Are humongous mechs practical?

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Iron.Eyeballs

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Threesan said:
Rolling Thunder said:
Everyone saying Huge Mechs in cities....that's what infantrymen are employed for. Infantrymen that can be concealed, move virtually anywhere, spring ambushes, set traps
...and get killed by small arms fire from any butcher, baker or candlestick maker. Because they all have AKs. The amount of concealment (in the sense of no one knowing that you're around) you can offer to a squad of uniformed soldiers operating in a dense urban environment is somewhat limited, even assuming they aren't with armored fighting vehicles or hummers. We're to the point where any deaths are borderline unacceptable. We don't send troops to certain areas on patrol because we don't want them to get slaughtered. True, you can't replace infantry with a mech, at least not any more than you can with an MBT or attack helo.
Infantry today are not necessarily meant to confront enemy positions head on, rather they are used to organize vital preparations for an assault. Infantry collect crucial Intel concerning enemy fortifications, positions, movement, etc. which allows armored vehicles, helicopters, artillery, etc. to effectively attack the opposition. Soldiers ,similarly to destroyers following an aircraft carrier, serve to escort, defend, and scout ahead of larger, more powerful (not to mention significantly more expensive) units.
Unfortunately the likelihood of infantry encountering enemy personnel will always remain high, and casualties are inevitable. However the distinct advantages infantry provide will always leave them as an invaluable component of any army. Infantry can weave through narrow corridors and tight spaces, take cover behind even the most insignificant debris, silently eliminate specified targets, secure enemy strongholds/structures whilst minimizing damage to said building, set up defensive positions and mow down advancing opposition, adequate restraint while engaging enemies limiting civilian casualties, and so forth.
In addition Infantry do not simply rush enemies with utter disregard for their safety. Soldiers properly survey an area they plan on entering in order to avoid being gunned down by enemy combatants. Though often the position of an enemy force is not as obvious as a machine gun nest. Ambushes can easily spring upon any group of soldiers no matter how well trained, though a reaction to it may differ wildly. A well honed squad of experienced soldiers is likely to prepped for such an occurrence. Soldiers travel cautiously along structures rarely stray far from potential cover, especially if the area appears dangerous.
 

McHanhan

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I am no engineer but having a bi-pedal unit like a mech has a default design flaw. The knees. It'll be like that Star Wars episode where the Ewoks trip over a walker, the joints in the walking mechanism is by default a compromising position. A well aimed missile can easily turn a mech into a scrapheap.
 

Iron.Eyeballs

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I imagine the closest thing we'll have to a mech in the future is a powered exoskeleton. An apparatus which can be worn by a soldier, which will neither hinder his mobility nor make him incapable of serving out the objectives listed above.

Once worn the user should be roughly around the same size, or at least not so large where it can't fit through standard hallway, which will allow for adequate mobility through enemy structures and give it a profile small enough to avoid becoming a mobile bulls-eye. The Soldier operating the suit should be nearly as quick or perhaps quicker than the would be normally otherwise the operator is rendered a sitting duck, thus eliminating the suit's usefulness. The suit requires sufficient articulation, in order to reach the optimum maneuverability/flexibility required to easily swing ones armaments, seek cover, vault debris,etc. Augmenting the strength of the operator would be the primary goal, giving the user the ability to wield weapons previously too bulky/heavy to wield, push aside debris and obstacles that hinder advancement, to support additional armor to protect the user, to carry additional supplies, and to perform a variety of tasks difficult for a soldier of average strength to take. In short a wearable weapons platform which allows the user to withstand small arms fire, bound over obstacles, rush behind cover,and lift normally bulky and inconvenient weapons with relative ease all the while allowing the operator to execute the same assignments as standard infantry.
 

LloydEsaka

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GloatingSwine said:
No. Any weapon system you could mount on a mech you could mount on a tank, but with a lower centre of gravity you could make it bigger, because the recoil wouldn't be as much of a problem, you could armour it more, because there are no joints, it wouldn't suffer mechanical stress trying to move itself....

Of course, there are large walking vehicles, (logging machines and timber haulers), but no-one is silly enough to try and put weapons on them.
No one is silly enough to try and put weapons on them 'yet'.
 

Cowabungaa

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Yes they are, just not in the way they're usually portrayed. For example, an AT-AT would be extremely impractical, pretty much a sitting duck for artillery as Rolling Thunder pointed out. However, small mechs like the AT-ST could be practical. There are plenty of area's that are pretty much inaccessible for traditional, wheeled or threaded vehicles. An AT-ST style mech could bring heavy firepower to such area's to support infantry.

Actually, they've already been testing mechs for military purposes. Sure not big monsters with massive guns, but we've got a small quadruped robot to support infantry. Meet BigDog:

Sure it's an ugly, small little thing, but it's a start, right?
 

Ocelot GT

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No they are not, bipedal movement and stability is extremely hard and delicate, not to mention how easy it would be to knock out a mech. Take out a knee or leg joint, the end, now it's down and out until engineers go through a very long tedious process of fixing the leg.

They look cool, but are not practical, especially with such a high profile and most infantry AT weapons now punch through armor like knife through butter.
 

Runding

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Ummm, I'd have to say that they would be useless against today's military weapons.

Don't you guys think the size of the mech would spell instant death to a tactical/precision missile/weapon of some sorts? It would last about 2 minutes in a battle.
 

WINDOWCLEAN2

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Small MEchs = YEs
Big mechs = NOOOOOO

Reasoning :
Small mechs could be manouverable and protect from small arms fire whilst pinning down enemys in order to make the way safe for troops, make them slightly bigger than a man and give them a minigun, some rockets and a few flares and your set.

Big mechs would be a fail as they lose any speed advantage
 

Canid117

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HellRaid said:
Yes, it turns out that some of them are INCREDIBLY practical. Allow me to name three:




If you've seen any of these in their respective games, I'm sure you'd agree.

(And yeah, Hunters and Striders are technically as biological as they are mech, but who cares?)
I could make a game where a floating cheese wheel that shoots death rays is practical. That doesn't mean it would work in real life.
 

emerald2142

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Redingold said:
If we could build something like the Geckos from MGS4, then they might work. They're agile enough to work in crowded urban spaces that no tank could reach, while delivering enough firepower to get the job done. They're also light enough to go onto the second floor of a building without it collapsing, but, unfortunately, this means you have to cut down on armour, for their legs.
In the case that they do make something like the Geckos, lets just hope they put in the sound effect folder that doesn't say "Farm Animals"
 

SIXVI06-M

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I'd say - smaller powered exoskeletons would be more practical - depending on the technology, especially for the purposes of deployment in battle, mobility is a must. But I can see the advantages of humanoid shaped mecha, even ones that move on four legs or perhaps treads - the extra surface area means more hardpoints (areas where weapons can be attached), and greater utility if the mecha had arms because of variable armament and the ability to perform menial field repairs to perhaps more complex combat maneuvers and dynamic tactical utility.

The greater amount of flexibility and dynamic movement would also mean they can react and aim faster than an average tank.

On top of that, I think I wouldn't put it past weapons designers in whichever part of the future to give them arm/shoulder-mounted shields to balance out structural weaknesses at the head and extremities.
 

SIXVI06-M

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HellRaid said:
Yes, it turns out that some of them are INCREDIBLY practical. Allow me to name three:




If you've seen any of these in their respective games, I'm sure you'd agree.

(And yeah, Hunters and Striders are technically as biological as they are mech, but who cares?)
If you look at their physical profile - they are actually both rather easy to topple. The Dreadnought can fall on its back and looks like it has little way of getting back up.

The strider is just ridiculous. Sure they're effective if the opposition doesn't have much way of fighting back, but I can think of a variety of ways to make that thing fall over.

They're effective because the games you've seen them in and played tells you they're effective, however- you're within the limitations that the game imposes on you.
 

SIXVI06-M

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Cowabungaa said:
Yes they are, just not in the way they're usually portrayed. For example, an AT-AT would be extremely impractical, pretty much a sitting duck for artillery as Rolling Thunder pointed out. However, small mechs like the AT-ST could be practical. There are plenty of area's that are pretty much inaccessible for traditional, wheeled or threaded vehicles. An AT-ST style mech could bring heavy firepower to such area's to support infantry.

Actually, they've already been testing mechs for military purposes. Sure not big monsters with massive guns, but we've got a small quadruped robot to support infantry. Meet BigDog:


Sure it's an ugly, small little thing, but it's a start, right?

Mount some automated machinegun turrets and a grenade launcher on it, and it'll be making dynamic entries into high risk operations. BigDog moves at a pretty decent clip. Just whack on a decent friend-foe tagging system on it, and you're set.
 

znix

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Right now, not very practical because of technical limitations. In the future, they might be very practical. Once you start thinking about constructs made with hardened living materials, things might change. In a way, it would be like making real life monsters for the battle field.
 

blind_dead_mcjones

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DracoSuave said:
The problem with mecha is the cube/square law.

Let's say you build a human sized robot, and it's pretty agile. You'd -think- you'd just double the dimensions and you're good to go but it -doesn't- work that way.

First: The mass is multipled by 8 for every doubling of height, which means that to move it at the same speed, you need 8 times the force. More troublesome is that to achieve the same level of agility you need to move it twice as far, which means that you need 16 times as much power to move something twice the size of a human with the same degree of agility relative to the size of the object.

Now, -ten- times the height requires -ten thousand- times as much force in order to accomplish the same degrees of articulation and agility.

Secondly, the amount of pressure on the structure itself changes. In this case, the square law kicks in, so you need legs, for example, that are 4 times as thick/strong for every doubling of height. For this ten-times-the-size mecha, that means that you need legs that are 100 times as thick/strong.

Thirdly, there is the problem of weight distribution. Your center of gravity needs to be relatively lower in a mecha than in a human because of the instability of having the center of gravity in a mecha that weighs 1000 times a human tipping over the fulcrum point.

So, let's say you wiegh 160 lbs. That means you're dealing with 160 000 pounds of machine, which is 80 -tons-. 80 -tons- tipping a meter past the fulcrum is a LOT harder to stop than 160 pounds. It's just harder to balance.
this

thank you thank you thank you good sir for both winning the thread and injecting some common sense into it

UAProxy said:
This is to suggest that tanks can't be pants-wettingly scary on the battlefield. Clearly you have not seen the Baneblade.

maybe in the world of 40k but in reality a baneblade would be just as useless as a mecha would be

if you wish to suggest otherwise then i suggest you read 'my tank is fight' for the reason why such a thing wouldn't work


BlueCrossBlueShield said:
Oh, yeah, and make the mech a lot stockier and industrial than commonly portrayed. As for power, did you know that diesel engines are incredibly powerful?
yeah, even diesel engines have their limits, case in point; the p.1500 monster, the thing was so heavy it needed four diesel engines taken from submarines just to get enough torque to move, and even then it shuffled along at litteraly a snails pace, you could walk faster than the bloody thing

Naheal said:
Valiance said:
Naheal said:
Actually, Battletech did mechs better then Anime did, considering they're intended to be industrial machines that have been adapted for war.
I agree wholeheartedly, but I feel that a 100 ton mech would be less useful than a 100 ton tank of similar size and armaments.
The thing is that a 100 ton tank doesn't have nearly the mobility that a 100 ton mech does. The amount of maneuverability that is available simply because of being bi-(or quadri-)pedal in infinately better for a piece of artillery then a track. It's easier to pick up and move when you have actual legs to do so.
except that neither would be able to move at all and would just sink into the ground, leaving you with a pair of very expensive and awesome looking if useless pillboxes
 

HellRaid

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Canid117 said:
HellRaid said:
Yes, it turns out that some of them are INCREDIBLY practical. Allow me to name three:




If you've seen any of these in their respective games, I'm sure you'd agree.

(And yeah, Hunters and Striders are technically as biological as they are mech, but who cares?)
I could make a game where a floating cheese wheel that shoots death rays is practical. That doesn't mean it would work in real life.
Necromancing a one-and-a-half-year dead thread to quote me? I'm honoured :p

The point is that walkers are much more maneuverable that your standard wheeled tank. In a massive city fight where there's rubble everywhere, for example, a walkers are much less likely to get stuck or bogged down. Walkers can also strafe.

In my examples, Striders are incredibly practical in city fighting as they can can traverse City 17's rubble-strewn wastes with ease.

Dreadnoughts are practical in similar situations because their weapon loadouts can include flamethrowers and assault cannons (chainguns). And they're so badass that they can walk through walls without difficulty.

But yeah, in an open field, not so practical.
 

Drakmeire

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No But they are AWESOME
<youtube=PLv7tUN-DxY>
gets awesome at 30 seconds
 

CarpathianMuffin

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If looking cool and being practical at the same time could be applicable in most scenarios, humongous mechs could take top prize. Still, I'd use 'em if I could.