Preference for StarShip Battles portrayed at Accurate Distances or Up Close like in the Age of Sail?

[Kemaiku]

While that's true, even the "Battle of the Binary Stars", everything was WVR by a good amount.

Most of the ships were so close that you can make out the details with your naked eye.

Real battle distances would make it very hard to make out onscreen though, this episode tried to have a sort of excuse over some others.

 

[Defiler-Of-Redshirts]

I'm in favor of whichever starship views look most exciting. But of course that depends on the exact battle scene and its detail. Whatever anyone thinks of Nemesis (I thought it had its good & bad qualities), that up-close starship collision did look spectacular and its general battle choreography did keep the viewer's pulse quite high.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Visual effects in Star Trek always have an element of the figurative (distances quoted in thousands of kilometers, while ships are seen to be, like, a kilometer and a half apart), but given the preponderance of fighters and the way Discovery and Enterprise were using each other as cover, it seems like the staging of this one was a little more literal than usual.

Given that it was an AI doing the fighting and we don't know what type of tactics it learned, using a Numerically Superior force of drones sounds like a typical AI solution.

(e.g. StarCraft Protoss Carrier Drone swarm over target)

Given that it's core mission was to capture the AI data from the Alien Archive and it had no certainty of where the data was moved to (The AI thinks it could be located either on the Discovery / Enterprise), not obliterating either target, but keeping them in check so that Leland AI Zombie can go in and acquire it personally makes sense for the objective that the AI was targeting.

And of course the Leland AI had no idea what Michael Burnham was planning, so it can't counter the plan if it had no idea of what Burnham's EndGame was.

 

[Bossplaya]

I don't recall seeing a kill shot from a torpedo in a ship vs ship battle.

Defiant vs the first Breen ship in the 2nd Chintoka battle, the Defiant levels 4 quantum torpedoes in an opening volley and destroys the Breen Ship. That was at some distance as well (though undetermined, wasn't point blank range) as there was a cut between torpedo fire and the Breen ship getting wrecked.