History Main / CoolButInefficient

* [[CoolPlane MiG-19 fighter]] was cutting edge for 1954 due to supersonic speed, [[MoreDakka multiple heavy cannon]], long range and [[FragileSpeedster handling]], yet it could not go above Mach 1.5, could overheat its own fuel tanks in the fuselage, was tremendously hard to maintain or repair due to fuselage construction (very closely spaced ribs and small engine bays meant all work had to be done through small hatches above them).

** The scythe chariot lasted through no more than one engagement with Alexander the Great. He invented the Mousehole, a simply modification to the formation of his heavy infantry that allowed them to easily trap one when it was driven at them, then kill the driver. Combine that with the fact that heavy infantry was already pretty resistant to the damn thing...

** The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FG_42 FG-42 early model]] had most possibly the coolest design of any WorldWarII small arm and it had been designed to combine the machine gun and rifle into one unit small enough to be carried by a paratrooper (it was as short as a modern AK-74, but had a 50cm barrel and fired full-power 7.92x57 ammo). Most of it's cool features proved useless: it was too light to keep steady when firing full-automatic (half the weight of a BAR), too awkwardly to aim properly, had too small a magazine, needed expensive alloys to be made and it could not mount a true bayonet, only a metal spike instead of it.

** British scientists also played around with a grenade design that shot poisonous needles everywhere instead of standard shrapnel. It was scrapped early on due to the incredibly large sadism-to-usefulness ratio, and the fact that it's use probably flies in the face of dozens of tenets of UsefulNotes/TheLawsAndCustomsOfWar.

*** You can't say that the germans weren't above [[ShootTheDog shooting the dog]].

** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav Schwerer Gustav and Dora.]] Two 80-cm rifled artillery guns, each weighing over 1000 tons and firing 7-ton shells. They required twin sets of parallel train tracks to even move around, which sometimes had to be built in front of them. They were designed to be used against the Maginot Line, so they were rendered irrelevant very early in the war, but they each actually saw action in the Soviet front. However, the enormous cost of building, arming and fueling the guns was way out of proportion to the amount of damage they ever did. Still, the guns were arguably useful as some targets in the Siege of Sevastopol were invulnerable to all other types of artillery besides the enormous 800mm guns, such as the "White Cliff" ammunition magazine located 30meters under the sea, with at least 10 meters of concrete protection. As such they could be said to have played a crucial part in bringing a siege that was tying up valuable units needed elsewhere to a quicker conclusion.

*** Actually, the fuel for the Me-163 was much worse than that of the V-2. The V-2 ran on A-stoff (liquid oxygen) and B-stoff (hydrazine or an ethanol/water mix). The Me-163 ran on T-stoff (80% hydrogen peroxide, the oxidizer) and either C-stoff (a methanol/hydrazine/water mixture) or Z-stoff (a calcium permanganate/sodium permanganate solution in water) depending on the specific model. The T-stoff could dissolve human flesh, and as both types of of engines used were hypergolic, the two propellants ignited on contact. Since the two were almost impossible to distinguish without chemical testing (apparently, nobody in Nazi Germany had ever heard of using tagants to identify liquids), this led to numerous accidents in fueling. To save weight, the launch wheels were dropped after takeoff, and often bounced back from the rough fields used and hit the aircraft, often causing catastrophic fuel leaks. Landing on the single belly skid could do the same with any residual fuel. Basically, the thing was a flying bomb more likely to kill it's own pilot that literally anyone else.

[[TruthInTelevision Truth In History]], also. For hundreds of years, long bows were significantly more dangerous than GUNS on the field of battle. Back then, guns were horribly inaccurate and had slow reload, while a longbow could be fired more times per minute than a gun by a large margin. Even a properly fired arrow could pierce armor that early firearms could not. Technological advancements, combined with deforestation, eventually led to the adoption of guns by armies. The greatest advantage of guns was always that you could train a man to use one in a span of weeks, where building the muscles and accuracy of a skilled archer took decades (There was a saying, "To train a longbowman, you started by training his grandfather"). Maybe those future weapons just haven't evolved enough? But then you'd think a lot of people would still be using boring old bullets... Damn you, RuleOfCool! (Indeed, one of her generals sent Elizabeth I of England a memo urging that the arquebus be abandoned in favour of the longbow on the grounds that the longbow was cheaper, had a much faster rate of fire, was more accurate, was more powerful and had a longer effective range.)

This is not in the least helped by a tendency not to do the research; futuristic rayguns also tend to lack some of the most common sense niceties of modern firearms. The most frequent mistake is the lack of a trigger guard, which would guarantee that phasers and blasters go off when incorrectly carried or set away. Just as common is a lack of anything vaguely resembling sights, a shoulder stock, or anything else to give you an edge over just firing from the hip. It doesn't help that almost no protagonist has [[IJustShotMarvinInTheFace any clue whatsoever about basic firearm safety]], frequently keeping their fingers on the triggers, waving loaded guns around like feather dusters, and never, ever applying the safety catch, if there even is one.

-->-- '''Clem''', ''{{Reno 911}}!''

* In the ''Codename: Kids Next Door'' episode "Operation: T.R.I.C.Y.C.L.E." the KND attack the Tommymobile by using the biggest ketchup bottle ever seen. The kids at the moon base drop ketchup on it using a giant hand to slap the bottom of the bottle. It looks awesome, but does absolutely nothing. It's immediately lampshaded by one of the operatives attacking the bike from a plane.

*** A case of ScienceMarchesOn. Also the Martians didn't want to exterminate humanity, but harvest it. They came to steal our blood and use it to terraform Earth to be more like Mars with the red vine. Weapons of mass destruction leaves just that, mass destruction. That's why they came here, to get away from their own destroyed planet.

** Played straight with the cornerless paper. Sure, it looks cool, but how do you store large quantities? On Earth, we put our cornered paper in rolls, what do they do? Although this might be more ''Alien but Inefficient''.

*** A case of ScienceMarchesOn. Also the Martians didn't want to exterminate humanity, but harvest it. Weapons of mass destruction leaves just that, mass destruction. That's why they came here, to get away from their own destroyed planet.

*** In the board game, this is quite a common and effective tactic.

** There is an example of this being used, but only as a booby trap. Since the normally solitary Sandworms will swarm-attack any operating shield on Dune. nobody uses them in the desert. This makes it perfectly safe to use laseguns to probe for anyone trying to hide under the sand, right up until somebody just leaves an operating shield generator out on the sand....

In the future we will have {{Ray Gun}}s, space-food and all other manner of things replacing current day technologies. Sadly, they will also be far less efficient than what we have today, raising the question of [[YouFailEngineeringForever why people invented them]] [[ItSeemedLikeAGoodIdeaAtTheTime in the first place]]. Sometimes they don't work as well as what we already have, sometimes they work as well or better but require too much additional work, sometimes they're just annoyingly prone to PhlebotinumBreakdown.

* Sci-fi from ''Franchise/StarTrek'' to ''StarWars'' and everything in between tends to have spiffy, future weapons (phasers, blasters, etc.) if they're so inclined. For all their technology, these guns seem useless when you actually have to kill someone who matters. Guns shown before to vaporize inanimate objects now only leave a nasty burn or push people back a few feet. And that's disregarding all the situations where energy weapons don't work or are defeated by defenses that wouldn't even slow a bullet. Which is somewhat justified (at least for ''Franchise/StarTrek'') in that phasers have more than one power setting. Still, needing to shoot a man hiding behind a rock should be easy enough for something which should be able to shoot THROUGH it if you don't care what happens to him on the other side.

* ''StarWars'' perpetrates the same problems as ''Trek'' when it comes to force fields, most notably with forcefields replacing regular ''spacedoors''. In this case, power failure would lead to explosive decompression of all landing bays. However, as ''Revenge of the Sith'' shows, there are typically emergency metal doors that quickly close in the event of such a power failure.

** And, of course, the lightsaber, which, while lethally effective, suffers the same drawback that rendered metallic swords obsolete when firearms came along: its maximum effective range is one yard plus the length of your arm. Of course, it ''is'' more effective in the hands of the people that favor them, considering their extreme reflexes and their ability to reflect your shots back at you...but only because their enemies are using FrickinLaserBeams instead of bullets despite knowing they can be reflected.

* In the ''ChildeCycle'' stories by GordonRDickson, this trope is subverted by the standard rifles: They are basically extremely refined bolt-action rifles, powered by mechanical springs and levers. This is explained as they are the most reliable and tamper-proof weapon imaginable, as anything higher-tech opens the opportunity for higher-tech countermeasures.

** ''Franchise/StarTrek'' has also shown that forcefields are the primary means of keeping prisoners in their cells. There's no indication that a solid door wouldn't work just as well and of course there's no reason they couldn't use both forcefields ''and'' physical doors, like shuttle bays do.

** The Goa'uld also use force fields instead of glass for windows on their spacecraft, which they attempt to [[JustifiedTrope justify]] as being necessary because glass would not hold up under the strain. Of course, glass would at least ''try'', unlike a force field in a power failure.

* ''Series/BlakesSeven'' had a weapon called the IMIPAK (Incipient Molecular Instability Projector And Key), a ray gun which [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin induced incipient instability in the molecular structure of the target]], after which you have to whip out and activate the Key to convert it to actual instability and thus destroy the target -- except that if the target is a living being and noticed you firing the gun at him, you never get the chance because long before then, he's zapped you with his own less acronymic but far more practical weapon. The IMIPAK might just about work as a stealth-based threat, but as a practical sniper weapon a simple club is probably better.

* In ''{{Castle}}'', the murder of a lottery winner leads the detectives to have a conversation about what they'd buy if they won the lottery, during which Detective Esposito says he'd buy a Ferrari. Castle, a millionaire mystery writer, points out that he has one, and it's not as great as you'd think. When Esposito insists that they're "hella fast", Castle points out that in rush hour traffic it's just as fast as any other car. Of course, Esposito and Ryan -- not being millionaires -- still frequently badgers and barters with Castle to get a turn driving the car [[RunningGag at every possible opportunity]].

** It should be noted, that nearly all cases of this trope are very well justified in-universe.
** It's also worth noting that the standard sidearm for military officers of the Imperium is a fully automatic armor-piercing mini-rocket launcher.

** The {{Space Marine}}s, {{Super Soldier}}s taken UpToEleven are an example of what happens when an entire faction is this trope. They have bullet-proof chests and corrosive saliva, can live on a healthy diet of concrete and metal, wear PoweredArmor better than most tanks, have lifespans in the centuries or even millenia, land on a planet via drop pods jettisoned from an orbiting vessel directly to the surface without slowing, and have weapons including but not limited to aforementioned automatic armor-piercing rocket launchers larger than an average person and hammers capable of killing an EldritchAbomination.

** Pretty much everything in the 40K universe operates by the principles of RuleOfCool and MoreDakka (being the TropeNamer for the latter); with realism chucked right out the window at every opportunity.

* ''{{Half-Life}} 2'' equipped the player with the Gravity Gun, which is basically used to hurl garbage at people (instead of, we don't know, bullets). Of course, this is a lot more fun than it sounds, and you're unlikely to run out of ammo. On the other hand, Alyx makes a point of saying that the Gravity Gun is a tool used for carrying large and hazardous material, and wasn't meant as a weapon.

* In ''VideoGame/ZoneOfTheEnders 2'', the Vector Cannon was just about the coolest weapon in the game. Unfortunately, outside of a few isolated instances (destroying the battleship engines, the shield around Aumaan and as a spectacular ending to the final Anubis fight if your aim was good), the weapon was practically useless due to its long recharge time, the requisite that your mech's legs be touching the ground or another stable surface during the charging, and the inordinate amount of subweapon energy consumed by firing (though the latter was negated if you played as Naked Jehuty, which had infinite subweapon energy).
** Really, the Vector Cannon was never meant to be used in combat at any point, and existed solely for story purposes. However, it should be noted that a 20 second charge period for a weapon that could destroy anything in its path is pretty nice. In an actual combat situation with backup (Rather than a one mech army) such a weapon would be devastating if protected properly.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' gives you The Treaty-Blade and The Sword of Kings. These swords have the power to cut [[GreenRocks Nethicite]], but, more importantly, have been bequeathed by the Gods themselves. Naturally, these swords'll be amazing, right? Wrong. They each have 30 attack. To give you an idea, the maximum attack a weapon can have is 150 - the kind of weapon your fighters will have at the time will have between 50 and 70. Admittedly, the swords good for dodging, but other than that, it's basically there to look pretty.
* Hymir's Finger in ''{{Drakengard}}'' is a literal {{BFS}} in a game which has done a good job of keeping the weapons relatively realistic, or as far as one can in a medieval-[[FunctionalMagic fantasy]] world. It is long enough to qualify as a jousting lance, and it does a hell of a lot of damage, enough to mistake it for the InfinityPlusOneSword. Cool, but it takes forever to swing. If you time your attacks right, you can wipe out whole squads of enemies, but the sword requires too much work to use properly. And the actual InfinityPlusOneSword is so much better.
** It's mainly meant for the more challenging side missions/weapon unlocking (like the one where you have to kill 150-odd zombies) due to the fact that once you get a combo started, it's hard for anything to get near you.

** And in SOTN itself, it's totally useless, since all but the weakest mooks are immune to it. When Richter uses it in an [[LimitBreak Item Crash]], it looks pretty badass, though, and is even capable of a (weak) attack in this mode.

* ''VideoGame/{{Prototype}}'s'' Snap-Kick Launcher. Basically treats anything smaller than a Leader Hunter as a soccer ball. Now if only a single maxed Musclemass boosted Snap Kick would just send that annoying supersoldier to his death rather than having to go after him to repeat the process.

** Not to mention that Schlock cannot use a normal handgun to fly.

* Lampshaded in the ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'' episode "Shriek", where a sound expert demonstrates his powerful sound weapon to the corporate head, Derek Powers. The inventor finds he has a tough job selling his technology when Powers notes that for regular tasks like demolition, conventional tools like dynamite are just as effective and cheaper than some exotic new technology.

** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav Schwerer Gustav and Dora.]] Two 80-cm rifled artillery guns, each weighing over 1000 tons and firing 7-ton shells. They required twin sets of parallel train tracks to even move around, which sometimes had to be built in front of them. They were designed to be used against the Maginot Line, so they were rendered pretty much irrelevant very early in the war, but they each actually saw action in the Soviet front. However, the enormous cost of building, arming and fueling the guns was way out of proportion to the amount of damage they ever did. Still, the guns were arguably useful as some targets in the Siege of Sevastopol were literally invulnerable to all other types of artillery besides the enormous 800mm guns, such as the "White Cliff" ammunition magazine located 30meters under the sea, with at least 10 meters of concrete protection. As such they could be said to have played a crucial part in bringing a siege that was tying up valuable units needed elsewhere to a quicker conclusion.

*** It should be noted that Christie, while he had some goofy ideas, also was a genius in armored vehicle design and his Christie suspension was used in some of the most successful tanks of WWII, including the T-34 and the Crusader.

** Most of the focus in the discussion was the Vietnam war, where most of the problems with the M-16 were because of several issues: First, it was put into production way too early (as such they were basically using a prototype,) they said the gun was self-cleaning (which it wasn't) and therefore didn't distribute ''any cleaning kits'', and the casings were packed with the wrong kind of propellant. All this combined with the harsh conditions soldiers had to drag them through led to a slew of reliability problems.
* The Persian [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythed_chariot scythed chariot]] was an average war chariot with sharp blades mounted on the axles; the crew just had to plow through the crowd and the scythes would cut in half everyone within 1-2 meters. It wasn't very efficient, as casualties could be greatly avoided by letting it pass, and it could pretty much only work in open flat country with enough room to maneuver, but damn, there was nothing as awesome as seeing dozens of soldiers sliced by its might!

*** War elephants pretty much define this trope in general. IIRC, that's part of why people stopped using them.
* Chainsaws in general. Yes, [[ChainsawGood they're very awesome]] and can hack through trees and such, but try swinging around something that's big, loud, heavy and just plain messy and you'll probably severely injure/kill yourself. Not to mention that, should the chain get jammed or caught on anything, it can snap and whip out into your ''face''.

** One plausible use for lasers might just be to take advantage of the fact that a laser beam is just coherent, high-intensity light and ''blind'' your target(s). As in, quite possibly for good. Of course, that'd still be a far cry from having a proper futuristic ray gun. More of a terror weapon, in fact... to the point that the [[TheLawsAndCustomsOfWar Geneva conventions]] [[http://www.un.org/millennium/law/xxvi-18-19.htm specifically prohibit]] the use of lasers in this way.

* This website, naturally. It may be cool to know pretty much everything about every piece of media out there, but [[TVTropesWillRuinYourLife good luck being able to concentrate on anything else]] like homework, work, a social life... YMMV on that one, if one intends to write works of fiction, can get over the fact the most of life does not work this way, will not drive themselves insane from the fact that nothing is new and probably will have it share of people not liking it and discussing why, AND use their knowledge of these tropes to create something amazing, whilst still having a stable life. THEN it might be worth it. DifficultButAwesome

** The Me-163 (a rocket powered fighter [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome which could fly nearly-supersonic in 1944]], but since the fuel it used was both explosively unstable ''and'' toxic -the same stuff was used to run the aforementioned V2- it ended up killing more of its own pilots than the enemy.

** And, of course, the lightsaber, which, while lethally effective, suffers the same drawback that rendered metallic swords obsolete when firearms came along: its maximum effective range is one yard plus the length of your arm. Of course, it ''is'' more effective in the hands of the people that favor them, considering their extreme reflexes and their ability to reflect your shots back at you...but only because their enemies are using FrickinLaserBeams instead of bullets despite knowning they can be reflected.

*** While they did build a proof of concept scale model, they realized in the process that it would be insanely expensive and time consuming to make, plus the war was ending by the time they could have gone forward with construction.

* That is specifically and deeply {{Averted}} in the DresdenFiles -- and getting muggles involved is something akin to nuclear strike in the supernatural community, and has been even back when humans waved ''torches and pitchforks'' around. Now, with powerful weapons; broad communications and mobilization; and fast, effective, heavy-duty transport humans are a force to be reckoned with. A lot of technology will fail in the presence of powerful magic, but a bullet can kill a wizard or a gibbering monster just as easily as a ball of fire. (In the case of said monsters, sometimes ''many'' bullets.)