Genuine question, it's seem like most people here like mecha

>>15029991
Maybe powersuits in animated capacity. I am sure an eccentric might make a really small mech for the hell of it. Other than that no.

>>15029993
>animated
Limited

>>15029991

As cool as mecha is, it doesn't have a role to fill in conventional warfare and likely wouldn't fair very well against conventional combat vehicles and aircraft.

>>15029991
>But does anyone genuinely believe that mecha will be real?

As entertainment devices?
Definitely. People have made far crazier shit just because.

As weapons?
They're literally just cool toys for children. Of course they hold no real military value.

>>15029991
There is no real military application for one.
I'm sure someone will build one though.

Not really. Because mecha draws in the sorts of nerds that are crazy about tech, military and science, those same nerds are keenly aware of how far away we are from actually making them practical.

Right now, the closest thing we have to actual mecha, in the practical sense, are those "exoskeletons" the US Army is experimenting with that are used purely for lifting and moving heavy objects. They're basically glorified forklifts that happen to be less bulky and less strong (I forget the numbers, but I think the exoskeletons can only lift something in the neighborhood of 500 pounds, whereas a forklift can carry stuff at least 2-3 tons heavy), no armor or anything meant for combat.

As said above, until there actually arises a combat situation where a suit of powered armor or a giant piloted robot will be more practical than just sending in a tank, they aren't happening.

I believe power armor is an inevitability.

>>15029991

They might come along at some point I suppose, if only for entertainment purposes at the least. I hope they never become a military thing in my life though. I enjoy them at least partly because they're fantasy and toys - knowing they were a real thing used in conflict would change the context of them and make them less fantastical and fun to me I think. They'd just be another military machine, rather than a fantasy of one stories and ideas can be projected through without quite impinging on reality and always maintaining an air of fantasy because of the mechs. There are some good military stories told using only real machines, some great ones even - but having mechs makes a small bit (or large bit) of fantasy easier to maintain and allows larger than life stories to be told. Which I enjoy.

>>15029991
Armored Core thread

I for one believe in AMBAC no not really

Sports, sure maybe.

Patlabor? Not unfeasible.

Military? Unlikely, besides maybe as some sort of glorified forklifts. I can imagine having a really small one for carrying equipment and building fortifications might be really handy.

>>15030029
it already exists, we just need a way to power them.
that being said when that energy source becomes available who knows where technology goes?
I dont believe long legged, high heeled, V-Finned mecha would be practical in war but mecha is a very broad term.

There is also the impending robo-industrial revolution where robots will take all manual labour jobs. This technology will take many forms and it is likely many of those forms will be weaponized if it makes sense to do so.

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>>15030047
Did someone say Armored Core thread?

>>15029991
100 years ago mankind couldn't fly, now we can. Maybe some day we will invent some crazy future tech than makes weaponized mechs a possibility, but I don't think it will be any time soon. Plus tanks work pretty well and are probably easier to drive.

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>>15030047
Armored Core Thread.

>>15030101
100 years ago was 1916, aerospace was a major industry by then.

Fiction and fantasy grounded in a believable reality is my preferred method of escapism.

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>>15029991
>Destroy Megalis on hard
>fucking VOB malfunction right at the beginning
>have to dodge and burst my way through a few kilometers worth of anti-aircraft cannons

>>15029991
Very short ones, possibly. Something like VOTOMS, where the "mecha" are really just oversized power armor. Those wouldn't be too impractical, and I can think of uses for them on the battlefield. But truly giant robots? No. Too big of a target, too much ground pressure for them to walk in most conditions, too much stress on the limbs for them to not break easily, too big for a reasonably-sized mechanic crew to maintain.

>>15030126
100 years ago people were still traveling via lighter-than-air dirigibles, and piston-propeller planes couldn't travel cross-continent without regular top-ups and a few days, carrying a few dozen passengers.

Today, planes use jet engines that allow several hundred people to travel halfway across the world in 18 hours or less. And we have rotary-wing aircraft that are faster and infinitely more maneuverable than blimps. And both of those models of flight have been miniaturized for personal entertainment.

>>15029991
Yes, but not as weapons of war.

Mech combat will be an extremely popular spectator sport in 2040.

>>15030201
>Today, planes use jet engines that allow several hundred people to travel halfway across the world in 18 hours or less.

Considering the failure of Concorde and its USSR twin, I wouldn't put commercial flight industry on any kind fo pedastal because it's frankly shit stuck in the perhistory because of bureaucracy.
It's like glorifying British railways... Yes, they easily beat anything available there in 1900 but they're absolute crap compared to Japan's.

>>15030204
Hey there megabots. Need another kickstarter to sell t-shirts while you putt of your fight with Kuratas for the umpteenth time?

>>15030217
>I wouldn't put commercial flight industry on any kind fo pedastal because it's frankly shit stuck in the perhistory because of bureaucracy.
Why do you say this?
Just because airlines are still using the traditional cigar tube body doesn't mean they haven't innovated.
Airline jets are magnitudes more efficient than they were in the 60's.

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>>15029991
Holy shit stop asking this question. It's completely fucking irrelevant because mecha does exist https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5m0ZadoooI0

Not anywhere close to the capacity it does in anime, but it nonetheless exists.

>>15029991
Pretty sure we call those people autistic, even in the Armored Core community. Holy fuck there's a lot of those idiots in there just because the game throws a lot of math at you. lmfao

>>15030242
>Waaaaaah
>Stop your hypothetical conversations at once!

>>15029991
Yes. If not for millitary purposes, then for blood sports

I don't think they'll ever be practical on Earth, but in space they might be useful. Mobile Suits were originally made for use in space combat, and the tech behind them seems sound to me, but what do I know.

>>15027041

>>15029991
yeah i'll be the crazy uncle to build mazinger in his basement

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>>15029991
I firmly believe that if we ever do see rl mecha that are actually vaguley uselful in a fight they will be quadrupedal

>>15029991

they literally already exist albeit extremely inefficient ones so yes

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>>15029991
nope. mecha are so cool that this world prohibited it to exist

they're just THAT cool

only ugly and cowardice machines like tanks and drones allowed sadly

>>15029991
>does anyone genuinely believe that mecha will be real?
Mecha is already real and it's getting realer all the time.

When I was born, TVs were black and white.
They were the size of your desk and you had to get up to change the channel or volume.
They also didn't display anything at certain hours of the night because there just wasn't enough programming to fill all the time in a day.
Then we got new TVs with remotes. Some had wires, others whistled at the TV. They had a few buttons and it blew our tiny little minds.
Then we got color TV, which was impossible to wrap your head around, but most of the programming was still black and white.
The remotes got better. They weren't sound-based anymore, and the idea of shooting invisible light was crazy.
Then you could play games on them? What? There was a tiny computer in a box hooked up to your TV.

Something a thousand times worse than that computer used to take up an entire room.
Hard drives capable of storing the text of this post were formed of several platters larger than dinnerplates, stacked atop one another.
They got smaller, and smaller, and smaller.
You didn't have to feed punch cards into then anymore. You could use keyboards. Now you just talk at them.
We went to the Moon with computers programmed with ropes, not the circuitboards you know.
We did it with less processing power than is found in the calculator that your dad used in school.

You don't even use calculators anymore.
You have smartphones. In my day, you had to spin a little circle several times to dial a number.
Before that, a woman working in a building across town would physically move plugs and wires around to connect you.
Pretty soon, phones didn't even need wires.
They were the size of your forearm, but you could talk to someone on another continent from the back of a taxi.
Now they're smaller than a wallet and stream HD video from the internet.

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>>15031299
The internet that you used to connect to by having your rotary phone sit on top of a modem cradle while they literally scream digital noise at each other.
Soon the phone was built-in, but we kept the noise (emulated, naturally) because it was comforting.
A full half of you may not even remember that noise from anywhere but movies and TVs about "the old times".

TVs that are no longer the bulky, black-and-white glass jobbers of my day.
Now they're plastic, 1-2 inches thick, displaying images with greater clarity and resolution than you'd have in person without shoving your face up to an object.
You can see every pore on an actor's face blown up to the size of a pencil lead.
Actors in TV shows in my day had to wear bright blue and red makeup just so it looked like they had cheekbones on our shitty TVs.

All of this advancement happened in a few short generations. Your parents or grandparents might remember these things coming to pass, people you can still talk to and learn from.
You've already seen huge leaps in technology in your short lifetimes, but you were born in a time with so much to begin with that you may not truly understand how far we've come, or how quickly. Our rate of advancement is always accelerating. The "impossibles" of yesterday, were blown away by things like electricity, then lightweight alloys, then the transistor, the integrated circuit, and a host of other technologies you now take for granted; the "why would we evers" smacked down by these same technological shifts and the emergence of new social and cultural needs. You can barely even comprehend the technical workings of the next big thing, let alone how its existence will change society.

You don't know why we may or may not need a robot of some arbitrary size.
You don't know how advanced software and artificial intelligences may become.
You don't know what strengths the metals, plastics, and ceramics of the next few decades will have.

But you will.

>>15029991
I don't know about the use of gigantic armored humanoids, like out of the Pacific Rim, but if army can field anything even remotely similar to Iron Man, they will.

And walkers likes of these from Avatar are already existing. You better damn bet, that there will be some use for them. And if it will be not warfare, then definitely security or logistics.

Even armed thiefs will think twice before barging into storage protected by armored walker, and security guards will be not sleeping in front of the monitors, when they can actually play Robocop on duty.

And why to call crane, or forklift to pick up something, when you can grab it with powersuit and handle much naturally.

>>15031299
>>15031320
>>15031344
>technology advances
Wow so insightful. Your blog post is 10/10 cringe. Consider deleting and never coming back.

>>15031276
Tanks and drones ARE mecha.
There's a reason that it's called "mechanized infantry".

>>15031387
You are replying to two different people.
Go be edgy somewhere else, son.

>>15031387
We had better tell-offs in my day.

>>15030225
I think he means the business behind it.

>>15030242
Do you idiots realize more than one person post on news sites?

>>15031387
You're not old enough to appreciate the scale on which the advance has happened. Not saying you're immature, you just don't remember a time when all of this was implausible science fiction. I was born in the color tv era, but I still remember when there were only four networks (ETV/PBS doesn't count) and "remote control" was my father telling me or my sister to get up and change the station for him. My first computer was a Commodore Vic 20 that loaded games off of an audio cassette.
READY> LOAD "RACECAR",8,1
>PRESS PLAY ON TAPE
I even remember getting our first 5.25" floppy drive and how big of a deal it was at the time.
and it would take 186,383 of those 5.25" floppy discs to match the tiny little micro SD I use in my PSP (which, in itself, puts the 386 desktop I had in high school to absolute shame). And that's only 70 years since the first computer weighed 50 tons.

Compared to the rest of human history, electronics development is at an absolutely staggering speed.
(double post-edit because good wine. sorries)

>>15031320
And yet, all those advances would be better put to making war machines that aren't giant targets. Low to the ground is always more practical. Mecha might become possible, but no one would use them in war. Possibly other contexts, but the sort of military mecha fiction that is most common would never be reality.

>>15031457
Yet sometimes other technology just slows right down.

We have airliners that are a little bit more fuel efficient but supersonic travel was simply deemed uneconomical for civilian flights.

Maybe suborbital aircraft will work out where the Concorde failed, but that's another decade away.

Even military jets haven't made anything recently as fast as the SR-71 unless you believe the conspiracy theories.

>>15031491
>Even military jets haven't made anything recently as fast as the SR-71
Is there even a point to making something that fast beyond muh record breaking?

>>15032008
There's hypersonic missiles and shit but nothing that would be a remotely good idea to stuff a human inside of.

>>15031257
Whoa, is that a new form of Garurumon?

>>15029991
I think that giant robots will perhaps exist for entertainment and that exoskeletons will see military and civilian use.

But the conventional idea of giant robots zooming around the battelfield? Never gonna happen.

>>15030217
Mostly because of political mismanagement though.

>>15031471
This. It's like saying that in the future, we will be able to put towns into giant balls and roll them around the place. It MIGHT be possible, but why would you do that?

>>15031471
This.
It's not that mecha can't exist. They certainly can, and even today do exist. Nobody (that is to say nobody that's not an idiot) has said that they are impossible, but rather that there's no reason to spend billions and billions of dollars on a research program to build a fifty foot tall mech when they can instead spend that money on hundreds of tanks that are far more useful in the vast majority of situations. And if the tech does come as a side benefit of already existing research, then it would be far more easily and cheaply and probably more effectively built into existing or otherwise traditional AFV designs.

>>15029991
Eventually? Sure, like a couple centuries down the line.
I won't hold my breath for it in my lifetime, but it's still something fun to think about.

>>15030131
That can happen?!

>>15031299
>>15031320
I don't think anyone is arguing that we won't have the technology to build a mech/walker the real question is: is there any military use for a machine like that? The answer to that question is a big fat "No". Everything points toward a future where drones and long range weaponry do most of the work.
If anything the conflicts of the last few years have shown that heavy ground based units have become increasingly useless due to the fact that even a goat shepherd with minimal training but the right weapon can take out a MBT.

So yeah, maybe there will be some weird tech discovery that will make it viable to build giant humanoid war machines but that's pretty retarded because then anything is possible
>maybe there will be super-powered personal energy shields that will make it necessary to use swords again
>maybe someone will one day discover magic
>maybe WH40k is real and we are just a forgotten colony
etc

>>15033111
>>maybe there will be super-powered personal energy shields that will make it necessary to use swords again

fucking Dune

>>15033111
Actually, Ukraine has shown how heavy armour and artillery is still important for fighting enemies equipped in a similar manner.

>>15029993
This, I genuinely want to spend some years working with engineering because I feel powersuits have the potential to be huge if we're going forward with the terraforming Mars thing.

It'd be very comfy to spend a few decades doing research and development.

>>15029991
Sport/Utility Mecha for lawn mowing, snow removal and other activities. Operate your snow blower in heated comfort in blizzard conditions with optional FLIR. Climb into the back of your pickup truck, turn around, shut it down, tie it down and you're ready to go. Worried about getting hurt felling trees? No problem, do it in your roll caged Sport/Utility Mecha.

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>>15029991
Of course I think mecha will be real, because mecha are real.

>>15031471
You miss the part where a mecha could easily be able to fly and be scarily mobile to the point of being incredibly hard to target. Add to that firepower that makes a tank cry with how superior it is and a mecha no longer needs to be low to the ground due to it being able to fucking fly and rocket jump. It`s almost as if you`ve never seen one mecha anime in your entire life.

>>15035818
>a mecha could easily be able to fly and be scarily mobile

We are talking about mechs in real life here.

>>15036034
Let`s pretend for a second we can have a mecha that can do this in IRL,and not get hung up on the how of it. Which would be goalpost shifting.

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In a military sense? Not likely.
Ecclectic, TV show like Robot Wars? Probably.
Current technology is able to create a good frame and system for a mech, as apparent here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iZ0WuNvHr8
But the main problem is power/fuel. Tech just isn't there yet. Also, walking bipedal mechs are still a ways off. We have a few human sized walking robots, but gravity and weight scaling makes most of the designs for those walking bots unusable.

I mean, maybe some revolutionary feat of engineering will make it possible, but at the moment we're stuck with tanks. If mecha were to become a thing, I want to see progress along the lines of:
Vertical Tank -> Battle-Tech/Mech Warrior -> Gundam.

>>15036337
I've always believed that a high pressure pneumatic system using high-speed dynamic valves was the way to go. Rotary APUs are the most suitable powerplant based on size and weight constraints. I'm excited by the new Korean bot, it shows they're at least serious about trying. The issue is getting the actuators fast enough to dynamically 'throw' the center of gravity in the walk cycle instead of a constant balance over the points of contact, which will never be fast.

If you see a white guy in a pneumatic-driven geara doga ripoff in ten years, that's me.

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>>15036353
I have only one mech I wish to pilot.
And I want it painted Hotrod Red.

>>15036289
Why can't the tank use the "firepower that makes a tank cry with how superior it is"?

>>15036337
>Vertical Tank
Not likely. Tanks have been getting shorter and flatter for a while now, because the biggest drawback of tanks is that their size makes them highly visible and easy to hit.

>>15036825
I suspect the only way anyone an sell a military on the virtues of a mecha would involve the mech in question being able to shrug off tank shells, bullets, and rockets. (for a time at least)
Of course I also assume that the mech would need to be able to dodge/juke/and be generally evasive as well.
Two things that are unlikely to happen.

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>>15033965

This. There's literally a thread right now about how the gooks have literally built one of those suits from Avatar that can amble around using the basic COG-shifting roboshuffle.

>>15033111
>maybe there will be super-powered personal energy shields that will make it necessary to use swords again

Nigga I ain't using swords when I got options

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>>15030957
I agree with this. Mecha in space or on bodies with very low gravity, such as the Moon would be easier to envision.

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>>15029991
Dude, the tank itself composed of 5-7 pairs of computer assisted, independent legs acting as suspension to their wheels.

And then, there's Korea and Japan getting shit done.

And we're already do mecha since 19th century man, what do you think train, planes, tanks and cranes are?

>>15030011
>literally cool just cool toys for children

this guy gets it

>>15041063
>suspension systems are now equivalent to legs
lmao, you faggots are reaching

>>15041128
They almost "work" like one, yes. Not as literal manner.

Even it was the simplest one, christie suspensions system have "knees" and "ankles" that work as extra absorber, makes it able to lift heavier stuff and traverse rought counture more effecticely.

And do you think legs wasn't a suspension for the entire body?

>>15029991
>mecha
It already happens for 2 centuries you goof.

If you mean a legged robots, then it already happend for decades, if not very effective yet.

If you mean piloted warbot, then well, i just can say maybe. Cannot say yes because we still tinkering around it, and cannot say no too because world doesn't work as we think it is, and there's an actual developement underway. So debating it will happens or not is kinda futile and waste of time, better to actually make it happens, like we regularly do since the dawn of time.

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>>15029991
Reminder that we have a state of the art remote control science lab robot on another planet right now. It is telling us the secrets of our little red neighbor.

Mechs are real.
And we have a better use for them than as weapons of war.
They are machines of SCIENCE.

>>15029991
Never

>>15044654
This

>>15036372
That guy looking back at the camera with the 'are you fucking serious' face gets me every time.

>>15044686
He didn't sign up for this shit.

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>>15037156
WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY

But in all seriousness our biggest hurtles are power sources and applications. There's a big market for specialized machines like bulldozers but nothing for a more adaptive machine like a mech.