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ON a totally different subject that I posted, to guys started to get off that subject, and started to discuss the viability of a dreadnought IN REAL LIFE...

Here are questions to ponder that they brought up.....

Could it run, would it tip over if shooting, if ran into would it tip, how would it get up, would it walk funny, can it go up steep hills, etc....

Have at it.....

Dawn of War 2 represents them well.

If you play DoW, it's clear that Dreads are viable combat machines in a universe overrun with sentient Fungi and overgrown bugs.

In real life you mean???

No. Without questioning whether the actual Dreadnought design would allow it to actually walk (let alone whether it would tip over), walkers, in general, don't work. High target profiles, many weakspots and so on - they are a sci-fi thing and are cool, but they do not work in real life.

I think they could have their niche, a walker will be far scarier than it mass in tank this could make them useful in low intensity warfare and policing actions.

Of all the walker types spider walkers make the most sense. It could work if the processing power was great enough to let the legs individually 'walk' themselves while the pilot, if any, just uses the controls to indicate what direction and speed you want to go in.
legs would be the best option for a ground based automated fighting unit, but for a human crewed vehicle stick with tracks or wheels.

Orlanth wrote:I think they could have their niche, a walker will be far scarier than it mass in tank this could make them useful in low intensity warfare and policing actions.

Of all the walker types spider walkers make the most sense. It could work if the processing power was great enough to let the legs individually 'walk' themselves while the pilot, if any, just uses the controls to indicate what direction and speed you want to go in.
legs would be the best option for a ground based automated fighting unit, but for a human crewed vehicle stick with tracks or wheels.

With 4 legs, just need to destroy one to topple it over though....

If the legs were redesigned to allow it to balance correctly, maybe. But, as it is it would just fall over, even then the knee joints and the hip joints would be weak spots that would be targeted quickly as you need little more knowledge than the dumbest Ork to realise that knocking out one of those joints would bring the whole thing down regardless of how well the balance issue is fixed.

As it is at the moment, it might work if the legs were replaced by tracks, but then you might as well just use a tank as they would be much better anyway.

The melee arm is more likely to knock it over than the gun arm though.

This is coming from someone who intends to run a full 6 Dreadnought army by the way.

H.B.M.C. wrote:In real life you mean???

No. Without questioning whether the actual Dreadnought design would allow it to actually walk (let alone whether it would tip over), walkers, in general, don't work. High target profiles, many weakspots and so on - they are a sci-fi thing and are cool, but they do not work in real life.

not all walkers are towering behemoths, some are squat and low to the ground, and in truth a four legged walker like mention before, is far better at moving into terrain compared to a tank or wheeled vehicle, so in truth if they are used at all they will be be low to the ground, more than likely 4 legged, and built either for anti infantry or for a support roll and carry long range guided weapons, as for krazynadechukr2's remark about blowing a leg off that would be the same as nailing a tank on its tracks, anything thats moving once it loses whats moving it or at least part of it, yes it will be hampered, but the difference between a tank and the quad walker would be, the walker can hunker down in a place a normal tank just can't get to, so it will be less likely to take the cripple hit to begin with, of course anything like a walker is years away, but usable yes, we just lack the technology to field them to any success at this time, but 30-80 years from now, it would not be a shocker to me to see armored divisions on walkers, and troops in a type of exo suit or other powered armor, already the testing for Exo suits are being done, so i could easily see in the next 30 years some kind of major project on 15ton+ war machines built on the four leg design starting up, but thats just my opinion on if they are plausible, dreadnoughts, maybe is all i can say, they are not towering machines like Battlemechs or the AT-ST from Star Wars, and it has a knack for bursting through cover, which is a very useful thing, but as said many times its almost begging to be knocked over*shrugs* for now walkers of any kind are in the Sci Fi realm

The frail, weak legs of a dreadnought are almost as good as the design of warhound titans. After all, whats more inviting then a hunched over walker with the cockpit (head) protruding out as far as possible? Still, you have to consider that somehow in the future of 40k that armor is super advanced but most guns suck. but chainsaws still work fine.....hmmm........

krazynadechukr2 wrote:

Orlanth wrote:Of all the walker types spider walkers make the most sense.

With 4 legs, just need to destroy one to topple it over though....

Nah. It'd just hop like a 3-legged dog.

What'd be funny is watching a RL Dread try to fight in HtH.

The RL Wraithlord would just push it over onto it's back!

NO.

NO.

Dreadnoughts would collapse into themselves from the sheer weight of their profile. Their legs wouldn't nearly be powerful enough to support their bodies. Even if it could stand right and good, it wouldn't be moving anywhere too fast, and it's elevated profile is a huge "Shoot me!" sign for anti-armor weaponry.

Slightly altered to fit the specifications, but mostly intact:

ShumaGorath wrote:Mechs will never exist. They are a non sensical design based off of the human frame, which itself is very poorly designed as a weapon of war. While all of this could be surmounted with "technology!" keep in mind the technology that it would take to make a functioning mech could just be used to make a flying deathorb of lasermissile superpower which would then kill all the dreadnoughts because giant top-heavy robot men are stupid and minimalism and redundancy of design is an inherent attribute of all things designed for combat.

The only mecha I would say that have a practical and probable use in the future are the ones out of the alien series -- ones used for construction and such. Dread's simply wouldn't be very useful on a battlefield, and would probably have similar problems that humans would have. The problems which humans have could furthermore be much more easily circumvented with exoskeletons and battle-armour (and we currently have working prototypes of the former.) problems with current soldiers include: vulnerability to bullets and shrapnel, unaugmented strength, and stamina, and other assorted problems.

Yeah, and the bigger they get, the sillier the concept is. I would prefer some sort of anti-grav suspension, with triple redundancy to make it survivable against all but the heaviest fire.

Problem is as far as I know anti-gravity is purely hypothetical ability for a machine to have.

It may never come to fruition. In which case you have to choose between conventional modes of movement.

?

All it needs is armor and guns!

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I think if the walker is short enough it could be viable, but only if it could then carry weapons FAR heavier than the power armored infantry that would already have been developed had.

If a dread stayed the height it is in 40K, it wouldn't be any taller than a large tank, so obvious profile is less of an issue.

Movement is the problem. It would have to demonstrate significant mobility advantages over a tank to be viable.

It needs mobility over a tank and a helicopter.

We are repeating the points made in the recent Mecha thread.

A Dreadnaught as depicted in 40K is an utterly stupid and impractical combat vehicle for all the reasons previously mentioned.

Its role within the game is to express grimdarkness by the idea of being piloted by a fragmentary semi-corpse.

If you have practical anti-gravity, you can make vehicles which combine the qualities of tank and helicopter. This is pretty much what the Eldar and Tau vehicles do, only the rules do not allow them to fly more than a few feet above the ground. The purpose of this is to remove the need for proper anti-aircraft rules, and more importantly, to allow H2H troops to attack them.

I think it is a viable machine (so voted yes) but there are two problems. We should be talking about a living breathing pilot who can be removed from the Sarcophagus rather then a mangled one. The other problem would be the firing of and the ammo storage for the weapons. To be stable enough you might have to effectively Entrench (like the Broadsides on DoW) so you can be stable and if you look on a dreadnought minature, there is nowhere to put vast swathes and belts of ammo.

The OC-D

Undying faith in the Emperor of Mankind can make the sky rain Skittles and 15 ton robots walk on toothpicks.

No walker would ever work in modern military. The legs are far too vulnerable a point. However, Take the torso, head, and arms, put it on a tank chassis and maybe you've got something.

Like a RX-75 Guntank?

of course anything like a walker is years away, but usable yes, we just lack the technology to field them to any success at this time

Go look up the Mule on youtube.">

In the Gospel according of a certain user here, Gundam suits are realistic to da max. It would be the best idea EVAR to produce them in real life because they would kick the crap out of everything.

Yeah and the legs would totally not buckle when it lands and change it into a nuclear powered coffin XD

That reminds me, if they do make walkers someone remind the military to get random kids to pilot them because they always seem to be way better then the vets who have had hundreds of hours of training.

barlio wrote:Undying faith in the Emperor of Mankind can make the sky rain Skittles and 15 ton robots walk on toothpicks.

Also, sigged.

n0t_u wrote:If the legs were redesigned to allow it to balance correctly, maybe. But, as it is it would just fall over, even then the knee joints and the hip joints would be weak spots that would be targeted quickly as you need little more knowledge than the dumbest Ork to realise that knocking out one of those joints would bring the whole thing down regardless of how well the balance issue is fixed.
.

People were saying the same about all those track links. I rthink it would be harder than imagined.

Bipedal suits are not practical over a certain size, but I was never envisioning quadrupeds.

Of all the walker types spider walkers make the most sense.

Spiders dont have four legs, they have eight. I would go with six minimum.

In fact six, the insectoid legs is optimum. insects work on twin passivve balance because their brain power is very limited. When a bug moves he moves legs in three so it always has a triangle of legs on the ground. bugs might stop andv lift the front or back legs together but that is as far as coordination goes. The asort of balancing required for a quadruped let alone a biped requires a decent size CPU in the brain stem. this tanslates well into machine intelligence, geting bipedal/quadrupedal balance right is difficult even even now robots can only walk on smooth surfacesd at low speed. Computer articulation could allow for a six or eight legged att terrain crawler relying on active amd twin pasive balance. The twin passive balance helps when you mount a turret on top and want to fire it as if stationary while moving. By including active balance you could have limited redundancy of legs allowing one to be lost from each side before motion is impaired. an eight legged crawler has even greater redundancy but is not really necessary. spiders benefit from eight legs as they can rwest on four and use four, robot tanks dont need this, six is sufficient.

No.

Firstly, the driver would either fry to death with a huge engine next to him, so big that it needs a couple of epic truck exhausts sticking out the back. Secondly it would only fire for about 20 Seconds, then have to go back to base for a reload. Thirdly, if you EVER got behind it, it would completely be dead -- it can't turn in a hurryy, it has to do the equivalent of a 10 point turn to go 180 Degrees behind it, by which point you've already fired an RPG at the mother-ucking engine.

sA

The only thing it has going for it is that it would look cool. You'd want to keep it towards the back far enough away so it won't be hit, but close enough so the enemy can see it walking towards them. Then hope that they have given up or ran away before they realise that it's really hoping that the wind doesn't change direction and knock it down as it struggles to waddle across the battlefield.