I'm not talking about what's an ideal weapon. I'm talking about within what we've seen on screen so far, the launchers makings some sort of energy weapon on the spot is the only thing that makes sense. This would introduce a believable bottleneck and explain away all the times ships was about to be destroyed, but they couldn't use torpedos.
I'm sorry, but your argument makes no sense to me. A finite supply of physical torpedoes is an entirely believable bottleneck. A quick web search suggests that the typical number of torpedoes a submarine is carrying aboard it at any one time is generally somewhere in the range of 24 to 36, whereas a US Navy battleship might typically have something like 48 missiles. That's all. Not 10,000, just a few dozen at a time on any given ship. Torpedoes and missiles are a finite resource for a vessel in real life. They're finite
because they're physical objects that have weight and volume, so that you can only carry so many of them on a single ship. And that means they can be used up far more quickly than energy weapons like phasers that don't expend ammo but can be recharged indefinitely as long as ship's power holds out. So your reasoning is completely backward. It's
harder to justify a finite supply for an energy weapon than for a physical weapon.
Another example I forgot to list above would be Yesterday's Enterprise for example. They fire off 5 torps and then let themselves be pounded into oblivion. Why? To save torpedos because there aren't enough? Makes no sense to me.
Lots of things about Trek space battles make no sense. They're meant to be entertaining light shows, not realistic wargame scenarios. And even if the writer does work out plausible details, portions of the battle may be cut out in editing to save time or money. But it makes no more sense if torpedoes are energy weapons.
Again, I think you are reaching with the scarcity argument. Not only do we know the ship had plenty of torps, but didn't use them even though there is an imminent destruction at hand, but after 100+ years of them being around, it's hard to believe they are still hard to manufacture. They contain 2 kg of antimatter, it's not that much for a ship that carries massive tanks of it for the main reactor.
Where are you getting that 2 kg figure from? That's frankly an insane amount. That would produce
an 86-megaton explosion. The largest nuclear weapon ever detonated was only 50 megatons; the most powerful ever detonated by the US only 15. There's no sensible reason to put two whole kilograms of antimatter in a torpedo unless you were planning to blow up an island or an asteroid or something. Whatever source you got that from, they clearly don't know their physics.
And yes, the ship has those antimatter tanks
for the main reactor. So if the ship is stranded in the Delta Quadrant and needs its warp engines to get home, it would be foolhardy to squander the engines' fuel supply on profligate use of weapons. It makes enormous sense for them to avoid using more antimatter than they need to -- aside from the obvious fact that Starfleet rules of engagement demand that only the minimum necessary force be used in any situation, and that violence be avoided altogether if possible.
Scarcity is simply not a logical explanation and Voyager strangely goes to prove my point: they must have refueled their antimatter tanks somewhere along the line, and that's all they needed to make more.
Just because it's possible to replenish antimatter, that doesn't mean it's a ubiquitous or easily obtained resource. Clearly they did find ways to refuel, but it's not like there was a Texaco antimatter station at every subspace exit.
But it obviously wasn't easy to replace torpedeo as we are flat out told that they have no way to replace them. So as part of the fictional universe that is ST we are told that the USS Voyager has no way of replacing it's torpedeos, so they have laid down one of the rules under which this universe will work.
No, that doesn't follow. It simply describes the state of affairs on the ship at the time that was stated. Given that they were under severe power rationing at the time, including replicator rationing, it's logical to assume they lacked the ability to replace their torpedoes because they lacked the power or the parts to run the replicators, not that there was some inviolable law of the universe preventing them from ever rebuilding torpedoes.
So yeah, it's a continuity glitch, but it's an extremely easy one to rationalize. It's not that big a deal compared to something like the changing number of personnel aboard the ship.
If we look at ENT S1-2 were laqrgely in the vein of TNG and VOY episodic based. S3-4 went for a more serialised approach. Now sure the ratings continued to decline but in the case of ENT the last 2 seasons were better receieved. So what was different about those seasons?
What was different was that the ratings were falling and the network was willing to experiment. Also that serialized storytelling had become far more commonplace by that time, so maybe the network recognized it could be an effective strategy for boosting ratings.
