Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:bear2.jpg
{{quote|''I will explain to my Legions of Terror that guns are ranged weapons and swords are not. Anyone who attempts to [[Throwing Your Sword Always Works|throw a sword at the hero]] or [[Pistol Whip|club him with a gun]] will be summarily executed.''
|[[Evil Overlord List]] #197}}
The inability of [[The Gunslinger|a long-range weapon user]], especially a [[Villains|villain]], to use said weapon ''at long range''. It seems that they are aware only of the trope that extended weapons [[Blasting It Out of Their Hands|get knocked out of hands easily]], and thus will hold those weapons close to themselves. Why they monologue and walk ''closely'' to their target is unknown, since this is usually a good chance for the unarmed target to wrench it away or for an annoying [[Sidekick]] to [[In the Back|club them from behind]].
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This may have to do that extremely long range fights don't look [[Rule of Cool|as exciting]]. Watch a [[YouTube]] video from the Iraq war or Afghanistan and notice how rarely you can even clearly see the enemy beyond the few muzzle flashes of their weapons.
To a certain extent, this happens in virtually every science-fiction show featuring futuristic vehicles or starships. Rule of thumb: if you can see the enemy ship, you're close enough to be instantly vaporized. Because 1
Commonly shows up when using a [[Short-Range Shotgun|shotgun]] or a [[Non-Fatal Explosions|hand grenade]]. May result in a [[No Scope]] kill with a [[Sniper Rifle]]. Contrast [[Sniper Pistol]], where the weapon has range far better than what it's supposed to have in [[Real Life]]. And don't confuse with [[No Range Like Point-Blank Range]], where getting up close and personal with a long range weapon is a conscious effort.
See also [[See the Whites of Their Eyes]], which is this trope for spaceships.
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* [[Those Wacky Nazis|The Major]] from ''[[Hellsing]]'' does this against [[Bifauxnen|Integra]] in the final volume, quoting "For the first time evah, I hit something."
* ''[[Code Geass]]'' is so guilty of this trope it's not even funny. Most ranged combat happens within two arms' lengths (allowing those [[Super Prototype]] mecha to dogfight around each other and exchange melee blows and gunfire in equal measure while reducing those hapless machine-gun wielding [[Mooks]] into decorations), and even missiles or ''battleship cannons'' aren't used at anything over a few hundred metres worth of distance. Even if we accept that some side effect of the universe's [[Schizo-Tech]] meant that targeting systems never evolved beyond the 'binoculars' stage, it's still bloody ludicrous.
** Must be noted that the [[Red Shirt
* Partially explained in ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam]]'', through liberal application of [[Applied Phlebotinum]] that screws with long-range sensors and targeting. The creator realized that futuristic space combat would most likely NOT involve giant robots and sword fights, so he came up with the [[Minovsky Physics|Minovsky Particle]] - when spread out over an area, the aforementioned particles destroy unshielded circuitry (making guided missiles useless) and refract all beams and signals pointed through it (so no lasers, guidance beams, or sensors.) Thus the [[Humongous Mecha|Mobile Suit]], which is big enough to carry electronic shielding and tough enough to take on the enemy at close range where sensors are unnecessary, becomes the most effective weapons platform. Though they tend to be armed with all sorts of powerful gun-type weaponry, they are designed to only fight things they are close enough to see, thus invoking this trope.
* ''[[Naruto]]'' shows us a supposed Long Range Division in the Shinobi Army arc that first tries to keep their distance, without firing, and later charges (complete with the command, "Charge!") when the opponents begin to catch up. They did have capacity for artillery present.
==
* Repeatedly pointed out to her opponents by Cinderella in the ''[[Fables]]'' graphic novel "War and Pieces".
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== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* Common in [[Tabletop Games]], which typically operate in the 25-30mm scale (IE one inch = 5 feet or so). There are [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality|plenty of reasons for this]], of course - realistic weapon ranges would require either tables the size of tennis courts or miniatures the size of pinheads, armies that focus on close combat would be totally boned in most situations (like they are in real life), games would take forever to play, etc. - but that doesn't stop it from looking pretty silly at first glance. Examples include:
** ''[[Warhammer
*** Of course, while that range of artillery is painfully short for real life purposes, it's tantamount to infinite as far as the tabletop is concerned. Unless you have a battlefield more then 10 feet long in any direction.
*** One White Dwarf article justified this - the units doppler out at long range.
*** The Deathstrike Missile given stats in the 5th Edition Imperial Guard codex takes this to new heights of absurdity. It's an ''intercontinental ballistic missile'' with a maximum tabletop range of 960
*** In the rulebook of the very first edition of Warhammer 40000 it was explained that this was done for game balance reasons, and that the real ranges of the weapons are ten times longer than those given in the game. So a Lasgun would have a range of 1200 feet, roughly the same as an AK-47.
*** There is a small nod to this in the old Daemonhunter and Witchhunter Codexes regarding the Orbital Strike support power. The orbital strike is basically one free shot every turn you can make, centered on a piece of terrain. It's rule is called (In)Accuracy, where it would deviate up to 18 inches from where you intended for it to hit if you rolled poorly, and can ''still deviate up to 12 inches if you rolled great''. This is references at how targeting tiny people running around on a small battlefield is next to impossible from orbit, and the gunners make the best of the situation and just aim in the general area. It's almost precision close Orbitally, laughably bad from the ground.
*** Possibly [[Justified Trope|justified]] in that the universe is full of great big alien monstrosities and [[Ax Crazy|Khorne-worshippers]] and Orks who want to get up close and in your face as fast as possible and that many battlefields are extremely enclosed ruined cities or starship-boarding actions, making range secondary to rate of fire and stopping power in the mind of weapon manufacturers. A lasgun is at least as powerful as a real-life gun, has zero recoil, and is logistically absurdly simple; shorter range in a universe with few situations in which long-ranged fire would be called for is excusable.
** The WARMACHINE and HORDES games set in the [[Iron Kingdoms]], where a typical sniper rifle has a maximum effective range of 70 feet and a mortar has a maximum effective range of 100 feet.
** ''[[BattleTech]]''
*** There was an interesting and elaborate [[Fix Fic]] about this very problem. It tried to justify the problem by saying that armor manufacturing has progressed to the point that in order to compensate, warheads had to become so bulky that Autocannons were effectively more like short-ranged mortars, with larger ones barely capable of firing beyond 100 meters. Likewise, missiles were limited by fuel capacity. Artillery, at least, has kilometers-long range.
*** Likewise, other fics paint it as an accuracy concern, based on poor quality fire control and recoil compensators. An
**** One early version of the rules attributed the accuracy problem to jamming of the electronic sensors plus extensive use of smoke screens. By this rule, the battlefield's a continual pea-soup fog and a Mechwarrior '''can't''' see his target well enough to hit beyond a few tens of meters. This didn't explain why some weapons could target the enemy at twice the distance another weapon carried by the same 'Mech could.
*** It's worth noting that in ''Battle Space'', the ranges were drastically upgraded so that ranges were measured in thousands of kilometers. Too bad it didn't sell, because, along with being insidiously complex and requiring significantly more paperwork (with ''hundreds'' of hit boxes and critical hit locations ''per ship'', and weapons loadouts that were could fill an entire page) than the land-based game, space combat made the series' signature 'Mechs (and their [[Mechwarrior]] pilots, by extension) [[Point Defenseless]] turrets tethered to their ships at best, and helpless cargo at all other times.
** ''[[Frostgrave]]'' and [[In Space]] spin-off ''[[Stargrave]]'' put maximum range at 24 inches on the idea that the terrain setup rules require the city ruins everyone is fighting in be so full of obstacles there's no way to actually have line of sight to a target further than that. That normally works out fine, except the rules also encourage vertical use of terrain in battle but don't have special rules for shooting downward so units can climb to the top of a building and find themselves unable to hit things they could if they were standing at the bottom of it since the hypotenuse is longer than the base.
* ''[[GURPS]]'' space combat takes place on a totally different scale than normal. Anything less than 20 miles (32km) is classified as point blank (and combat bonuses reflect this by making it virtually impossible to miss).▼
** ''[[Bolt Action]]'' has maximum ranges that get ''weird'' if you apply its official scale of 1/56th, but in practice all but the smallest mortars and howitzers can hit anything on the entire battlefield that's beyond their ''minimum'' range. Small arms however, are still very weird (rifles take penalties to hit beyond a mere fifty-six feet and maximum of one-hundred twelve feet).
▲* ''[[GURPS]]'' space combat takes place on a totally different scale than normal. Anything less than 20 miles (
* Lampshaded in a supplement for ''[[Tales From The Floating Vagabond]]''. It described scale ranges for its weapon ranges. The longest ('See That Dot?') range was given the appropriate scale, sponsored by the Society to turn Alaska into a Sand Table.
* [[Justified Trope|Justified]] in ''[[Cyberpunk 2020]]'' due to a serious case of [[Shown Their Work|Showing Their Work]] in regards to shootouts between amateurs and street hoodlums. Most firefights are fought well inside 12.5 meters (the "close" range band of pistols) and are usually decided by the first lucky hit. On average, they last all of fifteen seconds (five turns).
* Completely averted in most cases in ''[[Shadowrun]]'', where the extreme range limit for most weapons is about where the extreme ranges of real weapons would be (e.g. 1500 meters for a sniper rifle under the Shadowrun rules; that has been exceeded in real life in seven cases ever).
* Despite how its parent franchise lovingly embraces this, ''[[Star Wars]]'' RPGs avoid this. A "low tech" mortar has a weight of 1.8 kilograms with max range of 3750 meters <ref>The real world vz. 99 Antos, made long after these rules were first published and considered light for a mortar, weighs just shy of 3 times this with a much shorter range.</ref> while larger pieces can reach even further. Capital ships can hit targets with their turbolasers from orbit (bombers are used because this is very inaccurate and slow). Even small arms have reasonable ranges of 450ms being the max range for a normal rifle (this is lower than modern rifles, but still well past most visual range).
== [[Video Games]] ==
* Much the same in ''[[Fallout]] Tactics''
** This carries back to the main ''Fallout'' series, where the basic pistol had a top range of 25 meters, and the very best sniper weapons maxed out at 60.
** Caused by the [[Rule of Fun]], along with isometric view not being much good beyond throwing distance. Fallout 1/2/Tactics would not be fun games if you got instantly blasted by an impossible-to-see foe with a sniper rifle as soon as you entered a raider camp, or something.
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*** The best long-range weapon in the game is a lever-action rifle ''with iron sights'', because it does a lot of damage and has a spread of 0. Unfortunately, it uses the rarest ammo in the game. Oh yeah, and it was originally owned by Abraham Lincoln.
*** Also strangely inverted as well, as the standard hunting rifle, one of the more effective long range weapons (slightly less than the sniper rifle's range) lacks IRON SIGHTS. This would make the weapon near impossible to aim at anything further than very close range in real life. The hunting rifle model was given proper iron sights in [[Fallout: New Vegas]], which was required as that game introduced the ability to use iron-sights.
** Curiously, ''New Vegas'' actually has world set-pieces designed around firearms being able to function at longer ranges than enemies will actually spawn at and react to the player within. Using hacks to force even a relatively small increase in range makes certain entrenched enemies considerably deadlier now that their guard towers actually work.
* Similarly, all manner of ranged attacks in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', be they bows, guns, or magic fireballs, have a maximum range of 30-45 yards. They also have a ''minimum'' range, however. If the enemy gets too close you're forced into melee combat, so it is averted to a degree.
* [[Mass Effect]] limits all guns (sniper rifles, assault rifles, missiles, ''tank cannons''...) to 400 meters maximum range. Noteworthy in that every gun is technically a mass driver; the pistols would probably be as effective as a present-day rifle. The sequel does a better job by setting almost every firefight in a confined space (skyscraper, spaceship, warehouse, underground base, whatever). There's one blatant instance of the sequel playing it straight when Miranda says she can nail a shot at a hundred meters. This is further out than most fictional gunfights, but it's still spitting distance for a real-life trained rifleman.
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** The Archer class, despite it name, is not about long-range combat, but [[All There in the Manual|a large variety of skills and arms]]. It's just as likely that the character was called 'archer' so the player would be surprised when he starts [[Dual-Wielding]].
* The main reason that Naked Snake's CQC techniques work so well against Ocelot's troops at the beginning of ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 3''. Several times, he takes down soldiers who were charging at him from about six feet away with their rifles, when if they'd just shot him, the game would have been a lot shorter (doesn't help that soon before this, Ocelot had been [[Tempting Fate|mocking Snake's "judo" and his troops had laughed right along]]).
** Snake takes this trope to the next level in his ''[[Super Smash Brothers]]''
* ''[[Mirror's Edge]]'' is a heavy offender: the firearm-slinging [[Mooks]] will ''always'' try to club you with said firearms rather than gain distance and continue shooting. Not that [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy|it'd help them much]] and it makes disarming easy as pie, so [[Rule of Fun|nobody is complaining]]...
* ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'' and its progeny has it both ways: archers have ridiculously short ranges if you consider they are archers, but guns tend to not have a range restriction other than "straight line" and "nothing in the way".
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* ''[[Bloodline Champions]]'' has projectiles disappear once they reach their maximum possible range to travel.
* ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' curves all damage to be most effective at short range. Since the secondary weapon for most classes is a shotgun, and the other weapons (a minigun, a grenade launcher, a few kinds of pistols, a flamethrower) either have enough spread to be hard to use at long range, or retain a great deal of accuracy at long range (the revolver, the sniper rifle, the rocket launcher), it's Justified.
** Averted on any critical hits, as Crits ignore damage fall-off and will deal the full damage of the weapon plus the critical even at the most extreme ranges. This is useful for stuff like the Grenade Launcher and Pistols, where they can be launched much further away with a critboost and hit enemies not even aware of your presence, but is lackluster for weapons that also has spread like the Scattergun and Minigun, since the Critical does not curb bullet spread.
* In ''[[Battle for Wesnoth]]'', you have trolls punching with their bare fists, swords, flying firebreathing dragons, spellcasters, archers, and even one unit with a gun. All of the above have a one-hex range for all attacks.
** Remember the mantra: [[Space Compression|Hexes Are Possibly Miles Across]]
* In ''[[Majesty]]: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim'', heroes and monsters DO have decent ranges. A high level Ranger can actually shoot farther than what you can see in a screen.(The Ranger will be outside the screen to the left, the target will be outside the screen to the right, you'll just be seeing a flying arrow.) However, when the enemy gets close enough to melee, heroes and monsters keep using ranged attacks or spells. They shoot enemies in the face while getting hit by swords. Units can hit, can run, but cannot do both at once. Once a unit decides he can't win the melee, he turns tail and runs off, never resuming combat unless something changes his mind (i.e. being healed, spell effects, etc). [[Word of God]] is that they put in hit and run at first, but it made ranged units just too strong, so they made them stupid instead.
* Let us consider the humble Assault Rifle from ''[[City of Heroes]]''. Its Sniper Rifle attachment starts with a base range of 150 feet, [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality|keeping it in line with similar Powers from less tool-oriented sets]] (like Sniper Blast from Energy Blast). Meanwhile, enemy snipers have ranges that extend into (and beyond!) visual range, and it's almost never a good idea for any [[Player Character]] with an Assault Rifle to opt for the [[Good Old Fisticuffs|Brawl]] ability at close range. (Enemy in your grill? Ram the barrel down his throat!) [[Playing with a Trope|Where does that fit on this page? You decide]]!
* ''[[Ace Combat]]'', so much. In ''Shattered Skies'', the standard missile was good up to only 900 feet. A real-world short-range IR AAM, like the AIM-9 Sidewinder, can reach at least 1
* ''[[HAWX]]'' is slightly better than AC in this; for example, the MultiAA locks on at around 6000 metres, which while still a third of the
* In ''[[Gears of War]]'', the standard assault rifle has a ''chainsaw bayonet''. [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality|The issues with weight and fuel in real life don't appear in the game]] (though the protagonists are muscular and huge), as well as the probability of mucking up the rifle's barrel by getting blood and flesh in it, but as humanity's alien enemies, the Locust, have tough hides and favour swarm tactics, it just may be justified in-universe.
* In ''[[Silent Scope]]'', it doesn't matter if the enemy is two or two-hundred meters away; you kill him with your sniper rifle.
* ''Wasteland'' had its maximum range be about 30 to 40 metres. This was generally too far for any weapon, whether assault rifle or laser rifle.
* Aya Brea in ''[[Parasite Eve]]'' was described as something of a sharpshooter. Yet her range, based on the size of the dome and her height, was generally measurable in feet, and not many of them.
* Noel Vermilion is the only combatant in ''[[
* In the first ''[[Metroid]]'', as well as the remake, ''Metroid: Zero Mission'', your Power Beam has a very short range until you collect the Long Beam power-up, which removes the range cap. Thus, until you get the Long Beam, this trope is imposed upon the player by the game.
* In ''[[Command
* In ''[[Splinter Cell]]'' series, aiming the F2000 gives the impression that Sam Fisher suffers from Parkinson's disease. Hitting someone at a distance of 100 meters is extremely difficult. With a modern, customized rifle. Fitted with optic sights. Used by a top-notch black ops operative. Granted, leaving enemies alive is encouraged in this series, not to mention the F2000 is generally ''very'' loud.
* Played horribly straight in ''[[Devil May Cry]] 3'' with the Kalina Ann rocket launcher, which has projectiles that automatically detonate a short ways from him even if there are no enemies in range.
* Gunfights in ''[[Valkyria Chronicles]]'' typically take place at ranges of about
* ''[[Front Mission]]'', playing similarly to ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' [[X Meets Y|but with]] ''[[Mechwarrior]]'' stylings, doesn't just play this straight, it rams into it full-speed on jet-powered roller skates. Nothing but missiles and special artillery can shoot above 1 square's distance away, and that square is shown to be about
* In the ''[[Halo]]'' games, it's entirely possible to "no scope" an enemy, meaning you shoot them dead with a sniper rifle without using the scope. As the rifle has a really long barrel and most players prefer to move while firing instead of standing in one spot, this is somewhat difficult to do.
** It became progressively easier (relative to actual scoped firing) to no-scope as the games progressed.
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** Elites, particularly in ''Reach'', will often flank your position and assassinate you with a melee attack.
* In ''[[Medal of Honor]]: Allied Assault'', Nazis will frequently move in and melee your [[Redshirt Army]] allies to death, as the latter are [[Artificial Stupidity|too dumb to fight back at close range or shoot them from long range]]. The player's pistol is practically useless for anything more than a couple meters away, averting the [[Sniper Pistol]] trope. Ditto for the SMG's, particularly the [[MP 40]].
* In the [[Tactical Strategy]] ''[[Odium]]'', nearly all weapons are infuriatingly short-ranged. A pistol can only fire a square or two further than a thrown knife. A rifle only fires a square or two farther than a pistol. No weapon (except for the ion cannon) fires further than eight steps away. And, of course, at the very limits of a weapon's range its damage output decreases dramatically.
* ''[[Act of War]]'': The naval units in the expansion will fire their anti-ship missiles at each other at about visual range. Which is probably 1/100th the distance at which real life modern warships can engage targets at. Then again, the game wouldn't be playable if the action took place on a realistic scale.
* ''[[Call of Duty]] [[Modern Warfare|4]]'' and later have a form of this, where specific weapons will be unable to damage anyone past certain ranges depending on their class (a sniper rifle will reach farther than an assault rifle, which reaches farther than an SMG, and so on). This has some unfortunate side-effects, such as making actual long-range sniping with anything other than the [[BFG|Barrett .50cal]] a waste of time and ammo, and shotguns [[Short-Range Shotgun|worthless all the goddamn time]].
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== [[Machinima]] ==
* ''[[Red vs. Blue]]''. Though many characters own sniper rifles, they rarely use them for long range combat, preferring to just use their scopes as makeshift telescopes. Donut once asked Sarge why they never just shoot the enemy if they can get them in the rifle's sights, to which Sarge responded that that was the coward's way out. As for the blue team, Caboose is too dumb to use one properly, Tucker didn't have one for most of the series and Church? [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy|Well...]]
** It is [[Lampshaded]] in the latest miniseries by Lopez.
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