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"Dakka": Ork slang for rapid fire capability, based on the onomatopoeia for the sound of automatic guns shooting. You need more of it. No exceptions. - 1d4chan on dakka.
Improbable Aiming Skills are all very well, but sometimes - perhaps because your foe can Dodge The Bullet, perhaps because you need to mow down a whole army of Mooks at once, perhaps because you just really like the sound of your gun - you need to throw a wall of bullets at the target. Modern automatic weapons can achieve rates of fire that can only be described as "bullet spam", and the more guns you're using, the more dakka you can put out. After all, There Is No Kill Like Overkill.
Accuracy is an optional extra.
Hard to achieve with a single, rifle-sized weapon, though bonus points for screaming at the top of your lungs as you empty out a whole magazine at the target, or gratuitous shots devoted to torrents of shell cases spewing out of the gun. Getting More Dakka is often the reasoning behind a lot of BFGs. May be used to overcome stylistic inaccuracy. If you lack enough barrels but are a commander with reserves, free feel to substitute lots and lots of men.
Gatling Good and Guns Akimbo are common ways of achieving this (and if you can swing it, Gatling Guns Akimbo). Can make up for the troops in question being students of the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy... doesn't always. Distinct from A Team Firing, which concerns the employment of dakka to little effect. More Dakka is both a means to an end and an end in itself. The Macross Missile Massacre and Beam Spam use different delivery systems but are otherwise functionally identical.
Examples:
Tabletop Games
- The Trope Namer (and greatest example in all of fiction) of this trope is Warhammer 40000's Orks, who make up for their universally terrible accuracy with tremendous enthusiasm for dakka. The phrase "more dakka" itself is originally from a game upgrade to weapons, "Kustom Job: More Dakka". ("Enuff dakka", like "enuff choppa", is the preserve of the Ork gods, but something every Mekboy aspires to one day create.)
- A lot of weapons in 40k are based around this principle, but a special mention must go to the Imperial Vulcan Mega Bolter◊, a gatling gun the size of a battle tank (in that picture, mounted on a super-heavy tank), capable of mowing down entire platoons in seconds.
- Battle Tech refers to this practice as Alpha Striking: Firing every gun you can (including missiles and lasers) at a single target as quickly as possible. Deadly effective, but produces crippling amounts of heat.
- Depends on the 'Mech, actually. While alpha striking with most 'Mechs tends to punt them right out of safe heat levels - yeah, Nova/Black Hawk, that's you I'm talking to - other 'Mechs, referred to as 'alpha-babies' by fans, are made for continuous alpha striking all day. Case in point: Stormcrow/Ryoken.
Film
- The Matrix likes this one. From the helicopter minigun scene in the first film (complete with gratuitous Slow Motion shots devoted to the shell casings tumbling earthward), through the huge machine guns mounted on Zion's defences and resident Humongous Mecha, right down to Mouse dual-wielding huge machine guns in his heroic death, it's plain that the Wachowskis understand the need for dakka.
- This troper is pretty darn sure that those were automatic -shotguns-. So Yeah.
- As does a certain John Rambo.
- Hot Shots: Part Deux, parodies the need for dakka greatly, with even a scene where Charlie Sheen kills people just by throwing bullets at them.
- Predator. You know the scene I mean.
- It's a staple of the Terminator films to have at least one scene worshipping this trope, but undoubtedly the best and most memorable is the T800's minigun rampage against the police at the Cyberdyne building in T2. Also notable for its absence of human fatalities, due to the Terminator being programmed by young Connor not to kill humans, an amusing inversion of several tropes (as the Terminator invokes his Improbable Aiming Skills as an advanced assassin-cyborg to deliberately miss every shot.) The property damage, however...
- The climactic battle of The Rundown (Welcome to the Jungle for our European friends) is absolutely loaded with Dakka flying in all directions. It pretty much makes the movie.
Videogames
- All Ratchet And Clank games feature a weak, rapid-firing basic weapon, which usually upgrades to a less weak, extremely rapid-firing weapon. The fully-upgraded Heavy Lancer in the second game fired so fast it was almost a continuous stream of bullets, and the fourth game takes it still further with the ability to add "speed mods" to guns, greatly increasing their dakka output.
- In the Warhammer 40000 game Dawn Of War, the Orks get upgrades called "More Dakka", which increases the damage output of their ranged weapons, and "Even More Dakka" which... figure it out yourself.
- The Ninja gun from Lunar Knights is a rapid-fire, solar-powered Guns Akimbo just perfect for taking out a small army of weak Mooks charging at you. Progression through its ranks gifts it with More Dakka.
- This and Badass Lolitas are pretty much the entire point of Touhou. The genre it's in is called "Bullet Hell" for a reason.
- Once you have the Chicago Typewriter in Resident Evil 4, the game is all about this.
- Don't forget the PRL in the Wii version.
- The PRL was originally in the PS 2 version, as an added bonus to fans that had to wait to get the game. But that had a slow rate of fire, so it doesn't apply here.
- Providing the individual with tremendous rates of fire is a staple of the First Person Shooter genre.
- The Heavy and his gatling gun from Team Fortress 2 are a perfect example. His vast ammunition supply goes down a lot faster than you'd expect.
- Right down to his closing quote in the 'Meet the Heavy' video: "Some people think they can outsmart me. Maybe... *sniff* maybe. I've yet to meet one who can outsmart bullet."
- The Engineer isn't one to be outdone either- upgrading the Sentry adds two gatling guns, and then a missile launcher to boot. And it's accurate, very accurate. "The answer: use a gun. And if that don't work? Use more gun."
- The Cyclone from Perfect Dark has a secondary mode that fires approximately 2000 rounds per minute and empties the weapon's 50-round magazine in under a second. There's also the RC-P120, with a high rate of fire, and 120 round magazine.
- And Goldeneye 007 gave us the RC-P90, which held 80 rounds, and spat metal through just about anything. Its distinctive noise is enough to get any veteran multiplayer nervous.
- The entire purpose of Wolfenstein 3D's Gatling gun, which fired a minimum of five shots with every press of the button.
- Actually, it's two, as the Gatling gun has no spinup/spindown. Of course, your ammo will still be gone before you know it.
- As well as Doom's Chaingun and its imitators.
- "Hold RB to detach turret."
- The Russian PPSh-41 submachine gun in Call Of Duty 2; 71 round magazine plus the highest rate of fire of any weapon in the game equals a whole lotta Dakka. Yes, this really existed.
- Speaking of Call Of Duty, in CoD4, the mission "Heat." You know the part I'm talking about.
- Also in CoD4 - in multiplayer you can get the perk Double-tap, which increases rate of fire by 50% on automatic weapons. Very silly results with already fast firing weapons such as the M249 and P90.
- Army Of Two allows Tyson and Rios to spend their hard-earned cash upgrading their weapons. As an added bonus, upgrading the dakkaness of their weapons - referred to in-game as "Aggro" - naturally results in drawing more fire from enemy troops, which is the entire point of the Aggro system.
- Vulcan Raven, of Metal Gear Solid, carries around a minigun from a fighter jet. I repeat, carries around a minigun from a fighter jet. With its refrigerator-sized power supply strapped to his back. That's about as dakka as one man on foot gets.
- And then he got a tank.
- No-no. He gets the tank first. THEN he gets the minigun.
- The Boss's weapon of choice in Metal Gear Solid 3 is an assault rifle called The Patriot. Her method of using it is simply to hold down the trigger until whatever she points it at is dead. The weapon never overheats and quite literally has a Bottomless Magazine. You eventually get your hands on it... somehow... and can use it in much the same manner.
- Command And Conquer Commandos may get even more dakka. In Tiberium Wars, the GDI Commando carries a submachinegun-sized 40mm automatic railgun. Yes. A forty-millimeter fully-automatic railgun.
- GDI goes so far as to apply the concept of More Dakka to their tanks. Does that building-sized Mammoth Tank really need two oversized railguns and quad-missile launchers? Hell yes, it does.
- The same thing happens in C&C Generals, of course. Gatling cannons and machine gun drones are only the beginning - fully upgraded Colonel Burton has a machine gun that destroys tanks, while China has gatling tanks, minigunners, Overlord Tanks (and Helix-2 helicopters) which gatling guns can be mounted on, and Emperor Tanks which come with building-sized gatling cannons.
- In the same vein, the human basic marines in Star Craft carry assault rifles that shoot ginormous spikes. In fact, they shoot ginormous spikes so fast that the rifle itself effectively stops firing for a few moments after a burst in order to cooldown and prevent melting. Certainly a lot of dakka there.
- One of the Humongous Mecha in Robot Alchemic Drive, which transforms into a tank and carries the most weapons of the three 'bots you control, has an ultimate attack called "Fire All Ordinance." It does Exactly What It Says On The Tin.
- Metal Wolf Chaos can be entirely boiled down to slapping More Dakka on to a (not quite so) Humongous Mecha, piloted by an extremely Hot Blooded president, who is entirely willing to use his plentiful supply of Dakka to spread his BURNING JUSTICE!
- The HEAVY MASHINE GUN from Metal Slug. By far the most common weapon found in the series. The titular tank's Vulcan Cannon also counts when it comes to obliterate everything in your path.
- Unreal Tournament 2004 isn't terribly dakka-happy, with even the minigun having a depressingly slow rate of fire. A few mods aim to address this; one in particular, known as "Arkon Weapons", has a fusion minigun that fires white-hot projectiles at a stupid rate of fire, high enough to kill an enemy player by casually moving the aiming reticle across him. This is offset by an equally large amount of recoil, which makes aiming a nightmare and effectively restricts the weapon to low-to-medium range - though if you empty your entire ammo reserve at an enemy across the map you're still likely to eventually kill him, and anyone else in the area, through sheer bullet saturation.
- In Sengoku Basara, Nouhime can whip out a minigun from under her dress, using it to juggle enemies in the air. The gun can be upgraded to include a second barrel. Now that's Dakka right there.
- One of Fulgore's (The Robot) fatalities in Killer Instinct is revealing a gun hidden inside his body. Then another. Then another. Then some more. Then another. Then, he fires.
Web Original
- The FTO pretty much rely on this in the KateModern episode "Answers", spraying bullets everywhere while yelling "We will bring down the Order!" They still manage to screw up.
Anime
- In Gundam Wing, the Gundam Heavy Arms was built entirely around this concept; its upgraded form has two gatling guns on the same arm.
- And its second upgraded form from The Movie has Even More Dakka, with two handheld, twin-linked miniguns & another FOUR inside the chest. Leopard Gundam, Heavy's Expy from Gundam X & its upgraded Leopard Destroyer form takes it in a different direction, having fewer gatlings, but theirs are much bigger.
- Certain firefights in Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex seem to have been written to illustrate this concept, especially when they gave a Tachikoma a Vulcan cannon.
- In one episode of Code Geass R2, Cornelia literally straps on an entire arsenal of guns onto a hijacked Knighmare Frame in order to destroy the Siegfried.
Literature
- Reason.
- "Don't worry, they'll listen to reason."
- the Covenant applied this in the Halo novel Ghosts of Onyx IIRC, the plan was to simply fill the air with plasma so the Spartan-IIIs had no where to go.
Live Action TV
- On an episode of Mythbusters where the cliche, "Easy as Shooting Fish in a Barrel" was tested, it was definitely a case of escalating Dakka. At first, they had only used pistols and upped the ante to shotguns (even though just the shockwaves from a pistol would kill most fish). But when it came to true dakka, they ended the episode with a car-mounted minigun which not only turned the barrel into scrap, but practically vaporized the fish. The Mythbusters know dakka.
- As was demonstrated once more in the "chopping a tree down with a gun" test, with gorgeous redhead Kari Byron blasting away with another car-mounted minigun. Pulverizing the test trees into splinters in the process. And setting them on fire.
- And, once again, when seeing whether you could blow up a propane tank with bullets. This time, they loaded up the minigun with incendiary bullets which, yes, blew the thing sky high.
Comic Books
In the Liberty comics by Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons, the guns have a "brakka brakka" sound effect. Close enough.
Real Life
- The Metal Storm company have produced, through stacked rounds, a 36-barrelled weapon capable of a rate of fire around one million rounds per minute. Seriously.
- The proximity defense Vulcan cannons on many Navy ships are obscenely good at this.
- The A-10 Thunderbolt II's incredibly impressive Avenger Autocannon, which is larger than a Volkswagen and fires 30mm depleted uranium rounds at 3,900 rounds per minute. Each of which can punch through a battle tank and out the other side.
- Napoleonic-era musketry is an early example, the idea being to get a large block of men close in and throw out as many shots as possible, to compensate for the weapons' terrible accuracy. (These outdated tactics, when combined with modern, accurate rifled weapons in the American Civil War, led to extreme unpleasantness. Add in First World War era full-up machine guns and artillery, and, well, now you know how the anti-war movement got started.)
- The Lockheed AC-130 series of gunships, seen in the 2007 Transformers movie. Of particular note is the AC-130A, which carries eight rotary guns. The bulk of them are all mounted on one side, so the plane can circle a target and pelt it with metal continuously instead of having to make multiple passes. DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA...
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