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FourCartridge wrote:But those beat Mechs as well, so it evens out.
The giant ditch doesn't necessarily beat a 'mech... nor does a tank trap.
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
FourCartridge wrote:But those beat Mechs as well, so it evens out.
The giant ditch doesn't necessarily beat a 'mech... nor does a tank trap.
What about a giant ditch with a tank trap at the bottom?
*le gasp!* It's like a Punji pit trap filled with pirahna!
You know you're really doing something when you can make strangers hate you over the Internet. - Mauleed
Just remember folks. Panic. Panic all the time. It's the only way to survive, other than just being mindful, of course-but geez, that's so friggin' boring. - Aegis Grimm
Hallowed is the All Pie The Before Times: A Place That Celebrates The World That Was
This makes me throw my lot with mechs.
Although both are damn damn cool.
I tend not to like sword mecha either. I know nothing of battletech but I do like the mechs from Lost Planet 1. (Haven't played 2) Although it did turn to sword swingin at the end of lost planted....
"Praise Be To The Omissiah!"
"Three things make the Empire great: Faith, Steel and Gunpowder!"
Azarath Metrion Zinthos
Expect my posts to have a bazillion edits. I miss out letters, words, sometimes even entire sentences in my points and posts.
Now, Votoms or powerarmour are different scales and a harder choice. Essentially Votoms are equivalent to the Tau battlesuits (XV8) with the operator in the chest, the head being sensors and the arms and legs remote extensions.
I'm OVER 50 (and so far over everyone's BS, too).
Old enough to know better, young enough to not give a ****.
That is not dead which can eternal lie ...
... and yet, with strange aeons, even death may die.
The funny thing about comparing Gundam to tanks was, is that MS were originally Space Flight fighters, who would have a huge demoralising affect when invading the space colonies where most people live.
One interesting take was in Five Star Stories. There are tanks and mechs in those, but warfare is usually decided by champion knights in duelling mechs as proper warfare with the weapons available would damage too much and destroy what you were warring over; much better to have a test of skill and technology to decide it.
Though of course, sides often cheat. The full scale war with tanks was in desert, and that was was to rescue a VIP from one of the nations.
chromedog wrote:Not into giantninjagofightrobo stories.
So what about Battletech then? Because they sure as HELL aren't ninja robos
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
Melissia wrote:Sebster et al: So what if it's made up? I don't particularly give a gak... walkers themselves are made up and fictional right now anyway so boo fething hoo
And good morning.
Well, obviously there's no problem with it being made up when it comes to cracking out the hex maps and mechs and playing some Battletech.
There's a huge problem with it being made up when you try to use it to explain how mechs might actually function in a plausible future military.
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Dark Scipio wrote:Nice round up Sebster. Thanks.
Thanks mate. Had a spare hour at the end of a Friday at work
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/03/14 03:28:13
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
sebster wrote:
Tanks are stopped by more terrain features, but not that many. They do drive the things through buildings, you know. Whether the ability to manouvre across steep terrain like mountains is worth the immense number of failings of mech design is a decision I leave up to the military designers across the globe.
You also have to consider the fact that a 70-ton tank distributes its mass over a much wider surface than a 70-ton mech; meaning that it's very likely that the mech would actually be subject to more terrain limitations, not less. Indeed, even the idea that mechs can climb steeper inclines is a misleading, given that those inclines would have to support the entire mass of the mech at any given point that the mech might step; meaning that scaling steep terrain is out of the question. So, in reality, we're just talking about mechs stepping over things that tanks can probably drive over, or through, anyway.
And that's all before we consider the ramifications of small furry bipeds engaging in forest-based guerrilla warfare.
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
dogma wrote:You also have to consider the fact that a 70-ton tank distributes its mass over a much wider surface than a 70-ton mech; meaning that it's very likely that the mech would actually be subject to more terrain limitations, not less. Indeed, even the idea that mechs can climb steeper inclines is a misleading, given that those inclines would have to support the entire mass of the mech at any given point that the mech might step; meaning that scaling steep terrain is out of the question. So, in reality, we're just talking about mechs stepping over things that tanks can probably drive over, or through, anyway.
Fair point. Thinking about it further, I'm starting to wonder what kind of leg motion we're giving mechs that they'd be able to set over blockades anyway. You look at a human, and we're two metres tall. Not talking about leaping but just stepping over something, we can probably handle something about half a metre tall before we had to do something other than just step to get over it.
Houses, depending on the pitch of the roof, are about 5 metres high. At which point a mech would have to be about 20 metres tall to do it. A 20 metre tall thing wandering the battlefield is a deathtrap.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
A heavy mech wouldn't be feasible, but the more I think about it, if the weight could be cut down to ten tons or less, a small walker seems like it could be a perfect anti-infantry support vehicle. Assuming you get legs that are agile enough, a lightweight armor capable of shrugging off small arms fire, and perfect an antimissile system capable of knocking an RPG round out of the air, you could get something lighter than an armored car, that's more maneuverable than an abrams due to its reduced weight and narrower profile, and which has a higher vantage point. Something able to step over walls, or leap ditches, walk down any street wide enough for a car, assuming the surface area of the feet was large enough potentially wade a river that could drown a tank or trod through mud a wheeled vehicle couldn't get through...
Undoubtedly more expensive than the alternatives, but potentially more effective at fulfilling a certain role, especially with the morale effect of a fifteen foot tall bipedal tank running down the street firing a heavy machine gun at you.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/03/14 07:24:04
chromedog wrote:Not into giantninjagofightrobo stories.
So what about Battletech then? Because they sure as HELL aren't ninja robos
Battletech has tanks. You don't HAVE to play with the mechs.
It also had an incredibly lame-arse cartoon series (Just like Robotech did) that I saw part of one episode of and gave up on.
Gundam never appealed.
Evangelion was just incoherent.
Robotech was an annoying kids cartoon - the equal of dragonball or pokemon.
I'm OVER 50 (and so far over everyone's BS, too).
Old enough to know better, young enough to not give a ****.
That is not dead which can eternal lie ...
... and yet, with strange aeons, even death may die.
Sir Pseudonymous wrote:A heavy mech wouldn't be feasible, but the more I think about it, if the weight could be cut down to ten tons or less, a small walker seems like it could be a perfect anti-infantry support vehicle. Assuming you get legs that are agile enough, a lightweight armor capable of shrugging off small arms fire, and perfect an antimissile system capable of knocking an RPG round out of the air, you could get something lighter than an armored car, that's more maneuverable than an abrams due to its reduced weight and narrower profile, and which has a higher vantage point. Something able to step over walls, or leap ditches, walk down any street wide enough for a car, assuming the surface area of the feet was large enough potentially wade a river that could drown a tank or trod through mud a wheeled vehicle couldn't get through...
But it's going to be slow as hell getting anywhere. The reason we put troops in hummers is to get them to the conflict as quick as possible, because mobility is everything.
Here you have this awkwardly sized walker thing, that has to walk to the conflict by itself. Maybe the thing can walk over walls and ditches, but that's just not that much of an advantage when you look at the speed advantage that wheels and tracks give you.
Undoubtedly more expensive than the alternatives, but potentially more effective at fulfilling a certain role, especially with the morale effect of a fifteen foot tall bipedal tank running down the street firing a heavy machine gun at you.
But soldiers aren't stupid. Something that looks cool isn't going to raise moral when it's a liability in the field. You raise moral by giving troops weapons that kill the enemy as quickly as possible.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Sir Pseudonymous wrote:A heavy mech wouldn't be feasible, but the more I think about it, if the weight could be cut down to ten tons or less, a small walker seems like it could be a perfect anti-infantry support vehicle. Assuming you get legs that are agile enough, a lightweight armor capable of shrugging off small arms fire, and perfect an antimissile system capable of knocking an RPG round out of the air, you could get something lighter than an armored car, that's more maneuverable than an abrams due to its reduced weight and narrower profile, and which has a higher vantage point. Something able to step over walls, or leap ditches, walk down any street wide enough for a car, assuming the surface area of the feet was large enough potentially wade a river that could drown a tank or trod through mud a wheeled vehicle couldn't get through...
But it's going to be slow as hell getting anywhere. The reason we put troops in hummers is to get them to the conflict as quick as possible, because mobility is everything.
That's an engineering challenge, not a solid barrier. With modern technology, it's as impossible as powered armor, but it's still something that may yet emerge. Even if it comes along with the advent of full or almost full automation, it could still be useful as an image of power projection, so long as it has the resilience and firepower to back that up with actual projection, even if the bulk of any actual work gets done by UAVs or ground based drones. What says "compared to you I am a god, and there is nothing you can do to change that" like a fifteen foot tall monstrosity that's impervious to small arms fire and can swat RPGs out of the air? The essential impracticality of it, so long as its combined with functional implementation, sends a message of "I don't even need to try to crush you" to anyone intelligent enough not to be demoralized by the appearance of the thing.
Undoubtedly more expensive than the alternatives, but potentially more effective at fulfilling a certain role, especially with the morale effect of a fifteen foot tall bipedal tank running down the street firing a heavy machine gun at you.
But soldiers aren't stupid. Something that looks cool isn't going to raise moral when it's a liability in the field. You raise moral by giving troops weapons that kill the enemy as quickly as possible.
Negative impact on the enemy's morale, not positive on friendlies.
Sir Pseudonymous wrote:That's an engineering challenge, not a solid barrier.
No, it's a solid barrier. Legs are less efficient at transferring energy into motion than wheels.
You can predict a future battlefield where speed isn't as viable as versatile movement, such as primarily urban, anti-insurgent conflict, but then you aren't looking at a ten ton, 5 to 10 metre high mech, you're probably looking at something very close to man sized, probably more like power armour.
But if speed is an issue on the battlefield, it will always favour wheels over legs.
Negative impact on the enemy's morale, not positive on friendlies.
Enemy soldiers aren't stupid either. When something turns up that that can kill them quickly and is hard to knock out, they'll be afraid, whether it looks awesome or not.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Sir Pseudonymous wrote:That's an engineering challenge, not a solid barrier.
No, it's a solid barrier. Legs are less efficient at transferring energy into motion than wheels.
You can predict a future battlefield where speed isn't as viable as versatile movement, such as primarily urban, anti-insurgent conflict, but then you aren't looking at a ten ton, 5 to 10 metre high mech, you're probably looking at something very close to man sized, probably more like power armour.
But there's still a limit on what speeds are feasible in a close environment, such as a city. Get something that can move twenty or thirty miles an hour at full tilt, doesn't require much room to turn, and can move over intervening obstacles without much, if any trouble, and even if it's less efficient than a tracked vehicle, it's going to outperform it. At ~15' tall, it's also going to have almost the same vantage point that a sniper on a roof would have, and if you've got a working antimissile system able to knock out RPGs, preferably by having a computer identify potential threats before they can fire (and alerting the pilot to them if you haven't gotten to the full automation stage where it could better determine whether it's actually a threat or not, in which case there wouldn't be a pilot), and a hull capable of shrugging off small arms fire, you've got something extremely resilient that's going to have an easier time getting around the area its in than a tank or IFV would.
It's obviously not going to carry the day on its own, but as an anti-infantry platform supporting infantry or armored vehicles, supported by UAVs to locate targets and threats, it's certainly viable. Assuming the engineering hurdles have been cleared, of course.
But if speed is an issue on the battlefield, it will always favour wheels over legs.
On open ground, there's no question that tanks would carry the day with their lower profiles, higher speeds, and heavier armaments.
The only conceivable way the absurd sizes of something like Titans or battlemechs would make sense is if you had something gamebreaking that either couldn't be scaled down to fit in a tank, or required a sufficiently large amount of power that you couldn't fit the necessary powerplant into a tank. Something like the voidshields on titans, I suppose. All highly unlikely, really.
You have to remember that a lot of cities have quite a lot of hollow space under roads for pipework, etc. Even limiting weight to 10 tonnes could produce very high pressure (especially when running, suddenly stopping, etc) which could rupture the surface.
Not to mention the problem of maintining traction with such a small contact area.
The only conceivable way the absurd sizes of something like Titans or battlemechs would make sense is if you had something gamebreaking that either couldn't be scaled down to fit in a tank, or required a sufficiently large amount of power that you couldn't fit the necessary powerplant into a tank. Something like the voidshields on titans, I suppose. All highly unlikely, really.
You also have to assume that the gamerbreaking item cannot for some reason be put into a titan sized tank, because the big tank would have the void shield and all the other comparative advantages too, so it would be better.
sebster wrote:There's a huge problem with it being made up when you try to use it to explain how mechs might actually function in a plausible future military.
No there isn't.
The technology doesn't exist today, but it is plausible to believe it might exist in the future. This isn't time travel we're talking about.
If you're not willing to talk about the potential uses of walker vehicles once potential future technology applied to the concept overcomes the limitations of current technology, then just say so, so that I can ignore you and talk to someone more interesting who isn't just being hard-headed.
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Kilkrazy wrote:
Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
The only conceivable way the absurd sizes of something like Titans or battlemechs would make sense is if you had something gamebreaking that either couldn't be scaled down to fit in a tank, or required a sufficiently large amount of power that you couldn't fit the necessary powerplant into a tank. Something like the voidshields on titans, I suppose. All highly unlikely, really.
You also have to assume that the gamerbreaking item cannot for some reason be put into a titan sized tank, because the big tank would have the void shield and all the other comparative advantages too, so it would be better.
Dunno, wouldn't the average massive tnak actually be a bigger target to airstrikes? After all it has more horizontal surface on its top to hit.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2011/03/14 20:29:39
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
But aren't they both giant robots? I realize one is like Burger King and the other is like McDonald's but what separates them so much that you would consider them distinctly different?
Take a look at a really well done piece of 40K art. then look at one of those stupid "40K Anime" pics that are always being posted with giant bobble heade dcuddly spacw wolves with huge eyes and what not.
I consider those VASTLY different in the same way...
Sir Pseudonymous wrote: What says "compared to you I am a god, and there is nothing you can do to change that" like a fifteen foot tall monstrosity that's impervious to small arms fire and can swat RPGs out of the air?
Tactical nuclear weapons, or the aforementioned drone air force.
Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
The essential impracticality of it, so long as its combined with functional implementation, sends a message of "I don't even need to try to crush you" to anyone intelligent enough not to be demoralized by the appearance of the thing.
It also sends a message of "I'm too stupid to actually care about the laws of physics."
Relying on the emotional effects of the appearance of thing X in order to win battles is profoundly misguided.
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
Relying on the emotional effects of the appearance of thing X in order to win battles is profoundly misguided.
Methinks you're undervaluing the effects of morale on a force a tad much.
You know you're really doing something when you can make strangers hate you over the Internet. - Mauleed
Just remember folks. Panic. Panic all the time. It's the only way to survive, other than just being mindful, of course-but geez, that's so friggin' boring. - Aegis Grimm
Hallowed is the All Pie The Before Times: A Place That Celebrates The World That Was
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