CrimsonFALKE wrote:Myomers being able to lift more than they weigh, and I explained that you can save at least a quarter of the weight of a tank with a mech; eg the WHR-6R being 75 tons vs a tank with the same load out being 100 tons while lacking the same protection.
I didn't get it.
We have 75 t mech with all weapons and armor. This mech chassis weight aproximatly 10 t. Remove legs and mount torso on a heavy tank chassis, wich weights approximately the same 5 t as removed legs. And you basically just made a 75 t tank with same armor and weapons and energy source, as mech, but with lower profile.
How much more difficult would an exoskeleton or larger mecha be compared to a military vehicle a tank or an attack helicopter or even an transport shuttle?
An urban mech is only 5million USD a Firefly is about the same or do you mean something else?
I was just thinking of something comparable in function. Would it be harder, on par with, or easier to repair than say a more standard piece of war machinery.
How much more difficult would an exoskeleton or larger mecha be compared to a military vehicle a tank or an attack helicopter or even an transport shuttle?
An urban mech is only 5million USD a Firefly is about the same or do you mean something else?
I was just thinking of something comparable in function. Would it be harder, on par with, or easier to repair than say a more standard piece of war machinery.
A flat tire can be potentially replaced in the field. A broken actuator, or limb joint mechanism, probably not so much. That's the drawback of the increased mechanical complexity of limbs even when compared to modern wheeled suspension systems.
GeoModder wrote:Not that I understand why you felt the need for a 'cheaper' annihilation reaction in Outsider then antimatter, with a similar energy output.
The problem with antimatter is that it's not an energy "source"; there isn't a ready-made supply of antimatter that you can harvest or mine, so you have to synthesize it... which is incredibly expensive. The amount of energy needed is massive... a single starship outputs more energy than an entire planet produces. So if I say I'm using antimatter, I also need to explain where all this energy needed to create the antimatter is coming from. One could propose a fictional way to create antimatter cheaply, but I figured it was less of a stretch to propose a cheap way of making ordinary matter unstable.
How much more difficult would an exoskeleton or larger mecha be compared to a military vehicle a tank or an attack helicopter or even an transport shuttle?
An urban mech is only 5million USD a Firefly is about the same or do you mean something else?
Please stop using fictional references as statements in this discussion; it isn't helping. Urbanmechs and Fireflies don't exist. They don't cost anything.
The point of this is that in fiction anything can exist if you want it to... We are focussing on real-life practicalities.
Just thought of something while watching a show called Origins on Netflix (the show looks at something we know and love like Motorcycles, Airplanes, Knights, Horses, and whatnot from their earliest examples of such ideas and uses to modern times or their last hurrah.).
While talking about the history of tanks, the show mentioned that many a modern nation wants to end their use in a modern Asymmetrical style of warfare that is growing popular, HOWEVER they are still the best way to provide heavy firepower and heavy support fire on the battlefield.
In solving this issue, would that solve some of the "why" in mecha?
Let's set technology and tank-comparisons aside for a moment. Assume that eventually battery or energy generation technology will develop sufficiently to be able to power almost anything using a cell the size of your hand. Weapons technology will evolve, as will armour plating to match. So far so sci-fi.
There are two other factors in the development of war equipment that could be discussed: war doctrines, and culture.
At the start of WW1, the armies that were involved marched into battle expecting similar warfare for that of the Napoleonic conflicts - Lots of soldiers lined up on opposite sides of a field shooting at each other, sweeping cavalry charges and supporting light cannons. But by this point the accuracy, range and rate of fire of firearms had improved so much that it almost immediately made all of these tactics obsolete. The result was that very quickly the war doctrine of the time evolved into trench warfare.
Weapon design wasn't the only factor, of course. Early motor vehicles also completely changed how supply lines worked. Previously no army would have been able to sustain a front line so deep and so long without running short of food, ammunition and troops, resulting in them having to withdraw. Now they could be supplied from much further away and stay in the same place for extended periods (and not just months. Years.). Advances in food storage and preservation also improved supply lines, telephones allows remote communication and a whole host of other lesser technologies added to this.
Similarly, when tensions arose in the lead up to WW2, the militaries at the time expected warfare to be similar to that of the 1914-1918 conflict. Tanks back then were slow, unreliable and relatively lightly armed. Blitzkreig changed everything . Then air warfare changed it even more.
I would go on about developments in naval warfare, submarines, radio, encryption and more, but I think you get the idea.
On the other side, they may be cultural changes that matter. Take the current unrest in Hong Kong as an example: it is fully televised, live streamed and reported on (albeit to a greater or lesser extend depending on where you are in the world). Currently it is being fought through extensive low-intensity uprisings between (essentially unarmed) civilians and state police forces. But if the protesters in Hong Kong got their hands on a few containers of firearms, the dynamic might change drastically.
Imagine such a situation some time in the future when technology has advanced somewhat. Local protesters now have firearms, and normal police units are outclassed. The next stage would be to send in the National Guard-equivalent, with light APCs, real weapons and... (I got here eventually!) tanks. But maybe with the world cameras pointing at them, this might be a bit too much. The government doesn't want to escalate this into civil war, or want footage of tanks rolling over civilians (er... again) broadcast around the world. They don't want to deploy massive firepower, but do want to be seen to be policing the streets.
The government may consider "what do we have that's kind of more durable than police in riot gear, but not as big a deal as a tank?", No, not Robocop. But maybe not so far off. Heavily armoured police? Some kind of power armour?
The problem with comparing mechs to tanks is that a mech can't out-tank a tank. It can't carry as heavy firepower, its not as durable, its a bigger target, and its nowhere near as fast. So... what can a mech do that a tank can't?
Well for one thing, it can shoot around corners. Just like infantry, it can put a gun past a corner and fire. For a tank to do the same thing, it has to drive right out, exposing itself.
A mech can climb, and it can depress its weapon fully. So if you can get it to a roof, it can fire from above. It can also get around obstacles that a tank might need an engineering vehicle to move out of the way.
A mech can turn around on the spot without increasing its effective width. If its in an alleyway and a tank comes up behind it, it can turn around and shoot.
Urban warfare. Tanks are great on open plains, but they can struggle in cities, and many of their advantages are negated. Perhaps that is where mechs could be most useful.
If every cloud had a silver lining, there would be a lot more plane crashes.
We've touched on urban warfare before, and it's just to niche. At least, the way humanity has experienced it so far.
Urban warfare is relatively new in human history: Generally most forces want to keep fighting away from cities; they are the objective rather than the battleground. Even when fighting does occur, it's generally still on the outskirts of urban areas because there is always going to be an attacker and a defender (think: "Siege of Stalingrad").
Cavalry, motorised and mechanised infantry exists because so far in the history of warfare, there's much more of an advantage to out-manoeuvring the enemy rather than slogging it out, close up. Medieval castles, for example, were extremely easy to avoid (soldiers firing bows and arrows out of the windows don't exactly have much range). Their threat came from the more mobile forces that would be stationed there that, if an army ignored the castle, could launch harassing attacks on the army's flanks and supply chain.
Defending a city isn't ideal for a home force, either. A defending force is usually trying to keep an attacking away from the city rather in it. Fighting close to or in cities causes collateral damage and inevitable civilian casualties, which a defending force is usually trying to avoid. Paris was taken in WW2 with almost no fighting at all because France's forces were defeated quite some distance away.
Now, I'm not saying that urban warfare couldn't be the reason for having mecha, but it would be highly dependant on:
- Both attacking and defending forces having little or no regard for civilian casualties.
- The urban areas to be so physically extensive that they could not be bypassed (as in thousands of square miles).
- The urban areas being viewed as sufficiently valuable enough to fight over (once a city is depopulated and ruined, what's the point of capturing it?)
- Having the forces involved to be so equally matched that urban warfare dragged on for years, in order to cause a change in core doctrine and development of very specialist equipment for urban warfare.
It's still a stretch.
L.
Last edited by Luge on Sun Jan 26, 2020 8:26 am, edited 2 times in total.
Plus mechs would have to outperform infantry in armor and power armor (and combat drones) to such a degree at urban combat to justify the comparative increase in upkeep, and even then that only works if your supply chain can meet the gross demand to begin with.
It's been said before, but it's worth stating again: once we have the materials and powerplants necessary to make a workable mech, the technology would be better applied to these scenarios in a form other than a humanoid robot.
Even without their skating ability, a Tachikoma-style spider would be far better adapted to an urban environment. Likewise, something like Boston Dynamic's dogs would be better for rough/uneven terrain. Finally, we are reaching the point *now* where military theorists are saying that the F-22 will be the last manned fighter - drones are the wave of the future because an aircraft can simply perform better when not adhering to the physical limitations of a human pilot. It stands to reason the same would apply to mechs. Any advantage a human form could give a human pilot in terms of controlability (making it more natural) will be gone because the pilot won't even be in the cockpit.
Now, on the other hand, I see lots of possible applications for powered armor, but at most, I think we'll get Halo, not Battletech.
A depopulated city might have some worth....for repopulation. After ll, how many areas that once belonged to Native Americans are now major cities filled with the descendants of their conquerors?
It also might be a good place to be make a base for the army as they would have structures for houseing gear and troops, and a nice mantion or govenment building for the brass to work in.
Cities also usually exist because some aspect of geography made it a good place to build a city. You're not just capturing a group of buildings, you're capturing a strategically and logistically important location.
Urban warfare may be uncommon in history, but its been happening a lot recently, especially in asymmetrical wars.
If every cloud had a silver lining, there would be a lot more plane crashes.
Though if you want the location & infrastructure more than you want the people occupying it, other types of weapons become far more economical than mass deployment of mechs.
Powered armor is almost a certainty, will probably pop up soon in hostage rescue/swat teams and other high intensity but very controlled duration fighting scenarios, where the run time can be handled by batteries and you do not need any supertech to power it for days on end, which seems to be the current requirement by stupid morons in charge.
Mechs however is a different beast altogether, the only semi realistic way I have come up with for mechs is that human minds require human shapes, so the neural interface and it's MANY advantages require a humanoid machine.
And on the remote fighting bit, yeah sure, that works fine.....against armed goatherders and the like, against a tech savvy enemy with resources, it's more of a liability by both jamming and hacking.... unless you go autonomous fighting machines, and that way lurks skynet also mass death by glitch in the programming.
Still works fine on a low cost small scale, cheap recon drones are wonderful little things, not so cheap recon drones spotting for battleship guns are absolutely glorious.
discord wrote:Mechs however is a different beast altogether, the only semi realistic way I have come up with for mechs is that human minds require human shapes, so the neural interface and it's MANY advantages require a humanoid machine.
I'm not convinced by that argument, because the human brain is extremely adaptable. When you drive a car, you do it by muscle memory. Sure, your interface with the car is through your human body, but you don't think "I'm gonna press the accelerator with my right foot", you just accelerate. Muscle memory translates this thought into action. Same thing for airplanes, boats, etc. Training is there to build up the muscle memory so that your reactions happen "automatically", without you having to consciously think of the steps needed to do them.
Have you ever had a dream where you fly? You just want to go up, and you go up, it's magic. This is not something that works in our waking life because the human body cannot levitate on its own. But with some fancy mind-controlled repulsor/anti-G/whatever sci-fi gizmo, it'd work. Our brains are perfectly capable of doing the thinking needed for that if we could actually fly.
gaerzi: yes, you are quite right, but that is not the point of the excercise.
Mechs make negative amounts of sense in just about any application, what I am trying to come up with is some sort of semi plausible reason why they are not a rediculously stupid choice.
I would think power armor would be an option, even if its a small numbers, might be effective. THe average soldier today carries so much gear on them, even in short patrols, more than a medieval night in plate armor did. This might be a good way to carry heavy loads, stronger guns, and go into ares that are more dangerous such as with the Marines in Star Craft or the namesake troopers of Starship Troopers from the book.
