Still not indicative.: Roboteching

This has been brought up before, but keeps trailing off. Anyway, this is supposed to be a Sister Trope to Macross Missile Massacre, but the only context in this trope's name is the show's name and "ing", which is of course not very helpful. One of the proposals in the old thread was Robotech Redirecting Rocket, but what do you all think would work?

Heck I don't even remember what did I support for the old thread (I recall it was still a rename with Added Alliterative Appeal). The proposal above sounds good.

Well, the name seems like it's working. It's got the good wickage. And it's not actively confusing like a Bad Snowclone or something might be...it's just not indicative. Having an awkwardly unintuitive name doesn't seem to have hindered it so far, so I'm skeptical that renaming it would improve its performance.

On the other hand, it currently has no redirects, which is a travesty. Needs Redirects.

Well being piss poor alone has been enough in the past.

As someone who's a big fan of Robotech/Macross and mech anime in general, I had no idea what Roboteching meant until I read the page.

Macross Missile Massacre, on the other hand, was fairly obviously another term for the Itano Circus.

So yeah, the name is pretty bad.

All sorts of things happened in the past that don't fly now. Playing Musical Trope Names for no objective reason is one I'm personally glad to see dropping off. Trope looks to be in good fettle count wise for wick and inbounds. Any sign of misuse?

"ing" is objectively not a way to indicate the trope meaning. Plus "The Cruella" had little misuse, but just a few weeks ago got renamed to Cruella to Animals, because "The" was not a good indicator.

Besides, if I had to assign a definition to Roboteching it would be "taking several otherwise unrelated series and tying them together using a rewritten dub track"

Which is emphatically not what this trope is about.

That had 27 inbounds, as opposed to over 800. I think the circumstances are slightly different.

Besides, if I had to assign a definition to Roboteching it would be "taking several otherwise unrelated series and tying them together using a rewritten dub track"

Which is emphatically not what this trope is about.

If there's misuse showing that people are using the trope for that, you'll have a case for a rename.

edited 25th Feb '11 12:24:30 PM by Daremo

If people don't like the name, even lack of misuse is not enough to prevent a rename. Just look up the thread for The Cruella.

The Cruella had low usage, which is also cause for a rename. That is not present here, making it a poor comparative example.

There will be times when public opinion runs roughshod over objective analysis, but I believe that should be the exception, not the rule.

It would help if the title actually made any sense. I don't see how "Roboteching" follows from the description of the post.

Lack of misuse, maybe not. But wicks in the hundreds will usually do it.

Low usage was not the ultimate reason for the rename. Plus the trope was a lot newer than this one, which has only a fraction of the wicks that Macross Missile Massacre has.

BTW, I'm looking at some of the wicks, and some seem to think this is a homing attack, and the trope is actually projectile attacks making sharp turns. So there is misuse.

edited 25th Feb '11 12:46:18 PM by DragonQuestZ

Low usage puts a rename on the table because it means the rename doesn't have the negative consequences we normally associate with renames.

Well again, this is an older trope, but not a lot of wicks for its age. Furthermore, I am looking for misuse, and not only is there some confusion with Homing Projectile, I also saw a couple so far confusing it for Macross Missile Massacre.

edited 25th Feb '11 12:51:25 PM by DragonQuestZ

Redirects Are Free so lets ADD them!

I'm not asking for those. I'm asking the name actually has some context. Robotech Redirecting Missile works, as "redirecting" is clearly a separate thing from "homing" (not to mention wicks will need to be cleaned up that are really Homing Projectile instead of this trope), and it's also clearly not the amount of missiles, but their behavior, so it doesn't look like the MMM trope (which will also have some wicks to clean up).

I feel the more interesting trope here is when lasers behave in this manner. With missiles its almost People Sit In Chairs, since thats how they are supposed to work, but when Lasers do this, its notable.

Homing Laser isn't a trope, is it?

Edit: Guess not.

edited 25th Feb '11 2:26:26 PM by SakurazakiSetsuna

That's Truth in Television, not that other trope.

↑↑If you read the page, you'll notice that real life is far from this trope. Repetitive, near-instant, almost-90º redirection towards their target is something current missiles can not even possibly think to do.

I think in order to make sure the trope name does not imply things that are not necessarily this trope, we could just reduce it to Rocket Redirection or something, and we still preserve the AAA. Perhaps a third word with R to indicate that the missiles display this behaviour by themselves, but I don't know of a good word for this (I first thought "recurrent" but that doesn't mean what I thought it meant).

edited 25th Feb '11 5:38:20 PM by SilentReverence

The trope still isn't limited to rockets/missiles.

How about Remote Re-directional Rocket?

Of course it is still a bit of a non indicative name since Roboteching also aplies to lasers, In fact i have seen more Laser/Energy Beam tropes on works/character pages then actual missile/rocket examples.

I actually used to think that "Robotech= Many Re-directional Lasers and Macross Missile Massacre= Many Re-directional Missiles" for quite a while.

For all it is worth i would also like to Point out that this is Very similar to Precision-Guided Boomerang, But with Missiles... And without the Weapon returns part.

So one can also look at those Tropes for name inspiration. Precision Guided Projectile or something like that? Would make the name apply to Beams and such things too.

Time On Target

....I read too much David Weber.

As for where the term came from, it was a pre-existing term, though not a hugely popular one(let's face it, it doesn't come up all that often).