Arbitrary Maximum Range: Difference between revisions

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Particularly [[Egregious]] in shows where vessels are depicted fighting at a few hundred yards, where in real life energy weapons would allow them to do battle at hundreds if not thousands of kilometers.

This is one of the [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality]] in videogames. Imagine that your game engine takes into account velocity, momentum and other relevant factors of every single projectile fired in a battle. Now imagine you have, say, [[Stealth Pun|9,001]] [[Macross Missile Massacre|missiles]] flying. Add in [[More Dakka]], [[Beam Spam]], what-have-you. Then remember you need to keep track of the moving ships, the effects of successful hits, etc. Computer performance is going to crash and burn if you want to be hardcore realistic about it. Neither are computers typically capable of handling the sheer scale of engagements waged at the distance of tens of thousands of kilometers, and even assuming they would, such battles would probably boil down to [[Hot Sub On Sub Action]] [[Recycled in Space]], where the first ship to detect the enemy is likely to win the engagement by the virtue of shooting first, or a matter of who has more weapon throughput, [[Deflector Shields]] and better damage control, making the player's skills in either piloting or unit management a complete non-factor.

This is one of the [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality]] in videogames. Imagine that your game engine takes into account velocity, momentum and other relevant factors of every single projectile fired in a battle. Now imagine you have, say, [[Stealth Pun|9,001]] [[Macross Missile Massacre|missiles]] flying. Add in [[More Dakka]], [[Beam Spam]], what-have-you. Then remember you need to keep track of the moving ships, the effects of successful hits, etc. Computer performance is going to crash and burn if you want to be hardcore realistic about it. Neither are computers typically capable of handling the sheer scale of engagements waged at the distance of tens of thousands of kilometers, and even assuming they would, such battles would probably boil down to [[Hot Sub-On-Sub Action]] [[Recycled in Space]], where the first ship to detect the enemy is likely to win the engagement by the virtue of shooting first, or a matter of who has more weapon throughput, [[Deflector Shields]] and better damage control, making the player's skills in either piloting or unit management a complete non-factor.

See also [[Short-Range Long-Range Weapon]] and [[Old School Dogfighting]].

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*** It depends on how tightly the beam was originally. Maybe that ''was'' diffused...

* Implied aversion in ''[[Invincible (Comic Book)|Invincible]]''; rumor says that the Space Rider has a weapon whose beams are still traveling through the cosmos and destroying everything in their path.

* Averted in Joss Whedon's ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|Astonishing X-Men]]'': the ruler of a distant planet plans to destroy Earth by launching a huge missile through space to shatter our planet. The X-Men find about this and plan to stop the missile by messing up with its engine. {{spoiler|Only after it's launched do they find out that it's not a missile, but a giant bullet. There's no engine to mess up with, the momentum gained in launching the bullet is enough to carry it to Earth.}} However, even though Whedon got that bit of physics right, there's still the matter that {{spoiler|the bullet}} [[Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale|appears to reach Earth within a couple of days]].

* Averted in Joss Whedon's ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|Astonishing X-Men]]'': the ruler of a distant planet plans to destroy Earth by launching a huge missile through space to shatter our planet. The X-Men find about this and plan to stop the missile by messing up with its engine. {{spoiler|Only after it's launched do they find out that it's not a missile, but a giant bullet. There's no engine to mess up with, the momentum gained in launching the bullet is enough to carry it to Earth.}} However, even though Whedon got that bit of physics right, there's still the matter that {{spoiler|the bullet}} [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale|appears to reach Earth within a couple of days]].

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== Literature ==

* Entirely averted in the ''[[Honor Harrington (Literature)|Honor Harrington]]'' series. Although ''[[As You Know|every book]]'' will include some discussion about the range of energy weapons and missiles, it is clearly stated that the range discussed is an ''effective'' one, that is, the range from which it's still possible to ''hit'' the target.

** [[Frickin' Laser Beams|Energy weapons]] has the beam divergence and on-the-way dispersion that tends to limit its effectiveness at the extreme ranges, but most significant problem is aiming. It's already a [[Rule of Cool|major miracle]] that laser cannons could aim at all, given that targets often move on relativistic speeds and the typical range is light seconds to light minutes, [[Shown Their Work|as Weber very consciously averts]] [[Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale]] trope. It doesn't matter how powerful your laser is (and how many gazillions of kilometers it can go) if you have a 99.99% chance of missing anyway.

** [[Frickin' Laser Beams|Energy weapons]] has the beam divergence and on-the-way dispersion that tends to limit its effectiveness at the extreme ranges, but most significant problem is aiming. It's already a [[Rule of Cool|major miracle]] that laser cannons could aim at all, given that targets often move on relativistic speeds and the typical range is light seconds to light minutes, [[Shown Their Work|as Weber very consciously averts]] [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale]] trope. It doesn't matter how powerful your laser is (and how many gazillions of kilometers it can go) if you have a 99.99% chance of missing anyway.

*** The beam divergence problem is exacerbated by the fact that warships are protected against fire from the sides by gravity 'sidewalls' that weaken incoming fire. At ranges of over 500,000 km an energy beam would be too weakened to do any damage. In cases where the target is not protected by a side (which doesn't happen often against an awake enemy) the effective range is about double that.

** The missiles' engagement range is objectively much smaller, but the fact that they are homing made them the primary long-range weapon in Honorverse. They are, however, limited by their drive endurance -- the missile without fuel has no other choice than coast ballistically, and although much more stealthy, is both a sitting duck for [[Point Defenseless]], and has 99.9% chance of simply missing its actively maneuvering target -- at such distances even slightest inaccuracy translates into a huge miss. This was made especially apparent after the invention of the multi-drive missile, which could launch, coast until near the enemy (even if it takes literally hours to get that far) and then fire off their second drive to attack - giving them virtually unlimited range.

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* Averted in the ''[[Humanx Commonwealth]]'' series by [[Alan Dean Foster]], which presents a wide variety of space-based weaponry, some with effective ranges measured in intergalactic distances. Even a simple ship-mounted laser has light-second range; the major limiting factor is accuracy.

* ''The [[Hardy Boys]]: Casefiles'' book "Flight into Danger" has the boys in an experimental jet with an experimental laser weapon. Since the beam loses efficiency over distance, it's like "hitting [another fleeing jet] with a flashlight" beam. Still gets his attention, though.

* Averted hard in ''[[The Forever War]]'', by the 10th year of the war (which lasts over 1000 years) missiles (called drones) can already hit targets from across the system, and combat basically consists of a one ship chasing another while both sides throw up curtains of 'drones'. Also, committing more than a single ship to an engagement is considered unusual. All in all, it's about as far from Star Wars as the [~~http://en.~~wikipedia~~.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Denmark_Strait~~ Denmark Strait] was from [~~http://en.~~wikipedia~~.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salamis~~ Salamis].

* Averted hard in ''[[The Forever War]]'', by the 10th year of the war (which lasts over 1000 years) missiles (called drones) can already hit targets from across the system, and combat basically consists of a one ship chasing another while both sides throw up curtains of 'drones'. Also, committing more than a single ship to an engagement is considered unusual. All in all, it's about as far from Star Wars as the [[wikipedia:Battle of the Denmark Strait|Denmark Strait]] was from [[wikipedia:Battle of Salamis|Salamis]].

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** 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 (Film)|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.

* The original ''[[Battlestar Galactica Classic ~~(TV)~~|Battlestar Galactica]]'' featured laser bolts that would arbitrarily explode after traveling a certain distance.

* The original ''[[Battlestar Galactica Classic|Battlestar Galactica]]'' featured laser bolts that would arbitrarily explode after traveling a certain distance.

** 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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* Semi-averted in ''[[Vega Strike]]'' (current version, at least). Each weapon has the maximum range property, but also property which controls dissipation, so arbitrary "range" ''could'' be avoided or set many orders of magnitude higher, it's needed only to conserve resources. Missiles are less limited -- torpedos even got [[FTL]] drives -- though lockable ranges are still relatively tame.

* Both averted and played straight in ''[[Free Space]]''. Laser bolts (which more accurately would be plasma weapons) simply vanish a certain distance from the ship that fired them. Justified by the missiles, which explode automatically once they reach their maximum range (presumably after running out of fuel). But averted with the [[Badass]], ginormous energy beams used by the capital ships in the sequel, which can be seen going off into infinity (bonus points for them being true lasers: they strike the target instantaneously). The fact that these weapons still have a "range" setting makes very little sense (fans have attempted to explain this as the computer's effective targeting range: one campaign featured a ship attempting to fire a beam at an enemy outside that range and missing by about thirty degrees. The target jumps out before they have a chance to correct their aim). Then there's the fact that they are both visible in space and have a profound distortion/shimmer effect, but that's an [[Frickin' Laser Beams|entirely different trope]].

** The beam cannons have a 30 km cutoff range, you just don't normally see it because [[Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale|the ships are never that far]].

** The beam cannons have a 30 km cutoff range, you just don't normally see it because [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale|the ships are never that far]].

** The Kaiser, the one primary weapon that fires actual projectiles, technically has an arbitrary maximum range, but it is so large that it basically avoids the trope. There are few instances in missions where enemies are outside the range of the Kaiser and at long range it is nearly impossible to hit any ship due to accuracy issues.

** [[Gameplay Story Segregation]] does avert this in cutscenes as early as the first game. The Lucifer easily is able to bombard a planet with its beam cannons from a fairly high orbit.

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* ''[[Portal 2 (Video Game)|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.

* In ''[[All Points Bulletin]]'', weapons fired outside of their optimal range would have suffered from damage falloff, turning, for example, a 2-shot [[Short Range Shotgun]] into a 4-5 shots kill when fired at mid range. Before a certain patch, though, the game had a far more bizarre behavior - bullet that traveled outside their maximum range would ''disappear into nothing''.

* In ''[[All Points Bulletin]]'', weapons fired outside of their optimal range would have suffered from damage falloff, turning, for example, a 2-shot [[Short-Range Shotgun]] into a 4-5 shots kill when fired at mid range. Before a certain patch, though, the game had a far more bizarre behavior - bullet that traveled outside their maximum range would ''disappear into nothing''.

* In ''[[Far Cry]] 2'', all fires will only spread a certain distance, leaving patches of scorched Earth surrounded by untouched grass. Apparently, they put it in after a test fire ''consumed the entire game world'', killing every one in it.

* ''[[Star Ruler (Video Game)|Star Ruler]]'' has this problem, though ranges are pretty damn long: 1000 is equal to an AU, roughly eight light-minutes, meaning even the absolute shortest 1-range weapon is still good to about half a light-second. This goes into the other problem of having [[Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale|inexplicable FTL weapons]], though, when lasers remain hitscan all that way.

* ''[[Star Ruler (Video Game)|Star Ruler]]'' has this problem, though ranges are pretty damn long: 1000 is equal to an AU, roughly eight light-minutes, meaning even the absolute shortest 1-range weapon is still good to about half a light-second. This goes into the other problem of having [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale|inexplicable FTL weapons]], though, when lasers remain hitscan all that way.

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[[Category:Space Does Not Work That Way]]

[[Category:Arbitrary Maximum Range]]

[[Category:Trope]]