Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: Difference between revisions
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[[File:bear2.jpg|frame|''[[Cracked.com]]'' demonstrates]]
{{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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{{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."
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* ''[[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.
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** ''[[BattleTech]]''—where powerful, futuristic weapons have effective ranges as short as 60 meters (the heavy machine gun, for example)! The latest incarnation of the ruleset explicitly acknowledges that this is for playability only. (It's a little harder to excuse the fact that ballistic weapons tend to ''lose'' range with increasing caliber, though, especially when the same is most definitely not true for energy-based ones...)
*** 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.
** ''[[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 (32 km) is classified as point blank (and combat bonuses reflect this by making it virtually impossible to miss).
* 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]] ==
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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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* ''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 & Conquer]]'', both Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert, Rifle Infantry have such short range that splash damage from supporting infantry behind them will often damage the rifles in front. Particularly bad when one considers that a ''hand grenade'' can be tossed farther than these rifles can shoot. Also, ballistic artillery will only barely outrange a tank's cannon.
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