I believe when the Enterprise is engaged against an enemy ship, both ships have to have dropped out of warp and operate at sub-light speeds. But this is still many kilometers per second. Does any canon or even non-canon story address how humans or humanoids are able to make the maneuvers and fire weapons at targets that move at, say, even half the speed of light? (I know I never heard this discussed by characters on STOS).
For example, is there some way in which human reaction time is compensated for by some special systems? When we watch battles, it is deliberately shown as if both ships move like old-fashioned sailing vessels. In part this can be explained by the distances involved -- everyone has watched a jet in the distance appear to move very slowly. (This mystified me as a kid -- if a commercial jet moved at 700 kph, how could we even see it? As far as jet fighters are concerned, I think they rarely fight close to each other -- I am guessing the combatants are usually many km apart).
Thought: The idea that relative speeds are important suggests that an attacker could use software to match speeds, anticipate maneuvers, etc. would allow a human to indeed literally observe the battle without special enhancements. A defender with weaker armaments would try to thwart this, the analog of shaking another fighter plane from one's tail, etc. But just as there are only so many maneuvers one can use in dogfights between fighter planes, there should be ways of anticipating such maneuvers between star ships.
That sort of explanation makes some sense to me -- so now all I am asking is if this is discussed in Star Trek itself.
