If space combat can be compared to something related to terran navy activity it would be sub battles. And even that doesn’t come really close. However there are some similarities. Stealth is the most important one. A starship has to hide its heat signature from the cold background of space. A submarine must hide its sound signature best as possible.

Even comparing Traveller space battles with other systems are pretty futile as Traveller mostly is realistic in movement and in some versions pretty realistic when it comes to weaponry. Even discussing naval combat in Traveller is a challenge as the different editions have different combat rules and has difference in design rules to. TNE is the one which has the least of similarities with previous and later rules. The only thing it has in common with all other editions is the vector movement. This is also another reason that the analogue fails. Neither aircraft nor boats use vector movement.

Vector movement is the realistic way to plot movement in space. Speed is limited to whatever fuel endurance you got, unless of course your Traveller universe got reaction less thrusters, which then limits the endurance to power plant fuel duration.

Starship weaponry in Traveller has seen changes between the editions of Traveller, with again TNE making the radical change, rather evolvement from previous editions. T4 was something in between. MgT and T5 went back to the CT roots. TNE by going to something more realistic changed also the starship combat concept of Traveller. Suddenly, you couldn’t have three different weapons in a turret. Missiles suddenly grew in size and had to be moved on the board rather than being a direct fire weapon with different hit characteristics than a laser. Many disliked the introduction of gravitic focusing of laser beams to maintain the traditional multi light second distances Traveller starship combats traditionally was fought over in more abstract ways. Unlike real life naval weapons, weaponry comes in only two main varieties direct fire (laser, PAW or Meson, etc) or missiles/torpedoes. These weapons work more or less the same way regardless of weapons platform. Wet navy weapons are usually ballistic (guns), missiles, torpedoes and bombs. The behavior of these weapons is different depending on launching platform and intended target.

All in all, space combat isn’t comparable to surface combat of any kind. And secondly, even space combat in CT is way different than space combat depicted in MT or TNE for that matter. The mechanics and underlying technological framework vary too much. Thus, when discussing Traveller space combat it is necessary to agree upon a common reference frame by either rule set or technological capability, and leave real world behind.