Macross Missile Massacre: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

A tactic wherein a military vehicle or craft—often a [[Humongous Mecha]]—launches a massive salvo of missiles at a target, often more missiles than the craft should be able to hold. The missiles often follow [[Roboteching|artistic curving trajectories]] for no apparent reason, though strategically it may simply make them more difficult to dodge (or intercept, if there's any [[Point Defenseless|usable]] point defence). Occasionally, this is explained in [[Space Opera]] as the effect a ship's energy/force/gravity field has on the missiles. In some cases, this is justified by having the missile silos oriented up (or down) to allow for more surface area-and, in turn, more missiles.

* While not technically a complete Macross Missile Massacre, the ending battle in OVA 5 of the air combat series ''[[Sentou Yousei Yukikaze]]'' resembles a pseudo 3M, as every surviving aircraft is remotely taken over by the Yukikaze AI and salvo fires all of their remaining missiles simultaneously. The result is several hundred to several thousand full-sized Air to Air missiles blanketing the horizon. Called a pseudo 3M because all those missiles really were needed and because all of the aircraft carried a finite and generally realistic number of missiles individually.

* Kaoruko from ''[[Akahori Gedou Hour Rabuge]]'' often does this with her [[Powered Armor]], which has four missile launchers (two on her legs, two on her arms) that fire like this.

** In ''Nanoha'', if any character (particularly shown: Fate and Chrono) using an attack with "... Shift", you can expect massive missile rain.

** We thought Fate had reached the epitome of this with Photon Lancer, Phalanx Shift. Then Reinforce turned it against her: Photon Lancer, ''Genocide'' Shift.

** Reinforce (that {{spoiler|now dead}} Reinforce, mind you) also used [[Flechette Storm|a similar move called Bloody Dagger]]. It probably can be used by Hayate too, but.

* A variation, Mashiro Rima accomplishes this using six juggling pins, hitting a target as small as an (highly manoeuvrable) egg in ''[[Shugo Chara]]''.

* In ''[[Samurai Pizza Cats]]'', Lucille has this occur when she's upset, and the projectiles are stored within her hair.

* ''[[Crest of the Stars]]'' and its sequels made their battleships purely missile platforms that take Macross Missile Massacre to the absolutely ridiculous extent (the majority of the mass of ships multiple kilometers long consists solely of thousand and thousands of missiles). The sheer weight of fire ''ONE'' battleship could deliver would put ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' to shame. Of course, they were almost entirely [[Point Defenseless]], but that's another matter.

** The primary purpose of the ''[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Siege Perilous]]''-class assault ships built during the Commonwealth's final days. With their 180 missile tubes, they can launch more missiles than an entire fleet, making them perfect ship-killers.

*** Of the four built, three were shown on screen and played important roles: the ''Balance of Judgment'' survived the Nietzscheans rebellion, but its AI went insane; the ''Balance Wrath of Achilles'' was captured in battle and kept in the "starship prison" system; the ''Resolution of Hector'' was built by the New Commonwealth but hijacked by the ''Judgments'''s AI. The unnamed fourth ship was destroyed in port by the Nietzscheans.

* ''[[Space: Above and Beyond]]'' has a very memorable use of it in {{spoiler|1=the duel between [[Colonel Badass|Lt. Col. T.C. McQueen]] and [[Ace Custom|Chiggy von Richthofen]], ended when McQueen sends all six of his missiles into Chiggy at once.}}

* In the season one finale of ''[[Terra Nova]]'' the bad guys spot Col. Taylor and his soldiers trying to get away in a vehicle. The vehicle is hidden by a dense tree canopy so they cannot target it directly. Instead Lucas fires off a missile that splits into multiple smaller missiles that then rain down on the forest in a wide spread.

* ''[[Rifts]]'' has several mecha who can do this, being mounted with Mini Missile launchers that carry obscene loads of small missiles almost designed to be used in this way. Not unsurprising as Palladium Books also published an RPG based on the Robotech franchise that used the same system.

** The Robotech RPG was released prior to Rifts, and was the first instance of the name "Mini Missile" actually being used.

** By the way, those Exorcists? They're fired by Sisters who play the keys of the pipe organ that serves as the launcher for the rockets.

*** So you could say that when it comes to missiles, the Sisters of Battle pull out all the stops?

* ''[[Cthulhu Tech]]'', [[Homage]]-storm that it is, features rocket-pods that use exactly this method as heavy weapons for their [[Humongous Mecha]]. The big winner is the Cherub-class Engel, a middling-sized support mech that can hit a target with up to a dozen rockets at once.

** Not quite, the Force Missile Mage just adds an additional two missiles, making a total of seven for a high level caster. However, if you combine this with creative use of Metamagic (namely Quicken Spell and Twin Spell) one can easily fire off as many as 28 in a single turn, if you use Delay Spell you can end up with over fifty Magic Missiles going off at once.

** The "Magic Missile [[Shotguns Are Just Better|Shotgun]]": a Rod of Wands (holds up to three wands and allows you to use those wands simultaneously) and three Wands of Magic Missile (high level crafter = five Missiles per use each). Pull the trigger and it fires fifteen unerring bolts of magical force. Upgrade those wands to Maximized Magic Missile (automatically does greatest possible damage) and that's 75 points of damage per turn '''that [[Always Accurate Attack|cannot]] [[Armor-Piercing Attack|miss]]'''.

** And like everything in DnD tactics like this can be optimized to insane extremes, as can be seen in [http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5242.msg174850#msg174850 this] set up which launches well over a hundred orbs of force and does just a hair under 4000 damage on average.

* ''[[BattleTech]]'', for a long time ''only'' used their missiles this way. The individual missiles themselves were rather weak though, and could only do damage in numbers or through a [[Critical Hit|lucky hit]]. With the exception of artillery and warship-mounted missiles (which soon became extinct in the main setting), it was ''centuries'' before somebody revisited the concept of a powerful missile. Some mechs that are practically made of this trope. Gaze upon the ''[http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Image:Yeoman.jpg Yeoman]'', ye mighty, and despair!

** The vehicular 'SRM Carrier' has ''18'' 6-packs of short range missiles (thats 108 missiles per shot, thank you). One * will* sand all the armor of the biggest mech in the game. The tricky part is living to take the * second* shot.

** Also worth noting: standard ''[[BattleTech]]'' missiles are individually actually very small. One metric ton of long-range missile ammo for example consists of 120 individual missiles (launchable in salvos of 5, 10, 15, or 20), which works out to each of them weighing 8 1/3 kg or about 18.4 lbs. This puts them firmly in the 'man-portable' weight class, and indeed missile-equipped infantry exists in the game, but well below 'real' real life rocket artillery or guided missiles. (The [[WW 2]] Katyusha mentioned in the Real Life section below fired salvos of ''individual'' missiles weighing five times this much.)

* Any game based on [[Super Dimension Fortress Macross|Macross]], of course. There's a whole bunch of 'em.

** The best one has to be ''Macross Ace/Ultimate Frontier''. Not in the sheer number fired, but there's a title that's awards when you've killed one '''million''' enemies with missiles. The use of missiles is so ubiquitous in the game that the developers anticipated that a lot of enemies would be killed using missiles. There's even a counter for how many missiles you've fired, which goes up to the '''hundreds of millions'''.

* ''[[Mushihime-sama]]'' - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQZuidKexBQ Missiles like the world has never seen before]. And probably never will again.

* At least one type of weapon/plane/bombs in almost every [[Shoot'Em Up]] game.

** The GDI MLRS (yes, ''the'' an American M270) is this in ''[[Video Game/Command And Renegade|Renegade]]'', ''Tiberian Dawn'''s spinoff. Six rockets per salvo, compared to the original's two.

** The Nod [[Weapon of Mass Destruction|Multi-Missile superweapon]] from ''Tiberian Sun'' is, put simply, Macross Missile Massacre plus [[Recursive Ammo]]. It's the only weapon that can let off more than two missiles in a go, until ''Firestorm'' added the Cyborg Reaper, which lets off four missile a salvo.

*** Also in the same game, but at a lesser extent is the Orca Gunship, firing 6 air-to-ground missiles each. but since you usually have 4 of them, it ends up barraging 24 missiles on your enemies. The Kane's Wrath expansion even has a +2 missiles upgrade to these aircrafts, bringing up to 32 missiles in one quick run! Stack it up with a cheap Orca Strike Craft, and you get a full-fledged missile massacre.

* Samus Aran of ''[[Metroid]]'' fame generally ends up with a veritable [[Hyperspace Arsenal]] of missiles. In ''Metroid Prime 2'' she gains the ability to lock on and fire five of them simultaneously.

* In ''[[Fable]]'', the spell "Multi Shot" lets you do this with ''a bow and arrow''. Keep in mind that the arrows will [[Robotech]] en-route to their target, so using this in an enclosed space will result in only one or two arrows hitting the target, while the walls around you will resemble a feathery pincushion.

* The two expansion sets for ''[[Star Wars]]: [[TIE Fighter]]'' featured a new Imperial prototype fighter known as the Missile Boat, which was armed with ''four'' Missile Launchers capable of holding different types of missiles pending on the mission objectives, a Tractor Beam, Shields, a Hyper Drive and a SLAM System which doubled the Missile Boat's speed momentarily while draining laser energy (to compensate, the Missile Boat had only a single laser). Admittedly it was specifically designed to counter the threat of {{spoiler|the renegade Admiral Zaarin's new TIE Defenders (two Advanced Concussion Missiles dual-fired will destroy a TIE Defender outright even with full shields)}}, but the two launchers that usually held Advanced Concussion Missiles had 20 ''each''. That's a maximum of ''80'' Advanced Concussion Missiles which you can fire with a few second cooldown, two after another, without limit until you run out of missiles... Not only did this allow the Missile Boat to smash any other starfighter with relative ease, it could also singlehandedly take down large warships with little difficulty. It makes you wonder why the Empire didn't cut back on warships and make more Missile Boats.

* In ''[[Warhawk (1995 video game)]]'', there is a weapon for the titular aircraft to use known as the [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Swarm Missile]], which can lock on as many times as you want before firing, with the only limit being how many you have. Naturally, this can get extreme.

* In ''[[Ace Combat|Ace Combat 6]]'' there's the special weapon of the [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic|CFA-44 Nosferatu]] called the ADMM which includes 3 body-mounted dispenser units (one on top of each wing and one on the bottom-middle section) that fire off the rounds in a manner akin to countermeasure flares; these are retracted into the body and covered by doors when the special weapon is not selected. Unlike all the other "Multi-Tgt" missiles, each Macross Missile Massacre equals one expended missile (out of up to eighteen) and not however many targets you locked onto, usually up to four, or six with the new XMA6 air-to-air missile... it's even enough to (usually) negate the "inefficiency" flaw of air-to-ground missiles.

** The Vasari are no slouch in this department either, with the Kanrak Assailant and [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Vulkoras Desolator]] being their equivalents to the Javelis and Marza respectively. The volume of missiles they shoot is lower than that of the TEC fleet, but then, they shoot phase missiles, which can fly through enemy shields and hit their hull directly for deadly effect.

* The [[First-Person Shooter]] ''[[Rise of the Triad]]'' had the Drunk Missile, which fired five missiles which flew in a wild pattern and tracked enemies. Firing "drunks" into a crowd of enemies resulted in a [[Ludicrous Gibs|huge, gibletty mess]].

** This is how Ork Tank Bustaz work in ''[[Dawn of War]] 2'', they even come with a the ability "barrage" which lets them fire their roketz all at once in da air to rain death upon their foes.

** Once you unlock the Fragmentation Missile Pod for the Tau Commander in ''[[Dawn of War]] 2'' Retribution's Last Stand mode, equipping it allows you to fire off a triple-M at a target area, damaging everything in it. The Anti-Armor Missile Pod, while less trope-obedient, still fires a cluster of missiles at a single target.

* The Vulture gunship from ''[[Halo]] Wars'' has the Barrage ability wherein it launches a salvo of missiles at a ground target. It's also equipped with two air-to-air missile launchers.

** Pelican dropships can also be equipped for a missile massacre. This is most visible at the end of the Halo 3 campaign level ''Sierra 117'' in which a single Pelican blows '''two''' Covenant Phantoms to hell with a relentless bombardment of missiles. It will also shoot at any surviving Covenant infantry, often to comedic effect.

* ''[[Machines]]'' has the gorilla, which fires lots of small missiles at long distance, which kind of compensates for it's slow speed and it's other attack being very short range.

* The undeservedly little-known flight-based FPS ''[[Flying Heroes]]'' has two Macross Missile Massacre weapons: the Magion clan gets the Freezer, which releases a swarm of icy magic orbs, while the Lizard Riders get the Bombardion, which fires a single large rocket that releases a swarm of smaller [[Roboteching]] missiles on impact.

* The Dark Magician class in the free-to-play MMORPG [[Rappelz]] gets a spell called "Darkness Arrow" that is more accurately described as a Macross Missile Massacre of shadow-element magic.

* ''[[Champions Online]]'': The [[Power Armor]] Framework includes "Micromunitions". Several salvos of missiles are fired from the shoulders: Both, left, then right. It's a ranged Area Attack ability.

* The ''[[Twisted Metal]]'' series has many weapons like this, including the MIRV, Rain Missile 2, Satellite, Reticle, Zoomy, etc.

* [[Humongous Mecha|Krakens]] in ''[[Razing Storm]]'' love to use this on you. The third boss of the game, a [[Spider Tank]], does this when defeated in a [[Taking You with Me]] move. If you don't destroy enough of his missiles in time, it will [[Downer Ending|destroy the walkway connecting two skyscrapers, of which your squad is on]], leading to a [[Nonstandard Game Over]].

* ''Soldiers: Heroes of World War II'' featured the Katushya, the T34, and a German equivalent (see the real-life examples), who could shower any area on the map with missiles. Almost every multiplayer [[PvP]] game had [[Game Breaker|No Rockets]] (or even No Artillery) as the game name, since they could kill just about anything by sending a single scout forward to find the enemy tanks, and shower it with nearly pinpoint accuracy.

* ''[[Supreme Commander]]'' featured not only the Cybran T2 gunship, but also the Cybran Hoplite, which launched a volley of rockets. Not a massacre on it's own, it's very effective in groups.

* ''[[The Whiteboard]]'': In the 2010 [[Zombie Apocalypse]] story arc, the [[Awesome Personnel Carrier|APC]] from ''[[Alien]]'' included, as part of its armament, an ungodly amount of guided missiles, which it spent liberally. Considering Doc and Roger are worshipers at the Church of [[Spam Attack]], this is probably not surprising.

* ''[[Bob and George]]'': while Protoman doesn't normally have this, a common tactic of his is to merge with Nate, producing a rocket-heavy combined form known as Protean. While normally fitted with eight missiles, Nate being a ''shapeshifting goo monster'', they can easily go up to [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/050213 this]. And Nate can regenerate them {{spoiler|when he's not building up a large coating of goo on his target to produce a massive crushing fist around them}}.

 

== Western Animation ==

** Episode "Live And Let [[Pun-Based Title|Dy]]namo" goes differently. [[High-Speed Missile Dodge|No matter how hard the Girls try]], the missiles won't miss. It's a good thing that the Girls are [[Made of Iron]], though.

* Meatwad does this to Shake in one episode of ''[[Aqua Teen Hunger Force]]''. Frylock has just built a humongous mecha as a body replacement for Carl, who had been reduced to a disembodied head. Meatwad takes control of the robot, grabs Shake, throws him up into the air and blows him up with a barrage of missiles.

** His gun also has a "Death Blossom" mode that is a [[Shout-Out]] to the [[Last Starfighter]] entry above.

* In ''[[Swat Kats]]'', the Turbokat performs this attack twice. The first time with buzzsaw missiles while under the control of Hard Drive in "Night of Dark Kat", the second time in "When Strikes Mutilor", to destroy the fighter Mutilor was intending to use to destroy the drive and crash the mothership into the planet's surface.

* The U.S Navy also uses a Macross Missile Massacre as the main offensive weapon for its cruisers and destroyers: the [[wikipedia:Vertical launch system|Vertical Launching System (VLS)]]. This badass launcher can pump out Tomahawks or SAMs at a ridiculous rate (about one every two seconds) to attack ground targets, aircraft, or even space targets like satellites and ballistic missiles. The VLS-SM3 combo has been demonstrated as easily capable of killing an orbiting satellite.

** New Russian UKSK VLS is built around the same idea, but, as it uses a cold-launch approach, it's much cheaper and lighter on a per cell basis, so even a 2000-ton corvette is able to carry a couple of 8-cell modules.

** There's also the Ohio-class SSGN submarine, which can carry up to 154 cruise missiles in it's VLS tubes.

* A very large number of real-life weapon systems or tactics can be considered real-life versions of this, from multiple rocket launchers which can fire a large number of either "dumb" or "smart" munitions, to simply clustering a bunch of weapon launchers together or coordinating a large number of missile launches (works doubly best when paired with previous described weapon) or large bombers like the B-52 whose primary mission is to saturate a target area with missiles (back in the Cold War days, ''nuclear-tipped'' missiles. It's no exaggeration to say that a single B-52 with a full load of cruise missiles could effectively annihilate the Soviet Union by itself barring countermeasures or interception, and an equivalent Soviet bomber, the Tu-95 "Bear" for example, would likewise be capable of doing the same to the United States), let alone ballistic-missile launching submarines like the Soviet "Typhoon"-class (if you've ever seen ''[[The Hunt for Red October]]'' this is the real-life submarine the titular vessel is based on) which can carry 20 missiles with ten warheads each, or an American ''Ohio''-class submarine converted to launch 156 land attack cruise missiles, also cluster-munition capable. A reason why the Macross Missile Massacre is such a popular trope, after all, is because it happens to be a very useful and devastating real-life tactic, especially when target destruction must be guaranteed, probability of missile evasion or interception is high, and when collateral damage isn't given an afterthought or when the missiles have sufficiently "smart" enough guidance to prevent such.

[[Category:Military and Warfare Tropes]]

[[Category:Weapons and Wielding Tropes]]

[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]