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Said of missiles or beam weapons that fire along trajectories that are at an unlikely angle off of their target, streak along for a fair distance, and then make sudden synchronized turns in order to actually bring themselves to bear and hit it. The individual missiles of a Macross Missile Massacre almost always robotech on their way to a target. Often, it seems the best (or only) way to avoid this or a Macross Missile Massacre is to perform a High Speed Missile Dodge.

Named for the "adaptation" of several anime known as Robotech, in which the behavior was first seen by Americans.

This is actually Truth In Television, as many different kind of missiles used in both air, ground, and sea defenses do this, though most not as extreme — and lasers certainly do not and will not ever act this way — unless gravitational lensing is used to affect the path of the beam by actually altering the space through which the beam passes. With some electromagnetic beam weaponry, magnetic fields could be used for similar effect. On the other hand, if one does not develop targeting technology to the point of Roboteching, the alternative is only to fire when you See The Whites Of Their Eyes.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• Used in Project A Ko — though, oddly, a freeze-frame reveals the missiles to be cans of Coca-Cola.
  • This is a parody of several missiles fired in Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do you Remember Love?, where some of the missiles were drawn as bottles of beer.
    • Cans of beer, if this troper's memory is correct. Budweiser, judging by the label.
• Starscream's lasers fire like this in Transformers: Cybertron.
  • And in the preceding series Transformers Energon, Wing Optimus's "Meteor Attack Mode" fires a Beam Spam along with a small Chest Blaster, which then absorbs the individual streams of energy to form an insanely powerful Wave Motion Gun.
• In Dragon Ball Z, Piccolo becomes irritated at Android 17's ability to dodge his attacks, and develops the Hellzone Grenade, which fires a swarm of small energy blasts at seemingly random angles. They hover in a rough sphere around the target, at which point Piccolo exclaims "Try dodging this," and it goes boom.
  • Predictably enough, in the various Budokai Tenkaichi games the attack is perfectly dodgeable as long as you time it right.
  • Goku was once able to control where his Kamehameha was going against Raditz.
• In Space Runaway Ideon, the missiles Ideon fires act like this. When they are powered by the god-like Ide, they then fire off as beams of light, with 90-degree angles.
• In her Pactio powered-up form, Chachamaru from the Mahou Sensei Negima anime is seen using a roboteching Beam Spam attack that emerges from her back.
  • Most of Negi's magic missiles act this way too.
• Done in Vandread with any kind of missile spam. The Nirvana does this with energy shots that can dodge friendly vehicles when properly targeted on the way to the enemy. An extreme example of gravitational lensing perhaps, although given the abilities of the shows Applied Phlebotinum, the Pixis, it could easily not have even a dubious scientific explanation. Then again, the standard guns of the Dread fighters display a more limited, but similar, principle.
• In Gundam ZZ, the Psyco Gundam Mark II is supposed to do something similar with its beam weapons. It releases "mirrors" which are used to redirect the beam weapons around obstacles and from angles which regular pilots wouldn't expect.
• This was touched on again in Gundam00, where Louise Halevy's Regenant is shown to be extremely dangerous due to the fact that that the shots from its beam cannons were able to Robotech.
• Eureka Seven's Nirvash type theEND has a barrage of homing lasers. They all robotech. Sometimes they gather together and re-robotech. Pick any fight between theEND and anyone else.
• The Divine Shooter/Axel Shooter spell of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha - magic missiles whose individual flight paths Nanoha can control to streak towards different targets.
• The beam fired by the Psychogun in Space Adventure Cobra can swerve around obstacles to strike unerringly its target, since it is mentally controlled by the hero.
• In Katekyo Hitman Reborn, Gokudera's Rocket Bomb attack does this with hand-thrown dynamite by having secondary and tertiary charges explode to allow him to control the trajectory. At least some mention is made of how difficult a technique this is.
• Ten Ryu Jin's 'Hikari to Yami no Mai' in Gao Gai Gar FINAL does this — she fires off chaff missiles, then bounces maser shots off the chaff (based on an attack the first Bigbad of the series used). And yes, she does comment on how hard the calculations are.
• Many of the ships in Gall Force do this too, as lasers will be shot out at right angles to their ship, and once clearing the hull profile, make a 90-degree turn forward to bombard their target.
• In Strike Witches the neuroi attack using beams that robotech, even when the targets are very close.
• In Pokemon Special, the Elite Four all have special powers from out of freaking nowhere, and Lance's is that his mons Hyper Beams can robotech.
  • Even when they're not controlled by the computer, the Elite Four are cheating bastards!
• Hikaru's Flame Arrows in Magic Knight Rayearth. Much more egregious in the OAV continuity where, even though they're shot straight at an enemy, the fire bursts robotech around and past the target and then strike it in the back.
• In Uchuu Senkan Yamato, Gamilus uses mirror satellites to direct their reflex cannon at the Yamato even when it is on the other side of a planet from their base. Fridge Logic asks, if they have something that Frickin Laser Beams just bounce right off of, why not use it for sheilds? Eventually the good guys do exactly this to defend against the Desler Cannon. It's a pretty awesome Deus Ex Machina, but it doesn't explain why the Gamilusians didn't think of it first.
• The recent Evangelion remake features a bunch of missiles fired at Ramiel that behave this way - fired straight up into the sky and suddenly execute a 90-degree turn to aim at the target.
• Similarly, some robot-controlled planes in RahXephon are launched straight upwards and suddenly turn downwards to attack their target from above.

Comic Books

• A deliberate ability of Darkseid's Omega blast, from The DCU. He targets exactly where he wants it to go, and it will avoid obstacles in the way.
• Also seen in the Ultimate Nullifer.
• In the earlier issues of Image Comics' Stormwatch, Flashpoint (one of the members of Stormwatch Prime) also had the ability to control the direction and intensity of his eye blasts. It was very cool. Too bad the character was a prime Jerkass and The Mole (actually, all three members of Stormwatch Prime were moles, but he was the only one who enjoyed it and stayed evil. He got his in the end, too.)

Film

• The Fifth Element has a BFG that, among other functions, does this with bullets.
• In the film...adaptation... of the comic book Wanted (which could not be less like the comic in any way), this is the power of all the main characters. They do it with bullets. Fired from regular guns. Of course, one of them is Angelina Jolie, so I'm not complaining.
  • Actually, the Fraternity only uses smoothbore guns and the "curving" bullets are supposed to be like curving baseballs. When they want distance they carve rifling into individual bullets.

Literature

• The Honor Harrington novels introduce in later novels 3 stage missiles and off-bore firing capacity allowing both broadsides to be delivered to a target. Later Apollo Technology is designed with very long range control allowing the missiles to go ballistic before engaging the third drive allowing Roboteching over several light minutes.

Live Action TV

• Red Dwarf: The episode Polymorph features bazookoid weapons that fire heat-seeking laser bolts, which are eventually trapped going round and round in a circle on a deserted deck and eventually pop up as a Deus Ex Machina to kill the enemy. Unusually, the novelisation still calls them laser bolts and does not substitute something more scientifically accurate, which it does for several other technologies from the series.

Tabletop Games

• Tau Smart Missile Systems in Warhammer 40000 are said to work like this.
• One of the Champions rulebooks has statistics for an energy beam that follows the target until it hits. The rules were complex enough to defy even Champions attack powers, so the designers wrote it up as a summoned creature instead.

Video Games

• Dungeons And Dragons: The Temple Of Elemental Evil had the Magic Missile spell animated like this. Considered a very cool effect for the spell by even table-top D&D players. The effect is similar to the spell's depiction in Baldurs Gate, and Neverwinter Nights.
• Similar to the Magic Missiles, one of the Ghost elemental mage spells in the MMORPG Ragnarok Online summons a varying number of white glowing orbs which then streak towards the target.
• The swarm-firing missiles in space sim Descent: Freespace and its sequels. More advanced versions even corkscrew all the way to their targets. Later games in the Wing Commander series also included this trope.
• Zone Of The Enders and its sequel had Jehuty, the player's Humongous Mecha, equipped with a laser weapon whose beams Roboteched out of thin air to home in on locked targets, in a bright-blue rendition of a Macross Missile Massacre.
• Several warships in the Xenosaga series fire beams at angles away from the ship, which then make a sharp angled turn straight ahead.
  • This also occurs in the anime Gall Force, although the "lasers" may actually be cheaply-animated missiles.
    • No, their missiles Roboteched the traditional way. Those were definitely beams. You could even see them tearing through the ships they hit.
• Taito's Ray Series (Ray Force, Ray Storm, and Ray Crisis) and several other shmups by them have Roboteching lasers sometimes fired by enemies.
• Command And Conquer Red Alert 2 had the Russian Dreadnoughts do this when they were facing away from their target. It would make more sense if they tracked...
  • MLRS units can also do this in some games of the series, aswell as in other games. World In Conflict, for example.
• Quake IV has a modification to the nailgun that allows doing this with nails.
• In the Super Robot Wars: Original Generation Divine Wars (yes, that's the title) Cybuster's Cosmo Nova special attack is depicted as a Roboteched Beam Spam.
• You can Robotech the shots of the RPG in both the original Half-Life and Half-Life 2 by waving the laser guiding dot around. Justified because of some nebulous technology that causes the rocket to seek the guiding dot out, and a necessary gameplay element as Combine gunships will attempt to shoot the rockets down and will succeed if you don't bother to Robotech.
  • This is Truth In Television (well, videogames) to a extent, as laser-guided rockets in Real Life will do this — pursue the targeting laser's dot (called "illuminator"). That's why real laser designation systems have motion compensators — to make sure the dots do not move. The only unrealistic element here is how slowly the rockets move — normally there's not enough time for the dot to move much before the rocket hits — but this is a videogame and therefore an Acceptable Break From Reality
• Shows up in Devil May Cry with the "Hysteric" cluster micro missiles of Kalina Ann and the missile platform mode of Pandora's Box.
• Roboteched lasers fire from your craft in Ikaruga once you've absorbed enough enemy bullets.
• In Unreal Tournament 3, the Cicada's rockets robotech somewhat madly, but, if given enough time, usually end up at the spot crosshair.
  • Likewise in UT 2004, the AV Ri L anti-vehicle missiles only home in to a vehicle while you're aiming at it, allowing you to turn them at the last minute, making them harder to dodge or shoot down.
• A late weapon in the X-Com games was a guided rocket launcher that you set waypoints for the rocket to pass through before striking its target.
  • For that matter, Metal Gear Solid 2 had a missile that, once fired, the player would control in first person view. One puzzle required the player to guide said missile through a maze of ventilation ducts. I am not making this up.
    • It actually showed up in the original Metal Gear, as well as the first Metal Gear Solid.
    • The concept of player-guided missile is older than that, though. It was used at least in the 1986 Commodore Amiga classic Starglider.
    • And earlier, in the 1984 classic Archon II: Adept, for the titular game piece.
• Homeworld 2's Vaygrs love to use missiles. Their missiles often overshoot their targets. What does the missile do? Robotech their way to the original target. Original target died before the missiles reach? Robotech again to the nearest enemy craft.
• Halo has the needler, a handheld weapon that fires a spray little exploding crystal shards that home in somewhat on the nearest target. You can see them arc around to follow a fleeing enemy. How they do this is never explained (somehow, the covenant have developed self-guided plasma technology)
• In Fable, the arrows generated by the "multi-shot" spell do this on their way to the target.
• Drakengard's Dragon has a lock-on attack that fires several fireballs that robotech. The Chaos Evolution of the Dragon has fireballs that robotech in straighter lines with more angular turns.
• Worms 2 and Armageddon have a homing missile which does this — the best method is to fire it straight up in the air at maximum power, then watch it lock on and abruptly change direction half a second later.
  • Armageddon also has the Magic Bullet that is Roboteching set to eleven.
• The Drunken Missile launcher in Rise of the Triad fires a salvo of missiles which fly in random directions until they sense a target, at which point they converge on the target from all angles making it difficult to avoid all of them.
• Missiles in Sword of the Stars are one of the few weapons that need a direct line of sight to the target and robotech to their target after clearing the firing ship. Planetary defense missiles take it further: they not only robotech after launching from the poles of the planet, but if their target is destroyed, they glide for a bit, criss-crossing where the last target was if they were close enough, and robotech to the next target. Against a fleet of weak destroyers, a planetary defense missile may do this several times before hitting something.
• In Call Of Duty 4 the Javelin missile launcher does this, quickly popping up after being fired and then slamming down on the targeted tank from almost directly above; see Truth in Television examples.
• Higurashi Daybreak has this, in the form of Rika's charged ranged attack. She fires a bunch of purple missiles that robotech to the person you're currently locked on to. Like most things about Daybreak, is in full effect.
• Every single ranged attack in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game City of Heroes, without fail, will do this if the mob moves. Then again, this is less deliberate than the result of locked-on targetting — even if the damage of the attack misses the animation usually won't.
• Used by the Galbadian ICB Ms in Final Fantasy VIII.
• The Wind Laser in Axelay shoots four beams from the aft of the ship, then they curve forward to hit what's in front.
• Hit detection for non-ballistic long-range attacks in World Of Warcraft is done upon firing. If the target moves, the projectile will track the target until it hits, even ignoring obstacles. In earlier patches, this also applied to beam-type spells like the warlock's Drain Life or the mage's Arcane Missiles. As long as the magic-user could start casting the spell, it would continue to hit the target, no matter how far the target moved.
  • Fun fact: a player on an upgraded flying mount (which allows one to travel at about 4x normal speed and... well, fly) is faster than most spell "missiles". It's possible to actually string missiles along behind you if you fly far enough.

Western Animation

• Subverted in an episode of Powerpuff Girls. A humongous mecha tries to perform a Macross Missile Massacre, but all of the missiles just fly straight past its target, or in some cases, curve wildly and hit anything else.
• Occurs pretty frequently in Justice League Unlimited. In one episode, they were lasers fired out of a disco ball. And in the finale, Darkseid fires roboteching eye beams at Batman.
  • Darkseid´s eye beams, the Omega Effect ARE guided, even in the comics. Earlier in the Superman The Animated Series, they bent around Superman to hit a men behind him
    • The Superman series example is quite a Player Punch moment, as it kills The Commissioner Gordon "Terrible" Turpin.
  • Of course, Batman being the goddamn Batman is able to dodge it. Darkseid is really impressed.
    • To drive home that point, Batman has to do a lot of evasive maneuvering and a blind jump to evade it. And then he still needs to let a Mook take the hit. And he's so close to the impact that he's blown into a pile of rubble. Still Darkseid gives Batman props.
• Following the precident established in earlier D&D video games, Raistlin's Magic Missile spell does this in the animated version of the first Dragonlance novel.

Real Life

• Despite public perception to the contrary, certain missiles actually behave almost like this. While they are not fired in massive salvos, as in Robotech, often a missile will waver back and forth in flight a moment as its guidance system makes gross corrections.
  • More directly analogous, many missiles launched out of vertical tubes on warships will robotech almost exactly: the missile goes straight up (to clear the ship), then abruptly change direction. On their final approach to a ship, they will "pop-up and dive" onto the top of the vessel. Some anti-tank missiles will do the same thing, flying over the tank then dropping straight down.
  • American cruise missiles became famous for traveling to Baghdad, flying down a street, then almost stopping at a cross street while slowly turning to face another direction before streaking to the target.
    • The BBC's Foreign Affairs Chief John Simpson reported seeing a cruise missile in Baghdad fly "down the street and turn left at the traffic lights."
    • This is pretty much the entire point of cruise missiles.
  • The AIM-9 Sidewinder missile series reputedly got it's official designation from the side-to-side wavering performed by early models, similar to that of the Sidewinder snake. "Top attack" missiles designed to fly straight to a target, climb to a high altitude nearby, and "drop" on top of enemies are a standard of NATO military forces, under the rationale "people don't armour the top sections of tanks as much as the front or sides."
    • The top of the tank is almost always the weakest point, and tanks have not been redesigned since these missiles have begun to be deployed in mass. However, it is likely that newer tank designs will sport significantly stronger armor on the top because of this trend.
    • The only problem with this is physical weight - the crew needs to be able to pop the hatch and get out by hand, meaning that a decent-sized part of the roof has to be armoured lightly enough to be liftable by hand. That is most definitely not enough to stop these weapons.
  • The latest variant of the Sidewinder, the AIM-9X, has an ability to be aimed via a helmet-mounted sight and obtain lock-ons from almost 90 degrees off the direction of the firing fighter's nose. Furthermore, it can robotech a full 180 degrees off its rail to pursue a target. Check it out here.
  • The Russian Vympel R-73/AA-11 Archer is also aimed by a helmet-mounted sight, can can "see" targets up to 60° off the missile's centerline - and entered service 18 years earlier. After NATO learned about the capabilities of this missile, development of the AIM-9X, the IRIS-T and others was started.
  • Any of the swarm rocket launchers or calliopes from WWII did this — though not on purpose, because of technical limitations on the rockets themselves (designed to be cheap, easily-produced area denial weapons). This is lampshaded in the histories by saying that the weapons "were not terribly accurate". Examples being the Katyusha rocket launchers from Russia, the Nebelwerfer rocket mortar from Germany, and the Calliope tank-mounted rocket launcher of the Allies.
  • Pretty much the point of guided weapons period.
  • Thrust vectoring and hover/loiter capabilities on newer missile designs will most certainly take future ordnance in this direction.

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