Okay, let's play the brainstormy stuff here. Since my idea for why short-range battles happen seems to have been largely pooh-poohed, hopefully a superior one is available.
One thing worth noting is that, unless I'm mistaken, battles are usually long range or short range, with little in-between. For instance, the aforementioned "Equinox" 30,000km phaser shot was while the ship was on her way to spitball range, as seen later.
Cocytus wrote:Well, the examples I cited earlier of the Wrath of Khan, Nemesis and Equinox battles featured ships which were attempting to disable other ships by precisely targeting certain areas. Janeway was going after Ransom's weapons array. The Scimitar was targeting the Enterprise's weapons and shields. The Reliant was going after that specific spot on the E-As Engineering section. Presumably such precise targeting necessitates being at close range. Maxwell cared little about targeting subsystems. He simply wanted to destroy the Cardassian ship which had the ability to "dismantle the Phoenix's shields."
Okay, but what of the 90,000km torp shot from "The Changeling"[TOS2] against a target smaller than a man? Or the low-yield orbital shot from "Alliances"[VOY2]?
Indeed, any long-range torp shot could be said to run counter to that idea. However, that does leave us room to argue that phasers require such close ranges, which makes sense given their unguided nature.
However, examples like the
targeting of the power core of the Equinox run counter to that.
Of course, the human element must play in at some point. So psychological intimidation should also be a factor. Your quarry will be more intimidated if they can actually see your ship firing at them.
I don't think I can get behind this one. I mean, everybody watches the other ship on the viewscreen, so it won't really matter.
Certainly this was a factor in the three battles I mentioned. "I wanted you to know first who it was who had beaten you,"
He hailed him, on the viewscreen.
and "He wants to look me in the eye."
After blowing out the viewscreen.
Let's see. The Ferengi capture the E-D with stolen birds-of-prey in "Rascals." (capture=disable subsystems=close range) In "Peak Performance," the Ferengi again wanted to disable the Enterprise because they thought she was fighting the Hathaway over something valuable.
That's actually another example of a close-range torpedo detonation being uber-dangerous . . . forgot about that.
As for the ranges, they were short in those instances (see also "Yesterday's Enterprise" from which the "Rascals" FX were lifted, which also featured a boarding desire by the alt-Klingons). The idea that this is for precision targeting is not terrible.
But going with the idea I mentioned earlier of there being few-to-no mid-range battles, not to mention the fact that boarding actions require closing to less than (or perhaps way less than) 40,000km anyway, there may be other supporting factors.
For non-Federation ships, the battlebugs in "TDiC" were hiding in the Omarion Nebula. Nebulas always equal decreased weapons range.
That one's too wispy for such, surely.
So it's easy to consider that in relation to "The Search" where O'Brien states that 100,000 km is within their weapons range. Similarly, one of the first shots to strike the Odyssey is to the port nacelle, dealing a precise, crippling blow, which may explain why they closed range before opening fire.
I never really got the impression that the Jem'Hadar were being precise against the Odyssey. If anything, they seemed to be playing a game.
(And you said ship-to-ship, 2046, so I didn't include "Call to Arms." Even though we know the fighters to have long ranges, we've never seen a battlecruiser fight at anything other than spitball range. Maybe their range really is that short. Since the battlecruiser was the lead ship, it was determining the range at which the battle would be fought. No one else in the fleet was going to shoot, even if they had the ability, before the command ship did.)
This is a very unique idea, but I don't know that it makes any sense to me.
An enormous battleship . . . a mountain of resources and crew . . . armed with short-range-only weapons? Or, in other words, a Dominion ISD but designed that way intentionally? I just can't get behind that.
As far as brainstorming goes, though, another possibility is energy weapon velocity.
As others have noted, phasers seem to always hit within a couple of seconds, no matter the range.
If we were to assume that higher velocity beams impart a higher energy cost, then long range fire would be more costly for the firing ship than short-range fire.
This might be doubly true for Dominion energy weapons, which are usually used at shorter ranges. But, it might be another factor in why some like it short.
