Trek Space Combat Ranges

[Vic]

When one engages Graham, do the research first, it'll hurt less.

[Reliant121]

I don't think I have ever seen Graham as engaged in a debate in the entirety of the time I have been on this forum.

[Deepcrush]

When one engages Graham, do the research first, it'll hurt less.

[Captain Seafort]

Common sense, really. We know the ships can fly at close to light speed. We know the ships can fire across hundreds of thousands of km. We know the weapon yields can range up into many megatons, at least.

Correct. We also know that, with the sole exception of "The Wounded" all post-TWoK combat occurs at ranges of a few kilometres or less.

And, we know that the real ACTUAL reason they don't depict it that way most of the time is that it would look boring.

Why? I'd be interested to know if you've got a link to an interview in which one of the producers states this, because a) unless such a statement exists the claim is pure speculation and b) TOS battles are anything but boring, despite not having both ships in the same shot.

Now you can invent some technobabble in-universe bullshit to explain that, if you like. But do not lose sight of the fact that that is exactly what you ARE doing - inventing bullshit. I've done it myself many times, it's good fun and all that.

I prefer, in this particular case, to not BS technobabble it. It just sets off my common sense alarm, so I prefer to accept that the FX is exactly what it is - designed to look cool. I don't claim that I have irrefutable proof that my opinion is the One Way It Must Be, or that all others must or should believe as I do. I simply think it's what makes sense. If you want to go with other criteria and come to other conclusions, then fine, have at it and may it give you pleasure to do so.

Technobabble solutions are preferable to ignoring the razor, and make no mistake - claiming that all visuals of short-range combat must be wrong, despite having only tenuous evidence of a very few cases, is multiply entities unnecessarily. You're adding a flaw in the IU filming process, whereas problems with the sensors, such as those I mentioned in my previous post, would just as easily explain the visuals.

I will dwell on this one, slightly, because I do exactly that. Quite simply we have no idea what factors or considerations go into the 'real' process of designing a Starship. When somebody says "but it's stupid to have windows and put the bridge on the top" I'm perfectly happy to agree, but I'm also perfectly happy to assume that there is in fact some reason or other as to why the 24th century folks do that.

The windows and the bridge are minor issues. The complete lack of computer security, and the abandonment of all engineering principles in the design of the warp core, are far more serious.

For instance there is the Ent episode Storm Front, where closing to within a few KM to attack a target is specifically described as point blank range. And indeed every case of a ship firing from orbit at a planet - of which there are quite a few - would involve ranges of hundreds of km at least, and more likely tens of thousands of km since standard orbit seems to be geostationary.

Nobody's suggesting that the problem is one of weapons range - we've seen long-range shorts often enough to demonstrate that. The problem must therefore be with targeting, and hitting a non-mobile spot on a planet's surface is easy enough that a nineteenth century computer could do it.

Then there's The Changeling, where the Enterprise fired a torp at Nomad for 90,000 km away, scoring a direct hit.

Then there's Journey to Babel, where the Enterprise fires at a Klingon ship some 75,000 km distant and scores hits.

Then there's The Deadly Years, where the Romulans are pounding the Enterprise from up to a hundred thousand kilometres away. And let's not forget the weapon the BoP fired in Balance of Terror, which followed the Enterprise at warp speed for a good ten or twenty seconds, indicating a range in the millions of km.

Then there's the Klingons firing at V'Ger from outside the cloud, which gives their torps a range of 1 AU - 150 million km - even in the remastered version, and over 6 billion kilometres in the original.

All of which come from TOS, which suggests that something changed between then and TWoK. The most likely is that the ECM/ECCM balance swung towards ECM around that time, and stayed there for over a century.

Then there's A Matter of Honour, where Riker says that the Klingons should hold their fire "until you are within forty thousand kilometers" as it will "reduce their response time."

However, typical tactics for cloaked ships involve closing to within 3km, per Hero Worship.

Then there's The Wounded, which I've had in mind for most of this by don't know has been mentioned by name, but which shows combat at hundreds of thousands of km - against a ship, by the way, which was one of the only ones we've ever heard WAS carrying some sort of high power jamming field, and yet which did precisely squat to the weapons range.

Evidently it wasn't good enough, or the type (it was designed to block scans of the interior) was ineffective against targeting sensors.

Then there's The Search, in which they detect two Jem'Hadar warships who will pas within 100,000 km, described as "well within range of their weapons" by Kira.

Then there's half a life, where we see the E-D firing torpedoes into a star from several stellar diameters away, which must be easily millions of km.

Again, nobody's disputing that the weapons have that sort of range - they simply aren't used in combat, suggesting targeting problems.

And that's before we ever get into firing at warp, which we've seen both phasers and torpedoes do, and which would do god knows what to weapon ranges.

Again, the typical ranges we see are just a few km, same as sublight (e.g. Q Who?, Treachery Faith and the Great River)

The weapons clearly ARE capable of such ranges. Now if you want to BS imaginary ECM that cancels all that, feel free and more power to you. I've not ever once in this thread said that that's not possible.

You have, however, repeatedly stated your belief that the visuals are "wrong". We're pointing out that there's no need to assume such - ECM has been seen in use, and there are plenty of other things that can muck up sensors. There's nothing of the sort in supporting a conclusion that what we see on screen is inaccurate.

What I object to is the idea that this represents some "probably true" solution and that any other options must therefore be dismissed out of hand.

We're not dismissing all other options out of hand. We're dismissing the "visuals must be wrong" option.

[m52nickerson]

I agree with Graham on this one, why?

1. Star Trek is not a documentary. Pretending it is leads to a lot of problems, and is just idiotic. Even if we look at war documentaries as examples how many of them use precise and actual footage from the battles they are taking about, 100% of the time. Almost none. We see documentaries plug in stock footage of ships firing or planes dropping bombs to represent what happened. No on is looking at WW2 documentaries and measuring how many pixels a warship is to calculate distances.

2. Weapons doing less damage or being less accurate at longer distances is simpler then a whole ECM/ECCM line of thinking.

3. No one on this site is a "lord of what is cannon". Visual cannon breaks down as soon as you think it is anything more then just a representation of the event being told to us. As Graham has stated the visuals are meant to look pretty, but in no way meant to be accurate when held up to heavy securitization.

4. Occam's Razor was meant for use with scientific hypothesis. Not with an imaginary universe that we only know a small bit about. Yes some thing look stupid to us, but if people from the past could see a small slice of what we do today the same would apply. Why the bridge on the top of ships? Sure looks like a stupid idea to us, but is perfectly normal and fine for the people in the trek universe. Most likely because they know more about their universe then we do.

Really the amount of "we know better then you, because cannon or something else says so" on these forums really borders on absurdity. Manly the reason I don't post to often. Instead of looking at things in ways that would make things in Trek make more sense many are to busy looking for some non-existent truth. Too focused on the small thing to see the bigger pictures.

Some people really have to get over themselves.

[Tyyr]

The whole problem with deciding to "fix" Star Trek is that at that point you're just delving into personal opinion. If you want to make up whatever explanation you want to for things but you have to accept that its just that, your made up way of looking at things. I don't care for the way space battles are portrayed in Trek but I'm not going to say, "Yeah we've seen it dozens of times but its just wrong." Concocting some ECM explanation for combat ranges doesn't require looking at what the show's presented to us and declaring some of it wrong and some right.

All that said, I have my own explanation for the way battles are shown but I'm staying out of this on a canon level.

[Deepcrush]

Sounds like m52 sat on a spur...

[Captain Seafort]

1. Star Trek is not a documentary.

Correct. However, the discussion in progress is about the weapons ranges of starships. This involves treating the series as if they were documentary programmes.

2. Weapons doing less damage or being less accurate at longer distances is simpler then a whole ECM/ECCM line of thinking.

The ECM/ECCM argument is merely a corollary to the second of those suggestions, while the former is disproved by the effectiveness of weapons at long range in TOS and The Wounded.

3. No one on this site is a "lord of what is cannon". Visual cannon breaks down as soon as you think it is anything more then just a representation of the event being told to us. As Graham has stated the visuals are meant to look pretty, but in no way meant to be accurate when held up to heavy securitization.

Tough shit. Under suspension of disbelief, visuals are treated as documentary footage. Throw that out the window and you loose any ability to analyse the ships - you might as well declare that the E-D actually resembles a large sausage.

4. Occam's Razor was meant for use with scientific hypothesis. Not with an imaginary universe that we only know a small bit about.

The razor is a tool of logic. It applies just as much to analysis sci-fi under suspension of disbelief as it does to a genuine scientific theory.

[m52nickerson]

Correct. However, the discussion in progress is about the weapons ranges of starships. This involves treating the series as if they were documentary programmes.

It involves it for you. You can say "your wrong because you are not playing by my rules" all you would like. It does not make your ideas any better, or more right.

The ECM/ECCM argument is merely a corollary to the second of those suggestions, while the former is disproved by the effectiveness of weapons at long range in TOS and The Wounded.

No, The Wounded only showed us that a Galaxies weapons could be effective against a Galor at longer ranges, it does not speak to the overall power. For all we know the damage may have been greater if the ships had been closer.

Tough s**t. Under suspension of disbelief, visuals are treated as documentary footage. Throw that out the window and you loose any ability to analyse the ships - you might as well declare that the E-D actually resembles a large sausage.

Well tough s**t for you that the rules for these forums do not say that people have to stick to suspension of disbelief. Why? Most likely because it is an asinine way of looking at Trek or any other Sci-Fi. Throwing it out does not mean we now have no way of looking at Trek. That is a logical fallacy. See what the E-D looks like is a far cry from measuring distances on screen. There is no all or nothing when it comes to how we analyze Star Trek.

The razor is a tool of logic. It applies just as much to analysis sci-fi under suspension of disbelief as it does to a genuine scientific theory.

Perhaps, but since we don't have to look at Sci-Fi under those conditions your point is moot.

[m52nickerson]

The whole problem with deciding to "fix" Star Trek is that at that point you're just delving into personal opinion.

It is all personal opinion.

[Tyyr]

It involves it for you. You can say "your wrong because you are not playing by my rules" all you would like. It does not make your ideas any better, or more right.

Well, when it comes to arguing about something the side that starts with using the evidence rather than just throwing it out tends to have a leg up on the other side.

[m52nickerson]

It involves it for you. You can say "your wrong because you are not playing by my rules" all you would like. It does not make your ideas any better, or more right.

Well, when it comes to arguing about something the side that starts with using the evidence rather than just throwing it out tends to have a leg up on the other side.

Graham did not have evidence? Of course he did. It tended to contradict what the visuals show. That is the argument.

[Captain Seafort]

It involves it for you. You can say "your wrong because you are not playing by my rules" all you would like. It does not make your ideas any better, or more right.

How the fuck do you propose we analyse starships' capabilities without treating the live-action series as documentary footage? Make it up as we go along?

No, The Wounded only showed us that a Galaxies weapons could be effective against a Galor at longer ranges, it does not speak to the overall power. For all we know the damage may have been greater if the ships had been closer.

1) You're ignoring TOS
2) We saw a couple of GCSes take on a Galor in SoA. It took just as long (i.e. a couple of shots) as the Phoenix took.

Well tough s**t for you that the rules for these forums do not say that people have to stick to suspension of disbelief.

No, they don't. Such basic rules of logical debate shouldn't need to be spelt out.

Why? Most likely because it is an asinine way of looking at Trek or any other Sci-Fi.

Because...you say so?

Throwing it out does not mean we now have no way of looking at Trek. That is a logical fallacy.

It's doesn't mean we have no way of looking at Trek, this is true. It does mean we have no way of analysing the capabilities of the ships from an IU perspective.

See what the E-D looks like is a far cry from measuring distances on screen. There is no all or nothing when it comes to how we analyze Star Trek.

When we're analysing capabilities - range, speed, firepower - yes there is

Perhaps, but since we don't have to look at Sci-Fi under those conditions your point is moot.

No, we don't have to - we can look at it from a purely artistic perspective. However, since we're analysing capabilities, the scientific method is required.

[Captain Seafort]

Graham did not have evidence? Of course he did. It tended to contradict what the visuals show. That is the argument.

Actually, none of it contradicted the visuals. The gist of it was that since weapons can hit targets at tens of thousands of kilometres, the battles must take place at that sort of range. This is incorrect - the weapons do have that sort of range, but that doesn't change the fact that the battles are usually fought at ranges of a few km or less.

[Reliant121]

I think I just realised why I dont get involved in debates much. I simply don't care about most of it. Why does it matter what distance that trek battles are fought at visually? I can certainly enjoy a TV show if the distances arent quite perfect enough for me own liking.

As a sidenote about TOS battles not being boring, personally I found them to be slow and unexciting. However, that is deeply personal, so you cant really say its one or the other.