[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Justify BATTLEMECHS (Page 1 of 3)
Posted: 2/17/2007 6:40:47 PM EDT
| Would a Battlemech be the ultimate armored fighting vehicle, due to its humanoid form? |
The primary lesson of modern warfare is "if you can see it, you can kill it". A 20m tall Mech is nothing but a target. Now autonomous military nano-bots. That fricken scares me... |
I don't know but it would be the most awesome one. Make it impervious to RPGs. Run around town with it and when they find a terrorist holed up, you sick the mech on him. Have it kick the building apart and then reach in and pick up the survivors and dead and eat them. Have a big ass tree shredder in its face for a mouth and toss them in like mints. Having loud ass speakers that played an evil muhahhahaha laugh would be a bonus. that would be the most awesome weapon EVER. |
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Depends. What kind platform. Scout, assault, heavy assult, or gunboat. Armor? Powerplant? My personal fave when I was playing MechWarrior 3/4 was either a MadCat or MadCatII. In MW4. I made what I called the "Rifleman" It was a MadCatII. Stripped it down to the bare bones, Installed two Gauss rifles and two light gauss rifles, ammo, and put as much armor as I could before maxing out the chassis. Along with long range active/passive radar good out to 1200m that just happens to be the max range for the light gauss rifles. Go passive keep them in the hud and keep smacking them with the LG's untill they get till 800m and start letting loose with the Gauss rifles. At 800m and in I could average a Gauss/Lt.Gauss shot every three seconds with a continous volume of fire. Had the joystick set up. Took many a heavy mech and light mech. If need I could hold fire let the rifles load and let loose with one massive four tube shot. Ran the risk of a overheat but if it was a cockpit shot or a leg. You were toast. Ok geek out is over sorry. Buzz. |
only if it was slightly larger than human sized, and a human was inside of it countrolling it. That would be a very good use of tech. a 20 meter tall thing, would die very quickly on the battlefield. |
| You mean like walking on legs? That has to be the most complicated and costly way to move a vehicle, not to mention top heavy. What is going to power it? How will the engine transfer power to the "legs". How will it be able to negotiate uneven terrain? What would it cost? Unless it is piloted by huge breasted anime women, that is. |
dude the mini fusion reactor will power it. dont you know about such things? god...... the legs will have liquid metal muscles! all are reality! |
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Swarm robots will win. IRobotwww.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=149 In the end its work smarter NOT harder. |
im with you. Bolo's are the best idea for future war's ever thought of. And in Bolo books, there are "mechs" standardized troop mechs that are small human sized. But nothing can withstand the power of the Bolo! |
one word. Triangulation. You don't have to kill it, you just have to knock it down. It has only two legs. Two pillars of support. It lacks a viatl third pillar to give it real balance and stability. That and its a slow, big assed target. I suppose for intimidation effect, it would probably be great. For actual combat against a motivated and well equiped foe, they would be toast in short order. |
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I did an evaluation of the possibilities of SF type giant robots in one of my classes at university. The general consensus of my group which was later backed up by the prof was 1. If one ignores the cost and power source, it would be possible to manufacture non-flying SF type robots. 2. They would be best utilised in the construction industry, but the construction industry would have to change a little to max out the benefits. As a sidenote, work is being done on external mech-skeletons/powersuits and it wouldn't surprise me if they became everyday items within 20 years or sooner. |
Wonder why God didn't make us with tracks... 
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Because creating a creature with organic tracks would require organic maintenance teams, which mother nature never figured out. |
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Bolos...pshhh...those low-slung ghetto crawlers would be severly limited by terrain and performance. Terrain: obviously restricted to the flats. What happens when you fight in the mountains? Performance: Too slow...once their position is known, they can be targeted. 'mechs, on the other hand, can go anywhere two legs and jump boost can propel them. That lets them dominate the battlespace by the fact that once they strike they can quickly move out of the area before retaliory attacks can be launched. Plus, think of all the pranks you could do with a 'mech between combat actions... |
Mech vs. Elementals: 'mech = larger power supply = weapons than can out-range anything Elementals can pack. |
lolz, bolo's are supposed to be large enough, and with enough sets of tracks that they can climb extremely steep angles, always with enough traction to go further. they are also "supposed" to be fast, 60 mph in the early versions. Mechs are never supposed to be fast, just able to climb everything.... but having 2 easily targetted legs seems like a situation you would want to avoid. But then again in the bolo universe, there is shield tech which can stop anything... until they fail. |
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One of the barriers to the use of energy weapons is that they require a lot of power to operate. If energy weapons are the future ,than anything that would be capable of transporting small reactors in a variety of terrain on a high speed weapons platform will be desirable. I'm thinking 4 and 6 legged variants may be better. Why would they need arms and hands ? Better to have guns and cranes. |
In the pen and paper game four Guass rifles are able to fire every round without heat problems (until their ammo runs out). Four rifles at 1 heat point each plus up two heat points for running minus 10 points for the basic engine heat sinks = wide open firing. |
Because they would be tied in neurologically with their operators, thus capable of near-natural movement. |
There were several varieties of quad mechs in battletech, they were just not as common as biped models. In the pen and paper game the quads had less room to install weapons and equipment than their biped counterparts. |
Wait- you ran the risk of overheating from firing four gauss rifles? In Battletech, regular and light gauss rifles only produce one point of heat. Heavy gauss produce 2 points. They're the coolest running weapons in the game, short of an AC2 or machine gun. WTF? As for real life mecha, assuming they were fast and agile, as opposed to slow and cumbersome (oh crap, the ground isn't perfectly flat, I'm gonna fall over), then they would be a real asset on the field. If they were as slow and unmaneuverable as current technology can produce them, then they're nothing but really expensive targets. I could see mechs largely replacing tanks some day. Smaller footprint (which would be trouble crossing soft terrain like swamps and riverbeds, or crossing bridges), greater height means greater visibility and longer effective weapons range, more agile, they can turn sideways and squeeze in between buildings, etc. I can see us experimenting with mecha in the next thirty years, but I doubt we'll see any on the battlefield in our lifetimes. Infantry in powered armor, definitely. I'd love to see US troops go Starship Troopers on some hadji's ass. |
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the psychological shock value would be there but smaller ones, more of an oversized exoskeliton will probably be what we'll see. an uparmored infantryman, with enhanced speed, strength, senses and endurance could be very lethal. size would be a factor though, 10'+ mechs couldn't fit through doors, halls, or tunnels. a 7' armored battlesuit, say along the lines of the armored combat suits in Ringo's Posleen invasion books... that woul be the ticket |
"Gunner, Mech, SABOT, Fire" Worthless. |
Bullshit. Any technology that would give a 20m tall robot such abilities would give a conventional ground vehicle even more of those same abilities. Conventional designs are more efficient and effective. You can't trip a tank. If you can make a mech fly/jump, you can make a tank jump. If you can armor a mech to X standard you can armor a tank to X times a 100 standard since it doesn't need to balance itself and has less surface area. Worthless. |
As much geeky fun as I have had playing mechwarrior games, I have to agree. I mean c'mon! Anything that can be taken out of battle just by tying its shoelaces together is right at the top of the non-starter list yanno. |
The tallest BattleMechs are slightly over 10m, I don't know who came up with this repeated 20m stat, but it's dead wrong. That being said, I figure infantry armor along the lines of Starship Troopers and Armor would be more practical. BattleMechs would still be f'in cool if they had the tech they have in ye olde 31st century. Everyone talks about them being knocked over so easy, remember that they have good gyros. |
I cant believe I'm even replying to this  First for those that dont know in theory they'd have fusion power plants so power isn't really an issue. Heat was the big issue in the game. Secondly for the "rifleman" guy. They had a mech named a rifleman yah thief :P Lastly I've actually seen articles debating this very thing from actual military tacticians. It came out shortly after a university announced they'd created a fiber that acted exactly like myomers in Btech. It was pretty widely agreed they'd be missile magnets. I gotta find that article... it was pretty damn good and they took the "concept" pretty seriously. Now elementals... Armored suits using the same type of tech is very possible provided you could power it and make it nimble enough. Could you imagine a large armor suit you could put on and just wade through enemy infantry lines? Or even worse jump 100 meters into the middle of an enemy formation? Or onto the top of a tank? |
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I can see Mech's for certain very limited uses. For example: mobile heavy weapons and fire support for urban combat: A-La the guys in BHD could have used a mech or two. Situations where wheeled/tracked vehicles can't go. Tanks and hummers are very mobile, but they are suceptible to roadblocks and other major obstructions that a properly designed mech might be able to climb through. In the paper game I came up with a Clan Centaur [quad with a torso] that I played for a while. In the game it wasn't much better than a standard mech, but in reality, that design might be more practical. On my game unit, I supposed the front legs to be directly operated by the pilot, and the rear legs slaved to the front and computer controlled to provide maximum stability... |
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I think that there would be allot of problems fielding a Battle Mech army. for the sake of argument, let's assume that an operational Battle Mech can be manufactured. 1. Cost. Battle Mechs would exceed the per unit cost of modern jet fighters and would limit production runs. 2. Logistics. Replacement parts for battle damaged Mechs would also be very expensive. Specialized recovery assets would be needed to retrieve damaged Mechs. 3. Manned/Unmanned. Manned would require specialized training and SAR efforts. Unmanned would be vulnerable to jamming. Size. Mechs would be limited to Assault/Support By Fire roles on a conventional battlefield. They are too big to conduct CQB. I think a better alternative would be battle droids, as seen in the Star Wars Universe. Small enough to go where they are needed. Cost efficient. Can be specialized. Unmanned. The problem would be developing an AI system. Command and control could issue new orders when needed, but would be vulnerable to countermeasures. 
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| Hovercraft? Heh! Everyone seems to think a 35-ton armored hovercraft woulf float quietly around on its cusion of air...ever think how much air that thing would have to be moving to fill its plenum chamber? The thing would be like a mobile tornado! It would blast rocks etc. sideways with lethal force to nearby infantrymen, and prolly suck them in if they got too near. |
I've read a few of them. I want to read more.
Ever read the Hammer's Slammers series by David Drake? They have what they call combat cars: 30 ton hovercraft. They have steel plenum chambers and 8 independent fans for lifting/movement. Check out The Tank Lords at the Baen Free Library for further reading. |
[George Patton Voice] God help me I love it so! [/George Patton Voice] |
I read them, but he never adressed the physics behind how to float a 30-ton hovertank. It could be made to work, but it would be a mobile tornado, as I mentioned. |