See the Whites of Their Eyes: Difference between revisions

 

[[Trope Namer|Named after]] the [[Beam Me Up, Scotty|supposed]] famous quote of Col. William Prescott in the battle of [[The American Revolution|Bunker Hill]]: "Don't fire 'til you see the whites of their eyes!" This was justified at the time because they were using notoriously inaccurate 18th-century muskets and they had almost no ammunition, so every bullet had to count. In reality, the command was routinely given to soldiers in many battles: no army had very accurate guns or unlimited ball and powder—or arrows, for that matter. The saying is famed, and associated with Bunker Hill, by Americans because it was the first battle of the nascent American nation.

 

There are [[Justified Trope|four discernible reasons]] for this phenomenon:

 

See [[Short-Range Long-Range Weapon]] for more generalized examples of this trope.

{{examples}}

 

** At the same time, it's still a rather blatant anachronism. [[World War II]] tanks were often able to hit targets multiple kilometers away in combat just relying on their primitive gun sights. And most modern gun sights aren't radar based.

*** [[Minovsky Physics|Minovsky Particles]] interfere with ''all'' electro-magnetic phenomenon. In MS Igloo it was finally demonstrated that even visual sensors are impaired at great range.

* Averted largely in ''[[Starship Operators]]'' where the trainee crew who mans the ship for the majority of the show stress the ranges involved in combat early on. Several of the enemies ships play with this concept, running in stealth mode (drifting into a "no miss" range and attack angle, featuring extremely advanced stealth) or just just plain running in (featuring a nigh invincible bow designed specifically for ramming other ships).

 

* ''[[Action Comics]]'' had fist air fight right on the cover—apparently that's the main weapon of [http://www.comicvine.com/action-comics-its-a-bird-its-a-plane-its-supermobile/37-121620/ Supermobile].

 

== Film ==

* The ''[[Star Trek]]'' films, where most ship-to-ship combat took place with the captains of each vessel within spitting distance of one another. The inherent superiority of visual targeting is illustrated perfectly in ''[[Star Trek]]: Generations'' where a Klingon warship locks onto the ''Enterprise'' by using what looks a lot like a ''periscope''.

** "[[Stealth in Space|The thing's gotta have a tailpipe!]]"

** This troper got the impression that the aliens' tactics were based on the fact that [[Old School Dogfighting]] is fun when you're [[Deflector Shields|cheating]]. Until the humans exploited their lack of IT security, the only danger to them was that if they were careless they could crash into the ground.

* ''[[Transformers (film)|Transformers]]'' (movie version), and in particular the Decepticon known as Starscream. Whilst primitive Raptor aircraft employed by the US Air Force were designed with the capability to lock and fire at ground-based targets outside visual range, this advanced alien warrior apparently is unable to target and hit the Hoover Dam's power station unless he's ''stationary'' and in ''robot mode''. On the other hand, he's ''[[The Starscream|Starscream]]''. He may have just wanted to add a personal touch.

* ''[[Spaceballs]]'', where the crew of the Eagle Five successfully jam Spaceball One's radar by visually locking onto, and firing a giant raspberry jam jar at, the capital ship's radar dish. Having said that, this somewhat backfired given Dark Helmet was able to ascertain the jammers' identity from their choice of weapon: ''"There's only one man in the universe who'd DARE give ME the RASPBERRY ... LOOONNNNE STARRRRRRR--*clunk*''

** This scene [[MST3K Mantra|gets a pass]] because it's [[Rule of Funny|hilarious, and in a comedy]].

 

== Literature ==

* ''Note that in literature this trope is commonly averted, since it's relatively easy to describe in a narrative fashion the causes and consequences of interstellar warfare without actually showing it subject to the physics of the conflicts themselves.''

** In [[The Culture]] series of sf novels by [[Iain Banks]], this trope is deliberately [[Subverted]] and [[Playing with a Trope|played with]] in that the titular Culture, one of the most progressive and advanced interstellar societies, totally avoids the use of ground combat and traditional soldiery, and instead prefers to go to war with starships that are essentially big engines with weapon nodules at both ends, and which are capable of causing stars hundreds of light years away to go nova.

 

== Live Action TV ==

* Averted once in ''[[Babylon 5]]''. When the Narn fleet was ambushed by a team of Shadow Vessels, the initial salvos of the battle took place very far from each other. The shots were cleverly edited together to maintain the necessary sense of danger. By the end, they had closed to spitting distance, but a lot of Narn vessels didn't make it that far.

** To be fair, JMS does explicitly state in the DVD commentaries that he and the production team knew that space combat between large ships would realistically occur at extreme range but that they had to make some concessions to having an exciting TV show rather than a physics documentary.

* ''[[Star Trek]]'' uses and averts this a lot (particularly the latter in the Original Series). However, in many battles (especially big ones), a lot of fighting is done at extreme close range. As mentioned in the "The Wounded" example above, rendering an accurate battle in a visual medium that is in some way exciting can be difficult.

* Used and averted in ''[[Andromeda]]'', where on the bridge, they call out the distances and mention distances measured in light seconds, and have unexciting displays where symbols fire at each other. However, the CGI battles are usually done up close and personal.

** May be somewhat [[Justified Trope]] in that Cylon ECM is usually enough to make any kind of guided Colonial munition worthless, necessitating a close-in gun battle.

** Also Justified by the presence of FTL that cannot be jammed or traced. As demonstrated by the Colonial fleet surviving multiple Cylon attacks by the simple but effective tactic of jumping away every time the Cylons show up. In such a situation the only realistic option for an attacker is to jump in practically on top of their target, so they can hit them before they jump away. Since both sides rely heavily (but not exclusively) on fighters which must be launched and then get close to the target (presumably since their own guns have unspectacular muzzle velocity) this means positioning your capital ships very close indeed. Of course all of this assumes your target will want to run away (and you want to prevent him), but if he thinks he can fight back you may want to reconsider your attack anyway.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* In ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'', even the biggest artillery units have a maximum range which is, to scale, ''several hundred meters''.

** By contrast, in ''Battlefleet Gothic'', a space combat game set in the same universe, the main batteries of larger ships have ranges of several Earth diameters. Needless to say, model and "ground" scale differ!

***** Earth plus atmosphere is a single hex. Maybe you were thinking of the small gas giant?

**** More like [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality]]. The designers know this (and that ships don't 'orbit' at light speed and that moons are normally more than 10k km from the planetary surface...)

 

== Video Games ==

* ''[[Homeworld]]'', where your capital ships, whilst equipped with point defense weaponry, cannot target an enemy ship visible on radar tracking, which is out of visual range.

** That said, distances in the battles are measured in tens to hundreds of kilometers. The Mothership itself is something like four to six kilometers on its longest side, for goodness' sake. So this might actually be an aversion - visual range is just a freaking long distance.

* ''[[Supreme Commander]]'': The few guns capable of shooting with semi realistic artillery ranges (up to 71 km) are so damn expensive as to not be worth building. And most of them are game enders if they are built. A completed Mavor will make your enemies weep. Most of the game's units have an effective range of a few hundred meters, despite the fact that even the smallest targets are robots taller then trees.

** The prequel, ''Total Annihilation'' is much more forgiving about this sort of thing past the first tier, although tank battles still escalate to a mass of tangled metal if their respective armour is sturdy enough.

* ''Command and Conquer 3'' includes walking artillery units for the GDI that can fire the length of the map. However, for game balance purposes, they can only do this when a sniper is close enough to paint the target with a laser designator.

** Juggernauts could fire across half the map in their normal attack mode in the last mission of the NOD campaign. This was so they could pound the Threshold tower's defenses, but any juggernauts had this modified range (cue pounding of their ion cannon structure, which is another sidenote altogether...)

* In ''[[EVE Online]]'' the range of ship weapons varies depending on the size and type of the weapon. Small ships usually have a max weapon range of few dozen kilometers for long range weapons and a few kilometers for short range ones. Large battleships can potentially hit targets from several hundred kilometers away (although their close range weapons still require getting very close, especially for such slow and hard to maneuver ships). Large scale space battles tend to consist out of two large groups of ships about 100 kilometers from each other, blowing up the other group by focusing fire to one ship at a time.

* ''[[Star Control]] 2'' has some spaceships that can hit enemies from the other side of the map (Earthling, Druuge), and a few who can only hit at what's effectively ''melee'' range (Zot-Dot-Pik, Ilwrath).

* ''[[Sword of the Stars]]'' can go from BVR combat where the enemies are only visible through the sensor display to close-in fighting where ships maneuver around each other. According to [[Word of God]], though, this is merely an abstraction for the players' convenience. Everything actually takes place at stellar ranges and even "knife fights" with small mount weapons don't actually take place in WVR. The sequel will further avert this as weapon ranges will now exceed sensor ranges, requiring the use of battle riders as scouts/spotters.

* ''Universal Combat'' is perhaps one of the best arguments for why this is a good thing to have. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R94jmLqtc6I Behold!]

 

== Web Comics ==

* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' had one of ''[[Big Book of War|The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries]]'':

{{quote|'''Maxim 22''': If you can see the whites of their eyes, somebody's done something wrong. }}

 

== Real Life ==

* During [[The Vietnam War]], American jets carries carried the [[wikipedia:AIM-7 Sparrow|Sparrow missile]] which was designed to shoot down Russian bombers ''beyond visual range''. Unfortunately, due to a fear of friendly fire, commanders instructed fighter pilots to only fire on a hostile aircraft after ''visual'' identification , completely negating the technological advantage of the long range missile. The missiles were completely ill suited for tracking maneuvering targets in a dogfight and achieved a kill rate of under 10%.

** Which was still far better than [[The Scrappy|the AIM-4 Falcon]].