Hero-Tracking Failure: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''"You are defeated! Instead of shooting where I was, [[Lead the Target|you should have shot at where I was going to be!]] [[Evil Laugh|Muwhahahahahahaha!]]"''|'''[[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|Lrrr]]''', RULER of the planet Nintendu 64, ''[[
The hero is running from the baddies. He is unarmed. The baddies are not. They proceed to shoot everything they have at him, but for some mysterious reason they can't manage to track his position fast enough, with the result that bullets (and rockets, and laser beams, and...) hit juuuust where he was a moment ago without so much as scratching his clothes. Completely ridiculous, of course, since simple geometry dictates that swinging a gun a mere inch will result in the bullets hitting several metres ahead depending on distance, so the baddies must be moving their focus ''agonizingly'' slowly. You could argue that the baddies are bad at estimating the time the bullets take to travel, but even then, how long can this last before they decide they just have to [[Lead the Target|swing the gun a slight bit further]]?▼
▲{{quote|''"You are defeated! Instead of shooting where I was, [[Lead the Target|you should have shot at where I was going to be!]] [[Evil Laugh|Muwhahahahahahaha!]]"''|'''[[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|Lrrr]]''', RULER of the planet Nintendu 64, ''[[Futurama (Animation)|Futurama]]''}}
This sometimes happens with armored vehicles as well, in which case it might be slightly more justified in that the turret might lack the capacity for fast tracking. That is, if the same turret wasn't shown rapidly swinging itself into position in a second just moments ago... then it's just dumb.
▲The hero is running from the baddies. He is unarmed. The baddies are not. They proceed to shoot everything they have at him, but for some mysterious reason they can't manage to track his position fast enough, with the result that bullets (and rockets, and laser beams, and...) hit juuuust where he was a moment ago without so much as scratching his clothes. Completely ridiculous, of course, since simple geometry dictates that swinging a gun a mere inch will result in the bullets hitting several metres ahead depending on distance, so the baddies must be moving their focus ''agonizingly'' slowly. You could argue that the baddies are bad at estimating the time the bullets take to travel, but even then, how long can this last before they decide they just have to swing the gun a slight bit further?
▲This sometimes happens with armored vehicles as well, in which case it might be slightly more justified in that the turret might lack the capacity for fast tracking. That is, if the same turret wasn't shown rapidly swinging itself into position in a second just moments ago... then it's just dumb.
This sometimes happens to bad guys too, but it's generally more often seen with heroes, seen as they can't possibly be hit and shredded to bloody pulp in a shower of lead. When it does happen to baddies, the shooters usually manage to get their act together in the end.
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A subtrope of [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy]].
{{examples
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* ''[[Appleseed]]'' has large tanks with [[Gatling Good|enormous rotary cannons]] as their main gun, and automatic sensors to pick up the target. A tank picks up the main character as she starts running, the turret quickly swings into position and the big gun opens up, spewing thousands of empty shell casings out the side and laying waste to half a city block. You'd think that with all that firepower and modern systems the tanks would be able to correct their aim to track a running human. You'd think...
** It's heavily implied that the tanks were deliberately missing, leading Deunan to be surrounded from all sides, in order to take her alive. Note that at the end of the chase both tanks are aiming right at her and she has no place to flee, yet they don't open fire. This is especially likely, considering who hired them for the job.
** Subverted later on in the movie by the gigantic spiderlike weapons platforms, which seem more than capable enough to track the flying armored suits and swat them out of the sky with more [[More Dakka|automatic gun fire]].
* Taken to ridiculous extremes in the anime trilogy ''Memories'', or, more accurately, in its 2nd part entitled ''Stink Bomb'', where half the Japanese army (tanks, aircraft and all) is unable to kill a guy going over a highway overpass on a ''bicycle'' (even though everything immediately behind the target gets blown to smithereens).
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*** This doesn't quite explain why they didn't just try [[Lead the Target|shooting ahead of him]], blowing up the road and preventing him from advancing, but, [[Rule of Cool|whatever]].
* Justified in ''[[Trigun]]'': Vash isn't human, and has the reflexes to deflect bullets by throwing rocks at them in flight.
* In [[Code Geass]]: Suzaku outruns an automatic machinegun guarding a narrow hallway. They try to justify it by saying the camera has a slight delay, but there's no reason it couldn't have been programmed to lead the target.
== [[Literature]] ==
* Happens to Leavenworth Smedry in the ''[[
== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[
* [[The Movie]] of ''[[Judge Dredd (
* ''[[
* In ''[[Stardust (
* Happens ''all the bloody time'' in ''[[
* Captain Pirk screws up the killing shot in the epic battle of ''[[Star Wreck]]: In the Pirkinning'' by failing to lead his shots. He's of the opinion that the computer ought to do it for him....despite [[Too Dumb to Live|turning off the aiming computers less than a minute ago.]]
* In ''[[Star Wars]] A New Hope'' as the good guys are running away from the Death Star in the Falcon they are chased by four TIE fighters. Han and Luke get in the turret guns, but the fighters are too fast and they keep missing them as they go past. Eventually, of course, they start understanding elementary-level geometry and blow the
== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Power Rangers]]'' and ''[[Super Sentai]]'' villains consistently hit near the ''feet'' of the charging enemy.
* In the dramatized battle of the "Navy SEAL vs. Israeli Commando" episode of ''[[Deadliest Warrior]]'', the SEAL leader runs in front of gunfire from three Commandos, all of which miss him by inches.
* In the ''[[
== [[Video Games]] ==
* Examples of videogame AI design that fires projectiles toward the player's current position only (without regard for player movement) are too numerous to list.
** This is probably because it's hard to track an evasive target accurately, after all if they to target where you should be going at your consistent movement, you can easily get
*** In fact, that's a common gameplay tactic for the "slightly elite" mook types. Basic fire-where-you-are AI makes you move while shooting; basic linear lead-ahead makes you move in something other than a straight line.
* Carmelita in [[Sly Cooper]]
* ''[[The Elder Scrolls|Oblivion]]'' is a particularly glaring example of the AI failing because it is leads you ''too'' consistently and perfectly. Spellcasting has an obvious startup animation, so it's easy to bluff the AI by twitching to one side just as a mage lobs their fireball.
* The ''[[Battlezone (1998
** Exception: try giving hitscan weapons to turrets. Their AI is only programmed for weapons that necessitate leading, and will do so even when equipped with weapons that do not. Result: flash cannons waste a lot of ammo (they eventually hit, but only when enemy vehicles stop their movement), while blast cannons are all but useless.
* The first ''[[Banjo
** She is, however, completely thwarted by running in tight circles, except for her homing attack.
* The ''[[Alien vs. Predator]]'' PC-games averted this in the case of the Marine and the Predator characters, but played it straight for the Alien when controlled by the players. Justified in that since it is fast and harder to see in Infrared the Alien is harder for auto-turrets to track, but it's mainly for gameplay as otherwise the Alien would be defenseless against such obstacles.
** Most of the time there was an alternate route around the auto-turret, allowing the Alien player to sneak up to it from behind.
* ''[[
* One of the cut-scenes in ''[[Resident Evil]]: Code Veronica'' has this with one of the characters outrunning the strafing minigun fire from a helicopter. Naturally it was knocked off for ''[[Resident Evil]] The Movie 2''.
** What made the least sense in this one is that the helicopter pilot decided to strafe rather than turn.
* Averted in the final boss of ''[[Spyro the Dragon|Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!!]]'', where Ripto aims his basic scepter blasts relative to the direction the player is moving.
* Some unwieldy spells in [[Tales
* ''[[Ace Combat]] X: Skies of Deception'' has the Meson Cannon, which cannot track Gryphus One if he is flying above a certain speed.
* Averted in one level of ''[[Donkey Kong Country]] 3'', where you are faced with bolts of lightning. The lightning comes down slightly ahead of where you are when it tracks, forcing you to juke to avoid it.
* In the first ''[[
* ''[[Beyond Good
* Averted in ''[[Crash Bandicoot]] 3'' during the boss fight with Dingodile, who shoots lasers where you are moving to instead of where you are at the time.
* The common FPS tactic of "circle strafing", orbiting your target while firing, largely depends on it actually being quite hard for the defender to correctly sync their rotation speed even if trying to allow for lead-ahead.
* Averted by the better bots in programming game [[Robo Code]]---a lot of effort is put into analysing the movement patterns of targets and trying to guess where they're going to dodge to.
** Nearly omnipresent in [[Robo War]], due to the limitations of integer arithmetic. There's a reason why most of the top robots [[No Range Like Point
* Downright weird example in the first ''[[Mercenaries]]'' game. Hard to tell if the game has tracking AI, but the bullets move so slowly that you can dodge them pretty easily. Seriously, you can see the bullets coming for you, and a simple sidestep is all it takes.
* A [[Real Life]] example in games: You. You're probably gonna be doing this a lot when it comes to trueshot attacks in most games. Particularly RTS games.
** This tends to especially happen with analog stick aiming, where it feels like you ''should'' be able to move the sights faster than the target, but in the heat of the moment fail to realize that you're capped out by the control interface and start firing too soon.
* ''All'' guns in [[
* Mostly played straight in ''[[Hard War]]'', as the trope is the only reason you can survive the massive amounts of firepower everyone seems so eager to throw your way. However, ''your'' guns subvert it - there's no need to [[Lead the Target]], as they all automatically compensate for enemy movement, and the shots themselves have [[Homing Boulders|limited homing abilities]].
* Averted in the ''[[Halo]]'' series, especially on Legendary difficulty.
* In one [[Quick Time Event]] in ''[[Tomb Raider]] Anniversary'', [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=9AK6FOl34M8#t=163s Lara breaks free of her captor] and runs toward another baddie, a [[Pretty Fly for
* In ''[[Freedroid RPG]]'' the [[Player Character]] can be hit by [[Painfully
* The Husks in ''[[
* Most [[Shoot
* Averted in ''[[
** Inexperienced players, on the other hand, frequently play this trope straight, particularly if the target is a [[Fragile Speedster|scout]].
* In ''[[World of Tanks]]'', depending on the tanks involved, tanks are often able to move faster than an opponent's turret can track, plus the shot takes a finite amount of time to get to target. "Jinking" when running away from or moving toward another tank helps to avoid being hit, and smaller tanks with faster turning turrets can fight heavy tanks by circle-strafing while the heavy tank can't get its gun on target.
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* Multiple times in the first season of ''[[Beast Machines]]''. But apparently they can't even hit you if you are standing still but decide to duck.
* Villain tracking example: In the episode of ''[[Futurama]]'' where life becomes like a video game and Fry is fighting off an alien invasion styled after ''[[Space Invaders]]'', Fry finds himself unable to defeat the last ship due to this trope. The invading aliens even point his error out to him after landing.
* Other villain tracking example: in chapter 21 of ''[[Star Wars: Clone Wars]]'', during the [[Gunship Rescue]] moment, the ARC troopers don't seem to land a single shot on grievous, despite the ridiculous amount of dakka they have.
* Any time Batman gets shot at (really, in any media, but [[The DCAU]] is [[Egregious]] about it).
** [[The Flash]], meanwhile, gets hit a surprisingly large number of times.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Index Failure]]
[[Category:Hero
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