So the Betazed have the Liir problem - actually killing people at vaguely practical ranges is horribly traumatic?
Well,
if we take my speculations as truth, yes they would.
And this strikes me as a logical conclusion. We know the Betazoids are a highly empathic species, that they possess telepathy and can casually read other species' thoughts. We know that even half-Betazoids like Deanna Troi can use their abilities over very long distances (orbit-to-planet if not outright interplanetary range), and that extreme outliers (like Tam Elbrun) crank this power up to eleven on the dial and then snap the knob off.
We
also know that the Betazoids are an extremely peaceful and even pacifist species, more so than normal even by relatively enlightened Federation standards at least in TBG canon. It
could be pure coincidence that the most highly telepathic species we know is also one of the most peaceful ones, but I rather doubt it.*
I suspect that the Betazoids also (with perhaps a few exceptions) derive virtually
no benefit from their telepathy in close combat, simply because the sheer vicious emotionality of it causes their telepathic sense to shut down in self defense. I can't prove that, but the very existence of Betazoids who are psychologically capable of being (for example) an effective detective argues in favor of it. Dearre Nixa probably sometimes finds herself in situations where she just plain
can't cope without shutting out the thoughts of some of the people she encounters.
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*I suspect that since the Konen seem not to work this way, and given that we
also know that being taken prisoner by Konen is a very scary prospect based on some of the Captains' Logs we've read... I would bet that have a lot less empathy, in the normal human sense of the word, than most intelligent beings. Maybe in their prehistory telepathy evolved
as a substitute for the human faculty of knowing how other people feel by instinctively caring and thinking about how they feel. So that you wind up with a species of pitiless mind-reading intellects who are perfectly capable of knowing what each other are thinking... but just don't care very much except insofar as it affects them personally.
This is one reason I want to encourage people to be afraid of the Konen.
Since there was no "telepathic boost" mechanically in the Harmony's combat, and it was all RNG, I fail to see why the Licori developing telepathic blockers should matter to us. The omake is just an omake... Betazoid ships don't actually get any benefit mechanically from having telepathic crews.
My
not necessarily canonical explanation, which is a development off of (I think)
@Leila Hann 's speculations...
Is that the Betazoids won this particular battle handily by exploiting something that worked
once and won't work again- because it's not really that hard, using 24th century technology, to construct a 'jammer' that at least blurs and scrambles the telepathic signals off a ship's crew to the point where you can't get detailed, actionable, tactically useful information by reading their minds. This serves to explain what is otherwise a highly surprising result, namely one
Centaur-A frigate so handily beating another frigate of comparable combat stats.
Basically, in a fight against normal opponents, being able to read the minds of the enemy crew serves to offset the massive
disadvantages the Betazoids get from being extremely reluctant to actually kill anyone. The value of the mind-reading is limited by two factors. One is that it only works effectively at what are, by modern Trek standards, short combat ranges. The other is that most people rely heavily on computers to operate their ships, so much of what the ship is about to do cannot be predicted so precisely by a mind-reader.
In the case of the Licori, the second limitation does not apply because all their decision-making and is occurring within living brains whose minds can be read. This gave the Betazoids a
massive advantage the Licori weren't ready for... But in subsequent battles, the status quo is leveled out by the development of limited mind-shielding by the Licori.
So, the Betazoid should invest in some mind-shielding technology.
If Betazoids thought killing people was awesome and they should be better at it, they probably would do that. Since they
don't, they probably won't.
Furthermore, I suspect the Betazoids are uncomfortable in general with the idea of mechanical psi-blockers, for the same reason most Earthlings would be uncomfortable with the idea of shining laser beams in people's eyes to blind them (even temporarily). Sight is such a basic part of how we experience our reality that the idea of a machine temporarily depriving us of it is deeply unnerving and makes us uncomfortable, in addition to being potentially life-threatening.
Since the Betazoids probably
also rely on telepathy for internal communications among their crews and so forth, the same is true of temporarily depriving Betazoids of telepathic sensitivity during a naval battle.
Or they can just fight at regular starship distances like everyone else, and there's no problem.
Apparently being at regular starship ranges doesn't solve it completely at least in the omake.
It does turn it down some.
If we go with what I wrote,
@pheonix89 is right. Longer combat range doesn't actually doesn't help much with that. Thus, they lose the main advantage of being telepaths, namely having the most sensitive people on the ship being able to read their enemies' minds. But they'd retain the main disadvantage, of being able to feel all the murders they're responsible for, whereas normal sapients do not directly feel like they've personally killed anyone when they push a button that fires a torpedo. Because psychic death screams propagate through space a lot more effectively than "aim a little to the left," especially when you're already thinking about the person who's about to die.
Eh, I don't care for that aspect of the omake so I'm not going to go with it.
You are under no obligation to 'go with' anything, but I thought I'd explain, among other things because other people appear to be interested. Personally, I just started from Leila Hann's idea (that this seeming fluke of a battle can be explained as a "Licori meet telepaths for the first time" scenario, and decided to write a short science fiction novel from the point of view of telepathic beings participating in a war.
