Basic Trope: When a high-tech/futuristic society uses conventional weapons opposed to energy weapons.
- Straight: Even though in Ted's world he lives with a sentient robot and can replicate a three-course meal, he and the rest of civilization still fights bad guys with a good old slugthrower.
- Exaggerated:
- Ted fights with the exact same weapons and models that are used today, opposed to dressed up ones.
- Ultra compact Magnetic Weapons; futuristic kinetic weapons that put our most advanced gunpowder-powered firearms (and the flashy, but inefficient energy weapons available in the set-up) to shame due to their absurd destructive power.
- Throwing rocks is even better than any other weapon out there.
- Downplayed: Conventional weaponry is more powerful than energy weapons but it has some logistical drawbacks due to needing to deal with ammunition. However if you can keep them supplied they win out.
- Justified:
- Energy weapons consume too much energy and cause less explosive damage.
- The story is hard science fiction, is set in an After the End setting, or Energy Weapons are impractical for the situation.
- Another hard science example being you can jam an energy gun, but kinetic guns work regardless.
- Energy weapons are for different purposes. They can drain forcefields and energy shields, but a bullet has much deeper penetration purposes.
- Ted can't afford a laser gun.
- Energy weapons are way too flashy... Literally, they emit lots of light. Therefore, they're not optimal for Ted's role as a sniper, because they would instantly reveal his position.
- Inverted:
- Everyone in Ted's world uses energy weapons and nothing else.
- A Schizo Tech primitive society that somehow has energy weapons.
- Subverted:
- Ted's gun looks just like a modern day weapon, maybe even "reloads" and obeys ballistic arcs like one, but is still an Energy Weapon.
- As we go up the power levels of the society's arsenal we see weapons throwing larger objects at ever higher speeds, but the absolute strongest Weapon of Mass Destruction available is a Wave-Motion Gun or other exotic weapon.
- The reason why we only see kinetic weapons used by civilians and police is because energy weapons are too powerful - akin to why full automatic and explosive weaponry tends to be limited to the military.
- Double Subverted: The futuristic looking weapon is a kinetic weapon, whereas the modern- or primitive-looking one is an energy weapon.
- Parodied: Ted fights with a flintlock musket and a slingshot in a society with flying cars.
- Zig Zagged:
- Kinetic weapons are used along side Energy Weapons by the same faction. Both have strengths and weaknesses.
- Future weapons of choice fire kinetic slugs... that fire lasers! Kinetic slugs penetrate shields, and lasers penetrate body armor, making it the ultimate combination.
- Guns alternate between laser beam and bullet in one trigger pull, largely for the same reasons as above, just with a simpler system-IE, avoiding having to make a weapons-grade laser small enough to be fired by handgun, but strong enough to withstand being forced down a tube by an explosion.
- Averted:
- Ted fights aliens and robots with Energy Weapons that do not resemble modern weapons at all.
- Or Kinetic Weapons and Energy Weapons each have their own advantages and disadvantages and Ted uses both for various situations.
- The Enemy sneers at your precious Magnetic Weapons and Colony Drops, but crumbles into dust under a laser/energy barrage.
- Enforced: The writer insists on a hard science fiction setting. Or is a gun nut that thinks guns are badass and also never really liked how phasers and blasters go "pew-pew" vs. how even the most teeny-tiny of real-life guns are given a big "BOOOM!" in film.
- Lampshaded: Factions with Energy Weapons may mock Ted's .45, or Ted might wonder if he can fly to Pluto and back, why he can't have a plasma rifle standard issue.
- Invoked: Sergeant Bill has his men replace all of their laser rifles with conventional firearms because he knows that lasers overheat quickly and that the aliens’ shields only stop energy blasts, not bullets.
- Exploited: The bad guys invest in magnetic shields, which wouldn't stop lasers, but easily stop bullets.
- Defied:
- The characters forgo all research into kinetic weaponry, instead focusing on developing Energy Weapons.
- The aliens are Immune to Bullets. Completely. The heroes will need Magitek Slow Lasers to survive.
- Discussed:
- It will be mentioned what advantages conventional weapons have over Energy Weapons, or how they simply aren't feasible.
- "It's the 25th century, why am I still using the same weapons my great-great-great-... grandfather used?" or "Stupid humans and their slugthrowers!"
- Conversed: "The author has an NRA membership card, doesn't he? It certainly looks like it."
- Deconstructed:
- The characters' exclusive focus on kinetic weaponry eventually costs them the war against the alien invaders, who have focused on developing Energy Weapons and managed to make them more awesome.
- Alternatively or in conjunction with the above, the alien invaders recognised the dependence on kinetic weapons and developed Deflector Shields that largely if not completely negate their effectiveness, leaving the characters unable to fight back.
- The society that has spent the entirety of its war-torn existence developing better kinetic kill vehicles now has nothing with Mundane Utility.
- The exclusive focus on kinetic weaponry is considered the sensible one, as most races eventually accept that Energy Weapons are doomed to be joke weapons even if they look awesome. Those laser pistols? They're really just small railguns, and the streaks are an illusion caused by the sheer speed they can accelerate their loads to.
- Kinetic weapons are far more destructive but they are known for overpenetration and being less accurate compared to energy weapons in addition to lacking granular control. Kinetic weapons become taboo or an outright war crime.
- Implied: The cover of the text is a Frazetta Man attired like a modern-day special-forces soldier standing Atop a Mountain of Corpses of bullet-riddled laser-armed Xenomorph Xerox-types and "stabbing the sky" with an M-16.
- Reconstructed:
- The aliens are the ones with the foolish, exclusive focus; in all their years of research, they have found no way to improve Energy Weapons, but still use them anyway on account of them being more "advanced", leading to their downfall at the hands of the humans' Boring, but Practical kinetic weaponry.
- The society sets aside some funding into developing the needed equipment just in case the Forever War actually ends without either or both sides blasted into oblivion.
- Played For Laughs: Compared to the "pew-pew-pew" of In-Universe lasers, people are Blown Across the Room (and splattered against the wall), stuff blows up even if was only grazed, anything living hit needs to roll a save against the Chunky Salsa Rule; the characters probably wield Hand Cannons that only look practical because it's sci-fi, people cut literal swaths through whatever they are facing off against (and the surrounding environment) with gunfire... the moment the guns come out, it stops reading like whatever genre it is supposed to be and it becomes an ode to all of the excesses of Rob Liefeld's drawing (and writing) style.
- Played For Drama: The Mentor Archetype is an Obi Wan Kenobi wanna-be that continually spoused how lasers, light-saber-copies and magic were the "advanced weapons for a civilized age"... and he's felled by the evil hillbilly warlord Big Bad via a head-splattering shotgun blast, thus making obvious what made him such a big threat.
- Played For Horror: The story takes a long time showing how super-duper awesome and futuristic the setting is... and then dumps a Brenda Spencer/Charkes Whitman/Stephen Paddock-esque Spree Killer into the midst, causing a titanic body count with his piddly little hunting rifle even with all of the standard force fields and Jedi-esque magics pitted againt him. Talk about "An Ancient Weapon From An Advanced Age".
Sorry, there's no way you'll burn through the fourth wall with a chemical LASER in time. Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better.
