Averted by modifications in many cases.

Most direct-fire weapons just conk out and don't do decreasing amounts of damage the further they are from their target.

Arbitrary Maximum Range: Weapons have a maximum range that is baffling.

You don't just destroy stars, you can create black holes.

Apocalypse How: Runs the gamut from Societal Disruption all the way to Stellar Annihilation.

in 4, that purpose is served by weapon platforms. In SE3, units gave planets space capable weaponry.

Alien Invasion: Anytime anyone invades anyone else.

All Planets Are Earthlike: In the official artwork, only the Rocky Oxygen atmosphere planets fit.

A truly viable tactic in the fifth game, where a dreadnought with a full bank of weapons and its own fighter escort can be a terror: the dread trashes big ships (like other Dreadnoughts) whilst the fighters take out smaller ships like Escorts or Frigates and enemy bombers.

Large enough ships can be genuine Battlestars if you set their AI properly and outfit them with shields, armour and weapons.

The fighters themselves can attack planets.

Airborne Aircraft Carrier: While you can have carriers, they only launch fighters and then scurry away to the edge of the map.

They function almost identically to crewed ships, only being susceptible to computer viruses instead of mind control. Is a Crapshoot: Averted for master computer controlled ships. In addition any ship can become this if they use a ramming action while equipped with a Cobalt Warhead.

Action Bomb: Drones become this if set up with a Warhead, effectively making them smart bombs that come in Anti-Ship or Anti-Planetery varities.

2-D Space: Never truly escaped, even in the fifth game, though ground and space combat has a certain degree of it.

Let's try and focus on the ones in the stock games, okay? Due to customization, it's possible to find all sorts of scifi tropes in the Space Empires series.

Space empire v mods