Hmm... melee weapons in ship to ship space combat...
1- Forcefields. Let's say you need hard shell fields for travel in space because there's lots of dust up there, and at any significant percentage of lightspeed, a fist sized chunk of rock will collide with more power than your average nuclear bomb. In fact, if you're fast enough, your ship will be surrounded by a nuclear firestorm as every hydrogen molecule it encounters undergoes fission from hitting your hull. As such, it may not be *possible* for missile weapons to pack enough punch to do real damage- these ships withstand nukes the way a modern battlecruiser withstands waves in the ocean.
2- Relativistic Engines are too big for conventional missiles, and what's the point of firing weapons if the target casually outpaces them?
3- Same deal for onboard projectile launchers- remember, that whole "equal but opposite reaction" thing? A railgun puts as much energy back at you than it launches into the enemy. You can counter it a number of ways, sure, but it's still a lot of energy being put into attacks that could miss, especially when dealing with relativistic combat speeds.
4- Back to the forcefield integrity. If it's integral to ship durability, it may come to pass that the only valid military strategy in space combat is to hit their shields hard enough to deplete the power supply. At which point, they go from supertech to ordinary (relatively) squishy metal that can't survive the rigors of space travel.
This recipe puts you in a situation where most conventional weapons are useless, and nonconventionals cost more power than is worth using. Melee weapons have the advantage of requiring time to get to maximum power, which reduces immediate strain on the ship generating the power. Then, once they are at maximum energy (re: inertia), as long as you're smart you can redirect that energy with minimal loss, making it possible to miss several shots without actually wasting all that energy like you would with a railgun. Sure, you waste some, but not all.
What you end up with is melee weapons as the only valid strategy because projectiles are rendered moot by the nature of near-light combat (and, by definition, vessels which can survive near light transit speeds). Only battleships are fast enough to keep up with other battleships, and only battleships have engines powerful enough to generate energy necessary to damage other ships.
Now... I'm sure there would be stationary weapons powerful enough to be in play... but for mobile combat, it may be melee is the only viable means to direct enough destructive energy efficiently and reliably enough to actually cause damage.
It may be unwieldy and dangerous to the ships themselves, but if there's no other valid method to wage war, then we'll learn to wage war with melee weapons yet again.
1- Forcefields. Let's say you need hard shell fields for travel in space because there's lots of dust up there, and at any significant percentage of lightspeed, a fist sized chunk of rock will collide with more power than your average nuclear bomb. In fact, if you're fast enough, your ship will be surrounded by a nuclear firestorm as every hydrogen molecule it encounters undergoes fission from hitting your hull. As such, it may not be *possible* for missile weapons to pack enough punch to do real damage- these ships withstand nukes the way a modern battlecruiser withstands waves in the ocean.
2- Relativistic Engines are too big for conventional missiles, and what's the point of firing weapons if the target casually outpaces them?
3- Same deal for onboard projectile launchers- remember, that whole "equal but opposite reaction" thing? A railgun puts as much energy back at you than it launches into the enemy. You can counter it a number of ways, sure, but it's still a lot of energy being put into attacks that could miss, especially when dealing with relativistic combat speeds.
4- Back to the forcefield integrity. If it's integral to ship durability, it may come to pass that the only valid military strategy in space combat is to hit their shields hard enough to deplete the power supply. At which point, they go from supertech to ordinary (relatively) squishy metal that can't survive the rigors of space travel.
This recipe puts you in a situation where most conventional weapons are useless, and nonconventionals cost more power than is worth using. Melee weapons have the advantage of requiring time to get to maximum power, which reduces immediate strain on the ship generating the power. Then, once they are at maximum energy (re: inertia), as long as you're smart you can redirect that energy with minimal loss, making it possible to miss several shots without actually wasting all that energy like you would with a railgun. Sure, you waste some, but not all.
What you end up with is melee weapons as the only valid strategy because projectiles are rendered moot by the nature of near-light combat (and, by definition, vessels which can survive near light transit speeds). Only battleships are fast enough to keep up with other battleships, and only battleships have engines powerful enough to generate energy necessary to damage other ships.
Now... I'm sure there would be stationary weapons powerful enough to be in play... but for mobile combat, it may be melee is the only viable means to direct enough destructive energy efficiently and reliably enough to actually cause damage.
It may be unwieldy and dangerous to the ships themselves, but if there's no other valid method to wage war, then we'll learn to wage war with melee weapons yet again.