EVE Fiction

As far as I know, yes, the weapons are relatively short ranged even in lore. The only exception I can think of is the weapons of the Jove Mothership in Vak'Atioth that was firing from "seemingly out of nowhere" (whether this means it could cloak and fire when cloaked, or simply just really far away is up to debate I guess). But there is a seemingly logical explanation for this, I might be mixing up some other franchises technobabble in my head, but there would be something like a "lightspeed barrier" meaning that your sensors could not accurately tell where enemy vessels were in space beyond certain ranges, and of course with space being 3 dimensional this means predicting where your enemy will be is harder than it would be on land or the surface of the sea.

Other factor is that aside from certain missiles, all other weapon systems are "dumb-fire" and cannot correct their trajectory after firing. Lasers cannot keep their beams coherent enough to do noticeable damage beyond certain ranges. depending on the focusing crystal they use.

As for the orbital bombardment thing, I'm not sure either what's up with the planetary ranges. To me it would seem the beacon that tells your range from an orbital body is infact somewhere in the middle of the planet's core or at least lower mantle, not anywhere near the ground level at least.

Its 200 km considered extensive maybe against star trek where most of the battles happen at visual range haha but excluding that idk

Star Trek weapon ranges wary greatly, but actually are several thousands to several hundred thousand kilometers. Of course at these ranges the combat wouldn't be very visually engaging which is why we almost always see knife-fight standoffs in the series and movies.

Don't forget speeds! In the original series the Enterprise would engage enemies at warp speeds and sometimes from hundreds or thousands of kilometres away as they closed in.

To be fair, the only other Sci-Fi universe i've ever seen with the ranges like EVE has been Warhammer 40,000, which usually has fights from as close as brawling fights in EVE to farther than the farthest snipers in EVE. Otherwise, it doesn't look very cool on screen if you can't even see the other ship when you're shooting at it.

Engaging at warp speeds doesn't necessarily mean they were fighting at great distance or with tracking that had to deal with quickly moving targets. What matters is relative speed to target, for instance chasing someone or being chased while in warp could easily still mean firing taking place over a short distance and at a low relative speed.

Mass Effect has an exchange in one of the games which I think might shed some light on the short weapon ranges in EVE:



Considering that EVE ships are very maneuverable and that sensors are limited by the speed of light, it stands to reason that EVE ships may have not be allowed to fire unless a firing solution is 100% accurate to avoid collateral damage.

Firstly, ranges of a kilometer on a frigate-sized platform is a lot longer than modern weapons.

Secondly, ships have things like point defenses and maneuvering that can render any shot useless if given enough travel time, and at far enough ranges can probably foil perfect sensor lock so even lasers aren't necessarily a free hit.

Thirdly, stacking enough predicative AI in your ship to solve the second problem means that it will inevitably turn into a rogue drone, tell you to bugger off, detonate your pod, and fly off to become a Russian miner. Automation == BAD in Eve, that's the entire reason that Capsuleers are a thing. We're the only way to get a decent control system into place without it joining the collective or otherwise divorcing itself from human concerns entirely.

(Yes, capsuleers are actually an improvement over the logical alternative, explaining why the Empires keep making us and put up with so much of our crap beyond the mutually assured destruction aspect.)

Uh, rail guns in EVE work exactly like that. It's just that that projectiles are missing the other ship and continue onward into the void forever. Remember, at maximum fall-off you have only 50% chance to hit and after that the chance to hit something rushes down to zero at fall-off x2.

The same problem you encounter in EVE would also turn up in real life: How the hell do you want to hit a moving object across stellar distances? Rail guns are even worse than lasers, because energy weapons at least send energy beams at the speed of light.

Rail gun projectiles are far slower and lack any kind of targeting AI you could cram into missiles. One could argue it should be possible to fight at million miles+ ranges, but in truth it could turn out hitting something at those ranges is an unsolvable problem.

Realistically, drones and missiles with their ability to adjust course to the enemy's ship are the only true long-range weapons. Lasers and other direct fire weapons can certainly shoot out far longer than we can see in EVE, but we can't hit anything at those ranges, so the true range is irrelevant.

If shooting from France to England is short ranged.