Ship-to-Ship combat in fan-fiction

[Sgt_G]

I'd like to hear some thoughts on how you all think ship-to-ship should work.

As you may have seen me mention, I play Star Fleet Battles. In that game, combat often starts at ranges of 150 - 200 thousand kilometers. Shooting gets nasty at 80,000 km, and anything inside 20,000 km is considered knife-fighting. Combat speeds are typically Warp 2.5 to 2.75, or about 15-20 times light speed (max combat speed = Warp 3.175, or 32 times light-speed). Friendly ships tend to fly at tens of thousands of kilometers apart. A "huge" battle will have perhaps a dozen ships on each side.

On-screen, it's a vastly different story. We've seen hundreds of ships packed together so tightly that collisions and friendly-fire are almost unavoidable. But even in small squadron battles or single-ship combat, weapons fire doesn't happen until they're within a few hundred kilometers of the enemy, sometimes farther (several thousand km) but often a lot closer. Combat appears to all happen at sub-light speed, especially starting with TNG.

I'm kind of torn about which way to go. In the end, I'm not sure I like either description, not really. I'm trying to think up a decent, realistic, compromise of how space combat should work. Comments??

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I typically avoid battles at warp, though if I were then they'd probably be limited to torpedoes only (phasers and other such beam weapons at FTL just seems weird to me). Most of the battles I've written tend to be one-on-one, though there are a few exceptions, with tactics and ferocity varying depending on the odds (such as the border cutter Silverfin standing its ground, getting pummelled by a Keldon, as they were defending a crippled hospital ship at the time).

I've never really thought about distances during battles, except when ships are approaching weapons range. When writing battles I tend to focus more on what is happening inside the ship, the damage they take, allocation of resources, tactics/objectives of the fight, focusing more on the people involved--and of course exploding consoles and extras being needlessly killed or maimed, muwhahahaha!

 

[trynda1701]

In the movies, I always hated how photon torpedoes seemed to get weaker and weaker, and SLOWER! I think that started in "Wrath of Khan", when Reliant fires a torpedo at Enterprise before they reach the nebula, and although we see Reliant about a kilometer in the 'distance' behind Enterprise, it takes about five seconds to near miss her!

One of my favorite ST starship battles? Enterprise against the D-7 Dark Destroyer at the start of the New Voyages "Blood and Fire" fan film.

 

[Tribble puncher]

Honestly, I'm not sure if anything close to a "realistic" space battle has ever been put to screen. Closest thing I can think of in Recent Memory would be the "Donnager battle" in the ScyFy (or however you spell it series "The Expanse" (Good series BTW) I found a you tube vid of the battle.

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Anyway, If you watch the Vid, You get a sense of the distances involved. I always figured real space battles would actually involve a lot of waiting, and firing things and them, waiting for it to get there, and hoping whatever guidance system any weapon has is better than any counter measures they may have (and vice versa). Would probably be boring from a cinematic standpoint Most SciFi film and Television Battles try to evoke some sort of WW2 Naval Feel, with walls of ships, fighters zipping around, etc. etc. which makes zero sense in space, but they sure are cool to look at!

 

[Sgt_G]

One of my favorite ST starship battles? Enterprise against the D-7 Dark Destroyer at the start of the New Voyages "Blood and Fire" fan film.

I hadn't ever watched that episode all (don't know why not). I just found it on YouTube and skipped ahead until I found the Klingon. I didn't see a "space battle", just some threatening moves. Still, the range seemed a bit more reasonable than some of the DS9 battle scenes where ships fly between the station's rings.

 

[trynda1701]

No, I meant the skirmish at the very start of the episode, when the D-7 has damaged the Enterprise's nacelle. Yes, it's close range, like a lot of the more modern Trek showed, but boy was it vicious in it's brevity. I think it counts as a 'knife fight'!

 

[Sgt_G]

I skipped right over that somehow .......

 

[trynda1701]

I skipped right over that somehow .......

No problem, I was wondering if you had looked at another episode!

Like I said, it's short range like a lot of modern Trek, but it took my breath away when it was released as a tease to the episode proper. It just looked vicious, and made you hurt that the Enterprise had been damaged so much by the Klingon.

 

[Sgt_G]

Does anyone happen to know what the longest / average weapons range was in any on-screen dialog?? Any time they gave actual numbers??

 

[wonderstoat]

We don't have the Expanse in the UK yet. Books are great, and that battle was awesome <sigh>

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Does anyone happen to know what the longest / average weapons range was in any on-screen dialog?? Any time they gave actual numbers??

Memory Alpha might be your best bet for information like that. I can't think of anytime figures were mentioned, though there might be something somewhere--maybe an HD tactical display might include kilometres to target.

 

[psCargile]

First you must know how it's done wrong, then how it should be, and then figure out how to do it wrong, but believable.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewarintro.php

 

[TwoJakes]

Any time they gave actual numbers??

The Wounded does, one light second would seem to be the range of the ship's phasers.

I don't see any reason the a torpedo couldn't have millions (or billions) of kilometers of range. A torpedo's range should be expressed in time more than distance.

So a torpedo could have four hours of endurance, as it's range.

 

[TheLoneRedshirt]

Technically, a torpedo would have unlimited range. It would continue on indefinitely with no atmosphere to slow it until it hit something or was pulled into a gravitational field. Of course, a non-guided torpedo would be ridiculously easy to dodge unless traveling at very high warp speeds.

A phaser or laser beam, likewise, would not have a range, per se. Factors such as dust particles, electro-magnetic forces, etc. might diminish the weapon's efficiency. Consider starlight from millions of light-years' distance. Those light rays have travelled vast distances. If their was a limited range, our night skies would be very dark.

 

[TwoJakes]

A phaser or laser beam, likewise, would not have a range, per se.

it would depend on what a phaser beam is composed of. If it is a stream of energized particles, with a relatively short "life span," then there would be a finite effective range. The expired particles would continue on, but would have no destructive power if they eventually impacted anything.