Trek Space Combat Ranges

[Captain Seafort]

Space is big, but the space occupied by Trek fleet actions is pretty damn small.

[Tyyr]

While I'm in favor of saying, "what we see is not how it really happens," that's just what I like to think. Going by the evidence they like to fist fight with sniper rifles and grenades.

[Mikey]

Unfortunately, the fact that 'Trek fleet actions take place at closer ranges than WWII naval battles is one that I can't explain.

[SomosFuga]

It's the same in SW, B5, SG... I guess it is hard for directors and writers to think how to make an entertaining and dramatic battle with hundreds of kilometers of separation between ships.

[Captain Seafort]

It's actually pretty easy, as TOS (ironically, given that TWoK+Trek is one of the worst offenders) demonstrated - simply cut from one ship to the other, without showing them in the same shot.

[Mikey]

At least TWoK had an excuse... they weren't trying to get that close, they just couldn't tell where they were going.

[Captain Seafort]

At least TWoK had an excuse... they weren't trying to get that close, they just couldn't tell where they were going.

IU they did, but OOU the whole point of the nebula was to provide that excuse, which gets the writers one or two points for considering the issue but not enough to compensate for the concept of a visual-range space battle.

[kostmayer]

In TWOK they would have had to have been closer then usual in order to hit each other without weapons lock.

Still, the Enterprise did apparently drop 10km when waiting for the Reliant to pass over her - the distances shown on screen didn't seem that big.

[Sionnach Glic]

Personaly I explain the short ranges as being down to heavy jamming in fleet actions. They need to get rather close to actualy be able to break through the jamming to fire with any accuracy.

[Mikey]

I'm not thrilled with that explanation, but it's as good as any.

[Graham Kennedy]

I chalk it up to special effects contrivances myself. I have no problem believing that the ships are "really" a thousand times further apart than they are shown.

[Mikey]

I chalk it up to special effects contrivances myself. I have no problem believing that the ships are "really" a thousand times further apart than they are shown.

That would be my thought as well, but I hate having to explain away SoD issues.

[Sionnach Glic]

The problem with that explaination is that it contradicts some things. For example, how can ships ram each other if they're tens of thousands of KMs away? They'd be targetted and destroyed long before they could impact as soon as they moved away from the main fleet, and the target ship has ample time to move out of the way.

Also, didn't we at one point explicitly hear Sisko order his ships to hold fire until they reaced a few hundred metres or so range? Why would he do that if the enemy was shooting at him from tens of thousands of kilometres away?

[Lt. Staplic]

to add some validity to GK's opinion, the third deminsion can really throw you, when looking through a 2D window. my 3D design program (google sketchup) doesn't always put you on the correct plane, and so there will be times when your drawing a line, where the legnth should only be a few meters, but it's actually a few hundred meters.

[SomosFuga]

how can ships ram each other if they're tens of thousands of KMs away?

how can they ram at all?
of course in some cases like Nemesis they were without shields and already prety damaged but in DS9 we saw dominion ships raming klingon ships at the very begining of the battle and go through shields like they weren't there.