at such long ranges you could move your ship and avoid a directed energy weapon
But how would you know an energy weapon had fired? Wouldn’t you be constrained by the speed of light, regardless?
Yeah, you wouldn’t, but in those books, the ai of ships have random evasive movements they perform to make some shots miss.
If Star Trek sensors were constrained by the speed of light, warp travel would be impossible.
If their engines aren’t constrained by speed of light, why would their weapons be?
Just fire warp-capable drones at the enemy.
This is also an idea behind the Dark Forest Hypothesis, a proposed explanation for the Fermi Paradox. Any spaceship fast enough for interstellar travel can be used to destroy planets just by flying into them.This is also an idea behind the Dark Forest Hypothesis
I think that’s less about warp-speed weapons and more about natural resource constraints and the unpredictable nature of technological advancement causing advanced civilizations to preemptively obliterate one another.
But yes, the only practical defense against superluminal weaponry would be to avoid getting spotted.
