Trope-a-Day: Short Range Long Range Weapon

Short Range Long Range Weapon: Most sensible people try really hard to avert this – seeing as the lovely people who make these things for a living have provided them with so many comfortably long-range weapons, it’s a shame not to take advantage of them, and fight where survivability is greater, and surprise much more achievable – say, with drones, from over the horizon.  (See, for example, the starship combat ranges mentioned under Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale, which avert it very hard indeed.)

Not always possible, since chokepoints still exist and urban combat is still occasionally needed, and so on, but given the tactical choice, people will almost always pick ranged combat.  No sense in taking damnfool risks when you don’t have to.