Arbitrary Maximum Range: Difference between revisions

See also [[Short-Range Long-Range Weapon]] and [[Old School Dogfighting]].

* Averted in ''[[Starship Operators]]''. Ships move toward each other to get to optimum range before firing, and the first episode shows the effect of distance on the weapons.

* Averted for the most part in ''[[Toward the Terra]]''. Several space battles are shown to be taking place at such distances that the opposing sides can't even see each other. At one point a {{spoiler|[[Kill Sat]]}} is fired at a target on one one planet from the orbit of another.

** This was continued throughout all the TV series, onscreen battles were always extremely short-ranged affairs. Ranges beyond a few kilometers only appear in the Expanded Universe or were not represented onscreen, using either tactical readouts (like in the TNG episode, "The Wounded", citing ranges of about 200,000 kilometers), or calling out distances (several episodes of The Original Series called out distances on the scale of tens of thousands of kilometers).

** The makers of ''[[Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan|Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan]]'' wanted to have a starship dogfight between the ''Enterprise'' and the ''Reliant'', but were initially concerned that it wouldn't make sense since both ships would logically be able to hit each other without having to get close. Thus, circumstances were contrived to make both the film's space battles take place at close range. For the first battle, Kirk lets the ''Reliant'' came up to the ''Enterprise'' without raising shields because he doesn't realize they've been hijacked, which he later admits was a mistake. In the climax, Kirk lures Khan into a nebula, rendering the sensors on both ships ineffective.

** Ditto the late 1970s/early 1980s TV version of ''[[Buck Rogers]]'', made by the same production company.

*** Both presumably made so space fighters could fly through flak.