Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: When a high-tech/futuristic society uses conventional weapons opposed to energy weapons.

  • Straight: Even though in Ted's world he lives with a sentient robot and can replicate a three-course meal, he and the rest of civilization still fights bad guys with a good old slugthrower.
  • Exaggerated: Ted fights with the exact same weapons and models that are used today, opposed to dressed up ones.
  • Justified: The story is hard science fiction, is set in an After the End setting, or Energy Weapons are impractical for the situation.
    • Energy weapons are for different purposes. They can drain forcefields and energy shields, but a bullet has much deeper penetration purposes.
  • Inverted: Everyone in Ted's world uses energy weapons and nothing else.
  • Subverted: Ted's gun looks just like a modern day weapon, maybe even "reloads" like one, but is still an Energy Weapon.
    • As we go up the power levels of the society's arsenal we see weapons throwing larger objects at ever larger fractions of c, but the absolute strongest Weapon of Mass Destruction available is a Wave Motion Gun.
  • Double Subverted: The futuristic looking weapon is a kinetic weapon, whereas the modern-looking one is an energy weapon.
  • Parodied: Ted fights with a flintlock musket and a slingshot in a society with flying cars.
  • Deconstructed: The characters' exclusive focus on kinetic weaponry eventually costs them the war against the alien invaders, who have focused on developing Energy Weapons and managed to make them Awesome Yet Practical.
    • Alternatively or in conjunction with the above, the alien invaders recognised the dependence on kinetic weapons and developed Deflector Shields that largely if not completely negate their effectiveness, leaving the characters unable to fight back.
    • The society that has spent the entirety of its war-torn existence developing better kinetic kill vehicles now has nothing with Mundane Utility.
    • Since deconstruction doesn't mean 'inverted' but played realistically: The exclusive focus on kinetic weaponry is considered the sensible one, as most races eventually accept that Energy Weapons are doomed to be joke weapons even when Awesome Yet Practical. Those laser pistols? They're really just small railguns, and the streaks are an illusion caused by the sheer speed they can accelerate their loads to.
  • Reconstructed: The aliens are the ones with the foolish, exclusive focus; in all their years of research, they have found no way to make Energy Weapons Awesome Yet Practical, but still use them anyway on account of them being more "advanced", leading to their downfall at the hands of the humans' Boring but Practical kinetic weaponry.
    • The society sets aside some funding into developing the needed equipment just in case the Forever War actually ends without either or both sides blasted into oblivion.
  • Zig Zagged: Kinetic weapons are used along side Energy Weapons by the same faction. Both have strengths and weaknesses.
    • Future weapons of choice fire kinetic slugs... that fire lasers! Kinetic slugs penetrate shields, and lasers penetrate body armor, making it the ultimate combination.
  • Averted: Ted fights aliens and robots with Energy Weapons that do not resemble modern weapons at all.
    • Or Kinetic Weapons and Energy Weapons each have their own advantages and disadvantages and Ted uses both for various situations.
    • The Enemy sneers at your precious Magnetic Weapons and Colony Drops, but crumbles into dust under a laser/energy barrage.
  • Enforced: The writer insists on a hard science fiction setting.
  • Lampshaded: Factions with Energy Weapons may mock Ted's .45, or Ted might wonder if he can fly to Pluto and back, why he can't have a plasma rifle standard issue.
  • Invoked: Sergeant Bill has his men replace all of their laser rifles with conventional firearms because he knows that lasers overheat quickly and that the aliens’ shields only stop energy blasts, not bullets.
  • Defied: The characters forgo all research into kinetic weaponry, instead focusing on developing Energy Weapons.
  • Discussed: It will be mentioned what advantages conventional weapons have over Energy Weapons, or how they simply aren't feasible.
    • "It's the 25th century, why am I still using the same weapons my great-great-great-....grandfather used?" or "Stupid humans and their slugthrowers!"
  • Conversed: ???

Sorry, there's no way you'll burn through the fourth wall with a chemical LASER in time. Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better.

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