The Actual Viability of Mecha

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>>15660369
I'm more of a fan of the "don't even try to explain it" approach myself

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>>15660382
Good man.

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>>15660369
I can guarantee you the military has investigated the viability of mechs.
I mean just looking at the benefits is simple enough. Basically walking tanks or battle stations that can traverse any terrain if equipped properly.
I would assume more likely though mechs would be more viable if remote controlled or autonomous rather than with a pilot inside. Safety issues and whatnot.
The large problem with mechs is the power source and weight. You need a stupid amount of energy to move something huge which is why most mech manga/anime describe a "miracle power source" to explain the way it works.

>>15660369

Preferably, in either fiction or real life, mecha ought to be limited and have to be as easy to wreck as tanks and aircraft were when they were introduced, and that they're only used when there's a need. Combat is still combined arms tactics.

even if you could design a $300k robot suti it gets put down by a $2 bullet fired from a $200 surplus soviet AT rifle. for that reason it will never be feasible.

the only arguments it has to being more useful than more conventional armor are extreme vertical environments, such as metropolises or the himalayas, or dynamic environments where rubble or similar material might impede the movement of tanks. Regardless, the $202 anti-robot trick still applies. more force could be applied with less resources in similar areas with a few well-outfitted soldiers.

however, I could imagine a bored billionaire having a few hundred designed and sprinkled over some third world conflict just to watch what happens in the future. I think that would be your best bet for seeing irl mecha.

>>15660369
They're generalists. A mecha will never be as good as a machine designed for a given role, but it can easily adapt to any engagements just by swapping out its equipment. This makes them the preferred weapon for space navies, which have to field fast-strike forces in a wide range of potential environments and conditions in the middle of space, inside colonies, or on the surface of moons and asteroid. The mecha go in and perform Wild Weasel operations to clear the way for the heavy artillery coming in after them.

>>15660464
Not really mecha, but robots. And so far, it's just ones to carry our shit for us.

>>15660369
I could see mobile fortresses being a thing in the future. But boy would that world be fucked if that were real.

List of things giant robots can do that current military machines can't:

>punch enemies
>kick enemies
>step on enemies
>throw enemies
>suplex enemies
>hold guns
>hold melee weapons
>throw melee weapons
>hit enemies with gun like a melee weapon
>fly

>>15660575
>even if you could design a $300k robot suti it gets put down by a $2 bullet fired from a $200 surplus soviet AT rifle.
First of all, if your anything gets downed by a surplus Soviet AT rifle you deserve that fate. Second of all, just about any expensive military vehicle can be downed by something much cheaper than it is, so it's a terrible argument on its face.

>How would you rationalize the widespread usage of mecha?
In a more advanced world, the best rationalizations I've ever heard are for remote controlled and/or semi-autonomous infantry support walkers where the vehicle in question is no larger than a tank, but has the utilities of a walking machine. More able to assist infantry without so many of the issues that plague actual tanks in environments that they suffer in, and more agile than wheeled and tracked vehicles which people often forget are limited in their capabilities, and especially in tighter spaces like the urban environment.

Looking at the real world: power armor is the only truly, truly rational thing that we can look at and say for certain can be a reality in our foreseeable future. Barring any significant discoveries or inventions, of course. Taking a step further into the future is the idea of robotic infantry (very likely under the command of humans.)

>>15660369
Honestly the excuse is rarely ever MUH PARTICULES. If mechs were as effective as they are in their shows then they'd find a place on the modern battlefield immediately because they're obscenely overpowered. People always go on about how tanks could totally take down a MS with ease, but no they can't. They move like superhumans in their own show and are somehow every bit as articulate as a human can be and can target moving missiles with ease and they're fucking quick to boot. And they're even deployed by the dozens because apparently cost isn't a problem. Mechs like MS are "real" but they're still basically superheroes both in our world and in fiction, they're already rationalized in the same way Superman is, they just work. You're talking about NEXTs, which can turn on a dime and move at Mach 2 in any direction instantly with QB, which can also be chained, and you're talking about how you'd rationalize them. The rationale is that they're super fucking powerful and a single NEXT can take down an Arms fort armed to the teeth with the best weaponry no one can buy because NEXTs can dance around anything they fight at supersonic speeds.

The reality is that a mech would either break rather quickly when it starts to move anywhere as fast as a tank because of the strain on the materials or it would break the ground everywhere it walks because it'd be thousands of tons on a relatively small surface area (its feet). It's not going to be like a gundam that leaps kilometers into the air in a single motion and also turn on a dime and do flips like a ninja on a concrete road and the desert sands and marshes and certainly not like a NEXT which just accelerates from 0 to 2100kmph in half a second.

Robots and powered suits will probably be a thing though. Powered suits would lighten the load for soldiers and possibly make women actual viable combatants, especially if you make up for the lack of strength and take away their face.

>>15660884
>Robots and powered suits will probably be a thing though. Powered suits would lighten the load for soldiers and possibly make women actual viable combatants, especially if you make up for the lack of strength and take away their face.

More than just a way of making infantry more effective it'd be an opportunity to change the social aspect of military. Replace human ability with machine ability, take away faces, mask the screams, control communications, etc.

Robots at some point will be a better option but for now it seems like no one can get them to even walk properly. Humans can balance their stepping motion by shifting their entire body to align their center of gravity closer to where the foot steps, but when bipedal robots do it they do an awkward inward step that's hardly stable.

Not to mention you can't have autonomous robots because of moral choices, not that we're anywhere close to even recreating an insect brain much less emulating a human one that can make such choices. And communications would have significant latency if it's remote controlled.

I think mecha best use as a armored combat engineer.
>setting up trap and fortification
>clearing minefields

>>15660895
>Not to mention you can't have autonomous robots because of moral choices, not that we're anywhere close to even recreating an insect brain much less emulating a human one that can make such choices. And communications would have significant latency if it's remote controlled.
That's why you go with something more along the lines of Chappie and Almost Human. You can't always trust an AI to do the right thing, so you slave them to human controllers who are in the field and can make those decisions. Give them the intelligence needed to accurately and reasonably follow their possible orders and leave the discretion on giving those orders to a human.

>>15660464

I was thinking about what would robotic army look like. First, why would you pick the human shape?

For robot foot soldiers, they would be dog shaped. Run very fast, with a back mounted turret and other guns. They'd be fast, hard to hit, able to move in cities and houses, and with computer assisted aiming would be deadly.

Larger would be tanks, helis, and jets, and bombers, which would all be automated.

>>15660965
Human's are one of the most energy-efficient land-travelers, since evolution tricked gravity into doing half of the work for us. I'm not sure how that compares to a wheel and axle, but there are potential benefits to bipedalism, especially compared to other leg arrangements.

>>15660965
>>15661065
Also important to have humanoid robots in a situation where civilians would be involved. Can't have fucking laserbeam-wielding T-Rexes clearing rooms in a village or some shit.

I mean, you could, but that would be unwise for fostering good relations.

>>15660879
modern tanks take more than a cheap armor piercing round to shut down. you have to get extremely close, or you have to use sophisticated explosive technology that a random dude that grew up in a mud brick house won't be able to get a hold of. there isn't any feasible way to design a mech that doesn't defy the physics of this universe that doesn't fall to a high calibur AP round. you could push one through a tank with a well-placed shot by an educated marksman, but there are 3-5 guys in there, and it's not entirely clear where they are positions from the outside, unlike with a mech.

we have infantry armor technology that far surpasses what we(the US) outfits our soldiers with already. we don't outfit armies with it because it's not economically feasible. long before we are using power armor suits we will be fighting wars with unmanned drones or similar technology.

you're dreaming, but that's fine and I don't want to kick you around too much for it.

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How did those power loader looking things that Japan made for rescue purposes work out?

>>15660575
>I could imagine a bored billionaire having a few hundred designed and sprinkled over some third world conflict just to watch what happens in the future
So, Celestial Being?

What I want to know is where would a giant person be the most useful in war?

>>15661065
humans can run for a longer period of time than any other land animal on the planet. it's our predatory niche. since we can't outsprint, we persist.

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>>15660855
Mobile Fortresses will never be feasible because their size and weight make them a logistics nightmare. Just look up the Ratte.

>Destroys roads.
>Can't cross bridges.
>Can't be transported by train, plane, or boat so it has to get everywhere under its own power.
>Ate up a ton of fuel (energy) just moving around.
>Slow and would force the rest of the forces to slow down to not leave it unprotected.
>Its size would make it an easy target for literally everything on the battlefield.

>>15660369
I'd see them possibly as an intresting way to contravene military rules

for example, say Mars has a war with earth and loses - as part of the reparations made by the loser, Earth bans Mars from creating any armored/weapon using vehicles with wheels or tracks (naturally air vehicles are out the picture too), merciful enough to let Mrs continue using its legged construction/farming vehicles...

Which is a loophole Mars designers exploit to the maximum, learning how to build well and how to utillise them in combat against armored/weaponed vehicles whch have a natural advantage of the best of all worlds

tl;dr... Heavy tank versus mecha action with the tanks superior in all but mobility

>>15661747
Persisting would never work if we didn't develop excellent tracking techniques only capable because of higher intelligence. And it's a terrible way to hunt that's mostly a meme. It's so inefficient that you would have a hard time getting meat back to the tribe before it goes bad and was a dumb idea all around considering meat was most likely a small part of primitive man's diet. Good thing we moved past that stage.

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>>15660369
90% of mecha WOULD lose to 90% of stands.

>>15661575
>you have to get extremely close, or you have to use sophisticated explosive technology that a random dude that grew up in a mud brick house won't be able to get a hold of

ATGMs have range plenty long enough for urban warfare, which modern conflicts are almost entirely centered around, and they're really not that hard to get, even shitty old RPGs will do the trick of piercing the mighty Abrams if anyone using it is smart enough to get to the top of a building and shoot through the top armor.
One of the main drawbacks of current anti-tank weapons is that back-blast limits where they can be used.


Or you could just get a shit ton of simple explosives and burry them under a road the tank is likely to drive over, then watch it fly.
Or burry that RPG in the road and rig it to fire up through the tank's belly.

>there isn't any feasible way to design a mech that doesn't defy the physics of this universe that doesn't fall to a high calibur AP round.

My dude, anti-tank rifles could be stopped by shitty cast steel light tank armor back in WWII, in the age of composite armor it wouldn't even take 1000 pounds of armor to protect a decently compact mech cockpit from whatever shitty .50 cal or 14.7mm anti-material rounds you're likely to find in some third world goatfucker's hands.

Any vaguely realistic mech design has a cockpit much, much smaller than the entire fucking hull/turret of a tank, there's a lot less surface area to cover, you can protect that pilot to the at a fraction of the weight it takes to protect an entire three to four man crew.

Armor can be increased on more compact objects without weight becoming an issue as quickly, the amount of armor it'd take to armor the front of a mech cockpit comparably to a Challenger II's front armor would only weigh a few tons, if you think it's physically impossible to hold up a few tons under mechanical legs, then you're a fucking idiot.

>>15661575
>>15662480
(Continued)
I'm NOT saying mecha are practical, but all this shit people say about them being literally impossible to build is fucking retarded.

The concept of ground pressure doesn't suddenly change for mech with wide feet when it weighs less than an oversized modern main battle tank with tracks that have about as much surface area, but according to faggots like you it'd fall to into the core of the fucking earth because it has legs.

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>Computers automatically spotting a mecha/tank from hundreds of km away, transmitting the position in real time to every fighter, bomber, drone operator, navy ship, artillery battery and infantry squad on the battlefield

The era of heavy armor is coming to a close.

If you have air superiority then you don't need anything more then a IED and ambush resistant IFV.

If you don't have air superiority then your only hope is using civilian vehicles and try and blend in with the local population

Man sized powered armor infantry is a much better prospect that's actually being developed, but finding an energy source that's lightweight, quiet, powerful, reliable and long lasting is difficult

>>15662492
>mech with wide feet when it weighs less than an oversized modern main battle tank with tracks that have about as much surface area
That has less to do with it sinking into the ground and more on the ratios of how the fuck modern mechanics would make a sort of skeleton or frame would hold up. Also that example is just silly, how the fuck you gonna' have a mech that weighs less than a main battle tank and retain the same ground coverage?

Maybe a hollowed out asteroid being used as a colony. No gravity means weight's not an issue, multiple limbs (spider-style) would help it manuever through non-corridor spaces. Think giant metal ants.

Similarly on a planet, maybe within large built-up structures in an urban environment where rubble would keep wheeled/tracked vehicles from operating efficiently. It'd need unobtanium levels of tensile strength to move around quickly though

>>15660369
>How would you rationalize the widespread usage of mecha?
It doesn't need to be in widespread military use to be justified. Like, think about the following:
>Main hero has a crazy scientist as a grandfather, like Mazinger.
>Main hero finds an alien war machine, and it's a giant robot.
>It's actually a golem or some sort of stone giant from an ancient civilization, and maybe the villain has awakened an army of them.
>It just looks like a giant robot, it's actually a manifestation of the user's chi (like in Gekiranger).
>It's a magic machine made from demons (like the Goryu from Garo).
>You want to fight against giant monsters using hand-to-hand combat for some reason.
>It was made for construction or something else other than fighting, but the hero had to improvise.
Basically, as long as you have a hero with his mecha, and a villain with his mecha army or giant monsters, you don't need mechas to be in widespread use in society or in war to justify them existing at all.

>>15660369
Mechs will never be viable.

>>15660369
I don't think they are viable for combat, personally, but I think it could be possible to make mecha fights as a sport, like car racing. I think it would work better in space where gravity is less of an issue. Who knows, if the R&D that gets put into making sports mechas fight leads to well-developed mecha designs, they might one day reach a point where they are actually useful for certain military applications.

>>15660369
If your looking for realism giant bi-pedal mechs make no sense as they have a high centre of gravity, extremely exposed cross section, hard to stealth/hide/stay under cover. Complex joints, multiple weakpoints.

>>15660464
Problem with those pic related robots is they are also far too noisy. A human or horse while in motion makes comparatively no noise and those robots make insane amounts of noise for what they do. The best application for legged robots is in tight or complex environments but at the same time those environments are typically where silence and speed is absolutely critical.

https://youtu.be/cNZPRsrwumQ

>>15660382
First post best post.
When will you fucks learn? Seriously, come on, it's fiction we're on about here.

>>15667624
Willing suspension of disbelief and the rule of cool is the only "realistic" reason why giant mechs exist. Attempting to make a long winded "realistic" explanation is going to make suspending disbelief harder. In fiction some things are better left unexplained.