Arbitrary Maximum Range: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going till it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait for the computer to give you a damn firing solution! That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it!" This is a weapon of mass destruction! You are ''not'' a ''cowboy shooting from the hip!''''
|The '''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v{{=}}sCoHT_cHPzY Gunnery Chief]''' from ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' tells it like it is.}}
Weapons used on an atmosphere-bearing planet ([[Captain Obvious|like the one you live on]]) will suffer air resistance, gravity and other restricting factors. In space, there's no such thing. However, the word "maximum range" will frequently pop up in space battles, which makes no sense. All weapons in space have unlimited range. This can be especially jarring if [[Frickin' Laser Beams|laser beams]] are immediately cut off and bullets disappear when they reach maximum range, which happens frequently in video games.
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See also [[Short-Range Long-Range Weapon]] and [[Old School Dogfighting]].
{{examples|Examples (and Aversions)}}▼
▲{{examples|Examples (and Aversions)}}
== Anime
* Averted in ''[[Starship Operators]]''. Ships move toward each other to get to optimum range before firing, and the first episode shows the effect of distance on the weapons.
* Averted for the most part in ''[[Toward the Terra]]''. Several space battles are shown to be taking place at such distances that the opposing sides can't even see each other. At one point a {{spoiler|[[Kill Sat]]}} is fired at a target on one one planet from the orbit of another.
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* [[Justified Trope]] in ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam]]'', where the second biggest influence on the setting are the [[Minovsky Physics|Minovsky Particles]] that, among other effects, tend to play merry hell with non-visual targeting methods.
** Most other Gundam settings still use similar ranges out of pure habit, even where Minovsky Particles are not an explicit part of the setting.
* Played straight in ''[[
** Friction depends on velocity. Even if the coin melts, the molten stream of metal retains the velocity it had before melting. The specified distance might actually mean the distance at which the coin's material evaporates into thin air - but even then, the result would be a rapidly scattering cloud of metal molecules with an effect similar to a ''really'' hot flamethrower. Still, this doesn't explain how the one she fired {{spoiler|against Telestina}} simply disappeared as soon as it reached maximum range due to the target [[Awesomeness By Analysis|knowing how it works and backing off in time]]. That or {{spoiler|Telestina simply coated her mecha with an extremely heat-resistant material}}.
** On the other hand, Mikoto can launch objects MUCH bigger than a coin; the one time we see her do it, the projectile draws a thick heat trail ''at least'' several hundred meters long (we don't get to see how far it flies). She simply prefers coins due to their [[Boring but Practical|small size and being readily available at just about everywhere]].
** [[Fridge Logic]]: In episode 1 of the anime, Mikoto mentioned that she had to limit herself in order for the examiners to get any readings at all.
==
* Averted as strongly as possible in one of Paul Chadwick's "100 Horrors" backup features collected with ''[[Concrete]]''; it describes a vaporizing ray, fired from an immeasurable distance an immeasurably long time ago intersecting the earth, instantaneously boring a gigantic hole through the planet. At the edges, cities, buildings, pets and ''people'' are neatly sliced down the middle.
** That might actually be an inversion. Any ray would probably diffuse to a large degree after that amount of time. To have the effect described, the beam would have to stay coherent for ridiculous amounts of time.
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== Live-Action TV ==
* The first Romulan episode of ''[[Star Trek: The
** This is because this episode (entitled "Balance of Terror") was based on a WWII destroyer-versus-submarine script. The ''Enterprise'' played the role of the destroyer and the Romulan ship represented the submarine. This explains the use of depth charge-like weapons [[In Space]], torpedoes, and the [[Stealth in Space|cloaking device]]. And of course the weaponry operating as if they were in [[Space Is an Ocean|the Pacific]], with limited ranges and all.
** It didn't help that this was an early episode and the SFX crew hadn't really established what the ship's armament looked like when it fired, so the "depth charges" were shown as balls of light that resembled the as-yet-unseen photon torpedoes despite supposedly being phaser shots (as distinct from the blue beams later used for the phasers). It might have made more sense if the depth charges ''were'' torpedoes.
** This was continued throughout all the TV series, onscreen battles were always extremely short-ranged affairs. Ranges beyond a few kilometers only appear in the Expanded Universe or were not represented onscreen, using either tactical readouts (like in the TNG episode, "The Wounded", citing ranges of about 200,000 kilometers), or calling out distances (several episodes of The Original Series called out distances on the scale of tens of thousands of kilometers).
** The makers of ''[[Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan|Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan]]'' wanted to have a starship dogfight between the ''Enterprise'' and the ''Reliant'', but were initially concerned that it wouldn't make sense since both ships would logically be able to hit each other without having to get close. Thus, circumstances were contrived to make both the film's space battles take place at close range. For the first battle, Kirk lets the ''Reliant'' came up to the ''Enterprise'' without raising shields because he doesn't realize they've been hijacked, which he later admits was a mistake. In the climax, Kirk lures Khan into a nebula, rendering the sensors on both ships ineffective.
*
** Ditto the late 1970s/early 1980s TV version of ''[[Buck Rogers]]'', made by the same production company.
*** Both presumably made so space fighters could fly through flak.
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== Tabletop Games ==
* In ''[[
** In old versions, the spell's range is the maximum distance to its ''point of origin'': a fireball without set target flies to its maximum range and detonates as a sphere—unless something interferes. [http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#range In d20] all spells have an arbitrary cutoff range, and can affect nothing further away than that: a fireball with range of 400' hurled at 399' will make a ''hemispherical explosion'' because the half that would go out of range is not allowed to exist.
** Worse, your ''eyesight'' may have a cutoff range of 30' ... if you have infravision/darkvision/reviseforeditionvision - ''just about'' credible if it was some kind of active scanning sense, but the fluff generally makes clear that it isn't.
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** Despite its... purposefully bizarre physics, one thing that the ''[[Spelljammer]]'' setting did well was weapon ranges. Maximum range was just "snowball's chance in hell at hitting", and if you did fire at long range it would often take ''several turns'' for the arrow to get there. For heavy weapons, "range" is given for the first round, when the target have no time to get away; then a missile marker moves on at the same speed until it either hits something or reaches the tactical map border.
* The ''[[Star Fleet Battles]]'' board game reduces the damage of phaser weapons as the range increases, and the hit roll is used to see how much damage is done, not if they hit at all. This despite the [[Fridge Logic]] that the ships are notionally travelling at warp speeds and therefore speed-of-light weaponry shouldn't work at all.
** SFB is following the example of its source material, namely the original ''[[Star Trek: The
** Lasers, which are light-speed weapons (as opposed to Phasers, which are explicitly FTL weapons) have a maximum range of only one hex - the distance light can travel in one turn.
** SFB also solves the Romulan plasma problem by noting that the plasma is actually an FTL torpedo weapon.
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** What's ''not'' consistent is that, during on-foot segments, your sidearms have a maximum range as well—of about (eyeballing it) 15 meters.
** Interestingly averted in the old Windows 95 [[Win Trek]] game and its clones. While beam power dissipates, photon torpedo power does not, and since it's grid-based accuracy doesn't have to be all that clear either. Just point in their general direction and fire. No matter how far, the torpedo averages 200-250 points of damage.
* ''[[Star Trek: Bridge Commander]]'' is a little better about this. You can free-fire photon torpedoes and pulse weapons, but good luck hitting any target closer than 60 KM (or closer for faster ships or slower torpedoes). Phasers are most effective if fired at closer than 40KM, and won't fire on a target at all if it's further than 60KM.
* ''[[Homeworld]] 2'' has a bad case of this. Missiles and kinetic rounds fired from ships will magically disappear into thin air (or thin vacuum?) once they reach their maximum in-game range. This is especially ironic considering that in the first Homeworld, missiles that don't hit a target will be seen flying off into distant space rather than disappearing. Realistically it should also to be possible to fire such projectiles from across the map and have them hit the large and slow motherships.
** That's still pretty minor when you compare it to the energy beams that got cut off immediately after it reaches maximum range.
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** The fact that Covenant ships have to maintain a magnetic field for their plasma torpedoes means that, if they happen to be destroyed while the torps are on their way, the torpedoes will lose their magnetic bottles, continue moving in a straight line (i.e. no guidance), and rapidly bloom. This is actually done in the novel ''Halo: First Strike''.
* Used in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', where there is a limit on how far away an opponent can be to fire a spell at them. However, the spell doesn't care if they stay within that range after it's been cast, though if they run away for too long they'll take the damage before the spell graphic actually hits them. With a fast flying mount it's possible to travel faster than the projectile. This means someone can aggravate a gargoyle in Icecrown Citadel into shooting at them, run away from it, double back and get fired at again as many times as desired, fly off, land in the Howling Fjord, and finally get hit by a barrage of "40 yard range" spells that just followed them across the entire continent. Admittedly, they won't hurt.
** Something similar occurs in ''[[City of Heroes]]'', hence the [[Homing
* ''[[Portal 2]]'' subverts this at the end. As long as it hits a conductive surface, a portal is opening somewhere. Portal shots also travel at the speed of light. The combination of these things allows for some brilliant [[Foreshadowing]].
* ''[[Mechwarrior]]'' really can't seem to decide what side of this trope to be on at times. ''Mechwarrior 2'' had weapons with listed maximum ranges that seemed to get an unusual amount of distance beyond that (most notable for PPC shots and Gauss rifle slugs, but would occasionally be invoked by missiles too). At almost all other times, though, beams, projectiles, and missiles simply despawn at their maximum range. This can be problematic given the series' notoriously wonky hit detection and damage calculation at times.
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== Real Life ==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20100528134109/http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3x.html#xray Project Rho] considered the limits of beam weapon technology grounded in [[Shown Their Work|real-life physics]]. A 10 megawatt [[Frickin' Laser Beams|X-ray laser]] could quite conceivably kill spacecraft out to at least a light minute... sure, most things that were actively evading would be hard to hit due to lightspeed delay but consider this: such a weapon in orbit around the Earth would be able to vaporize well armored satellites in orbit around Mars when the two planets were at their closest, and thoroughly frazzle the electronics of any unarmored device fifty times further away (over twice the distance between Earth and Mars when they are furthest apart). So, yeah, [[Viewers Are Goldfish|no maximum range, but maximum ''effective'' range]].
* Anti-aircraft shells are designed to avert the trope as described in the top-of-page example. Because AA gunnery in the [[World War II]] fashion basically consists of firing large quantities of explosive-packed steel into the air ''over a major city'', something has to be done to make sure those quantities that miss their targets don't descend upon the people and things you are trying to protect. AA shells have a self-destruct mechanism, which triggers long after they should expect to have hit their target but before they have had a chance to fall to earth. The worst the people below suffer is a light rain of tiny fragments....in theory.
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[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Space Does Not Work That Way]]
[[Category:
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