shit out them due to being really quite powerful.

Why not guided railguns? Don't need explosives as high enough speeds will drop enough energy to make an explosion pointless. In addition to that, you have the effective range (note the effective. Effective and actual would be vastly different) of a railgun AND you can provide additional acceleration via the fuel alongside it allowing manoeuvring so as to hit the target.

Effectively what I meant with the missiles fired from the spaceship in my earlier post.

Yep. Rail/gauss guns with maneuvering thrusters on the projectile to let them deviate from their paths once launched.

If you allow really crazy velocities, KKVs can outdo antimatter for energy-to-target, but that's like .85c, so not really doable in a lot of settings.

KKVs are often used as planet killers - if you can get to that point, what are you even fighting in space for? Just go build another ringworld or something, damn uppity youths.

[GiglameshDespair]

It's stated in the codex that the Reaper cannons can be used to bury things such as hardened planetary fortifications, though.

Huh. So it does, I didn't remember that. That seems... odd.

[Amperzand]

On a totally different tangent I've been thinking about the possibilities of, while creating a new biosphere, I.E, while terraforming a lifeless world or rebuilding an all-but annihilated ecosystem after intense planetary bombardment, designing "Utility plants" to help colonization efforts along. Say, a "Golden Apple" tree that produces as complete a mix of nutrients as possible and produces a very high yield of fruit if properly kept while requiring little to no maintenance for baseline production of edibles, or a "Medicine Nut" that concentrates compounds good for purging the body of various contaminants in a readily usable form. (Say, activated carbon, zeolite minerals, and some low-level, broad spectrum anti bacterial/viral/fungal chemicals.

[90908]

I have no idea about battlestars, what they are, what they can do, so I can't help you there.

An actual Battlestar is from the (aptly named) show named Battlestar Galactica, the 2007 version of which is some of the best television ever. The term is often used to describe battleship/carrier hybrids.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

So I have a question
For room to room fighting with only boots on the ground, no air support or vehicles. What is the ultimate trump card? Grenades? Automatic weapons? Skilled soldiers?

[Neonivek]

So apparently in the future due to targeting computers. Jets will no longer have homing missiles for air combat but rather their cannons will do all the work.

[Insanegame27]

So I have a question
For room to room fighting with only boots on the ground, no air support or vehicles. What is the ultimate trump card? Grenades? Automatic weapons? Skilled soldiers?

High capacity semi-automatic carbines.

[Amperzand]

So I have a question
For room to room fighting with only boots on the ground, no air support or vehicles. What is the ultimate trump card? Grenades? Automatic weapons? Skilled soldiers?

So... That's complicated. Grenades are scary as hell, automatic weapons let you spray corridors empty, and extremely well-trained/skilled soldiers can be really, really good at their jobs.

[Insanegame27]

Grenades for when you're not already in the room. Automatic weapons aren't as 'spray corridors empty' as movies would have you believe (semi-auto is what soldiers are trained to use to kill. Automatic is strictly for suppressing fire and scare factor).

[Culise]

I wouldn't say there's a single trump card.  Flamethrowers are good for clearing rooms, and making the soldier less vulnerable as well as being more general-purpose, grenades are even better.  Assault weapons, specifically fully automatic machine guns, give individual soldiers the sort of weight of fire that's critical in close quarters.   On a personal level, modern urban warfare also utilizes satchel weapons, anti-tank guns, or purpose-built anti-tank/assault guns intended for bunker busting purposes to "mouse-hole"; rather than going through predictable doors, windows, or stairs, instead soldiers can punch holes in the walls, floors, and ceiling.  If you had to say there's a single trump card, it'd definitely be the soldiers themselves.  Training in urban warfare is key to knowing how to use all these fancy tools, and willingness to fight goes without question.  That, however, is a bit of a cop-out on my part; well-trained and motivated soldiers are a significant force multiplier in any sort of battle, rather than just urban warfare. 

Your best case study for modern warfare, especially if you're considering an asymmetric situation, could include Israel's occasional forays into Gaza or Second Fallujah.  More equivalent forces could be found in the Red Army's conduct of the Battle of Stalingrad.  For a fairly modern counter-example, the Siege of Sarajevo or much of Syria are probably good case studies for how not to fight a protracted urban battle.  The two Battles of Grozny twist both ways.  The first battle in 1994 and the First Chechen War was completely destructive to the Russian Army in spite of the eventual capture of the burned-out husk of the city; foolish tactics, particularly the use of unsupported armoured spearheads in an urban environment (Especially in the '90s..."What do you call a tank in a city? A target.") and a converging attack along multiple unsupported axes led to defeat in detail in the initial blow, and lack of a coherent strategy was crippling.  The second attempt in 1999 and the Second Chechen War was much more effective, though I won't say it compares to the IDF (whatever you may think of their politics, few do, after all); the vulnerable tanks were held back, and the assault to be conducted by trained infantry under artillery and FAB support.  On the flip side, the rebels in Grozny had turned the city into a fortress by setting mines in roads, building bunkers near apartments, digging trenches everywhere and utilizing the sewers to permit protected mobility between buildings (compare to the tunnels of Gaza proper), and establishing a coherent and solid plan for withdrawal and redeployment.  The result of these preparations on both sides was actually a bit of a mug's game either way; the time to take the city wasn't significantly shortened and the end result (Russian victory) was the same, but the casualties on the Russian side were drastically improved and the actual long-term strategic result was very different.

[Parsely]

So I have a question
For room to room fighting with only boots on the ground, no air support or vehicles. What is the ultimate trump card? Grenades? Automatic weapons? Skilled soldiers?

All of those things at the same time. There are too many potential factors to say any one is a trump card. In real warfare it takes a lot of things working in concert to win. It's never as simple as having one good thing.

So apparently in the future due to targeting computers. Jets will no longer have homing missiles for air combat but rather their cannons will do all the work.

Where are you getting this from? Missiles have far more range and if your target changes his vector the missile can put itself back on intercept course. The problem with bullets is that they don't have constant acceleration, so you have to be really close to hit anything, even if you have a computer aiming for you.

[chaotic skies]

So I have a question
For room to room fighting with only boots on the ground, no air support or vehicles. What is the ultimate trump card? Grenades? Automatic weapons? Skilled soldiers?

A shrapnel grenade can be used to great effect, if used correctly. It'll clear a room, but anyone too close to the room will more than likely still get hit by shrapnel; most walls won't be able to stop all the shrapnel. Anything to do with fire is dangerous, as the vast majority of buildings are flammable. An automatic weapon, while useful, can be bulky and awkward in close quarters. A pistol is better suited for room-to-room, but doesn't have as much stopping power; someone with decent body armor can survive a shot from one, where as a rifle is much more effective against armor. If all else fails, decent melee weapons can be a life-saver, although it's rare that they're actually used. Obviously, if you have well-trained soldiers, that know how to use most/all of these things, when to use them, and where it's a bad idea to use them, that's an all around huge plus. There's also a lot more than just stuff they're carrying to think about though, but I could probably make an (even bigger) wall of text for all that.

[Tack]

Specifically room-to-room?

Numbers.

Automatic weapons are a great force multiplier and rooms have a lot of choke points but sooner or later you have to reload and then soviet russia has you.
Play Planetside. Shows that in sad detail.