A 20th century with mechas

[Jub]

1. Hostile atmosphere/space setting: mechas are large enough to carry a power source and a life support system, both things that a regular person can only carry batteries/tanks of for limited amount of time. There are tracked vehicles too (or may even be the majority) but mechas are versatile (can use all four or more limbs for mobility, just switch tools rather than stop to retool entire vehicle) enough to be worthwhile. Especially useful (maybe?) where getting something ready to get the job done is more important than doing it efficiently.

Do we do this IRL? Nope, we use a truck and trailer to carry extra supplies, build infrastructure out to the area so we don't need to carry supplies in one trip, and have construction equipment that can quickly and easily swap tools to do multiple jobs. If mecha made any sense you'd already see them used in the Amazon for logging/mining or in the Antarctic where hostile environment and need for fairly bulky gear to go out and do anything are facts of life.

2. Snow? Either abnormally large or similar obstacle where mechas can just walk over (I'm assuming non-humanoid design). What comes to mind is Frostpunk's automatons, which were actually quadroped but could walk around on long legs rather than force its way through the snow. This was partly game design, so the automatons would not interfere with things on the ground much (they do climb about) but this aspect made sense to me.

Again not likely. If it were you'd see cities with snow issues using walkers instead of current snow removal equipment, and militaries would be using them instead of snowmobiles, tracked snow tractors, and other ingenious means to go over the snow. If it's some other obstacle, like a boulder field or ash drifts, you're going to have an engineer dispatched to deal with the terrain issue. You don't usually invent a new mode of transport to deal with problems we're already solved.

Plus, in Frostpunk there shouldn't be any fresh snow given the temperature so you have nice stable ice to walk on (no mecha needed) or you're ignoring science already and just rocking rule of cool.

[Simon_Jester]

1. Hostile atmosphere/space setting: mechas are large enough to carry a power source and a life support system, both things that a regular person can only carry batteries/tanks of for limited amount of time. There are tracked vehicles too (or may even be the majority) but mechas are versatile (can use all four or more limbs for mobility, just switch tools rather than stop to retool entire vehicle) enough to be worthwhile. Especially useful (maybe?) where getting something ready to get the job done is more important than doing it efficiently.

Do we do this IRL? Nope, we use a truck and trailer to carry extra supplies, build infrastructure out to the area so we don't need to carry supplies in one trip, and have construction equipment that can quickly and easily swap tools to do multiple jobs. If mecha made any sense you'd already see them used in the Amazon for logging/mining or in the Antarctic where hostile environment and need for fairly bulky gear to go out and do anything are facts of life.

Given that in real life the technology for powered exoskeletal systems has really only been making serious progress in the past decade or two, and that bipedal walking robots likewise have only been making progress for that long... um, I wouldn't assume that?

We may very well see loggers and miners using exoskeletons for certain job applications in the next few decades; the idea of a 'utility mecha' like the cargo lifters from Aliens or the civilian version of the walkers from Avatar isn't really out of the question in my opinion. But it's a technology that simply isn't mature enough to be sure if it'll ever be profitable in those applications.

As to the Antarctic, in real life it's not exploited economically on a meaningful enough level for the need to carry out heavy labor under Antarctic conditions to drive innovation in technology. People use scaled-up versions of the same cold weather gear they'd use everywhere else because "work in Antarctica" simply doesn't justify much of an R&D budget.

[Sea Skimmer]

1. Hostile atmosphere/space setting: mechas are large enough to carry a power source and a life support system, both things that a regular person can only carry batteries/tanks of for limited amount of time. There are tracked vehicles too (or may even be the majority) but mechas are versatile (can use all four or more limbs for mobility, just switch tools rather than stop to retool entire vehicle) enough to be worthwhile. Especially useful (maybe?) where getting something ready to get the job done is more important than doing it efficiently.

Why would a mecha be able to retool more easily then any other kind of machine? We already have all kinds of universal hydraulic and rotary power interfaces on tractors and hydraulic construction machinery. A mecha is just going to have the same kind of things on whatever it's limbs are.

2. Snow? Either abnormally large or similar obstacle where mechas can just walk over (I'm assuming non-humanoid design). What comes to mind is Frostpunk's automatons, which were actually quadroped but could walk around on long legs rather than force its way through the snow. This was partly game design, so the automatons would not interfere with things on the ground much (they do climb about) but this aspect made sense to me.

Snow is one place we can absolutely say a mecha will be inferior to a tracked or wheeled vehicle. The way to deal with deep snow is to float over it with minimal ground pressure, very wide tracks or very large low pressure tires. Walking means either very high ground pressure or extremely slow movement. For bonus vehicles designed like this are also easy to make amphibious, they may outright float from the tires alone, which tends to be handy in polar conditions where roads don't exist but the environment may not be absolutely frozen at all times of the year.

As far as obstructions go, some kind of jagged rock formations would be place where long legged walking would be an advantage. But then the question becomes, why are we bothering to operate on this rock formation? In sorta recent mountain operations against ISIL and the FSA in the Arsal region the Lebanese Army actually had hydraulic excavators with jackhammer attachments lead some of it's advances, smashing rocks so bulldozers could build roads up into an area which had none. Worked well, but slow.

If notionally some mecha could have made the advance without the jackhammer support they could have advanced faster, but I'm not sure this would have worked out because the road building also served to clear minefields, and it would only be possible to sustain the operation given infantry and logistical support on the same kind of vehicle. The bigger the rugged mountain area the more and more helicopters would become an advantage, and the less able the enemy would be to defend against them. Lebanon didn't have that option in 2017, but even if they had the defended area was too potent to be assaulted that way. It was however easily covered by artillery on lower ground.

Volcanic lava fields would be a similar situation where walking has a real advantage, but those tend to be easier to outright bulldoze as the rocks themselves tend not to be that large. Just frigging endless and sharp.

[Jub]

Given that in real life the technology for powered exoskeletal systems has really only been making serious progress in the past decade or two, and that bipedal walking robots likewise have only been making progress for that long... um, I wouldn't assume that?

We may very well see loggers and miners using exoskeletons for certain job applications in the next few decades; the idea of a 'utility mecha' like the cargo lifters from Aliens or the civilian version of the walkers from Avatar isn't really out of the question in my opinion. But it's a technology that simply isn't mature enough to be sure if it'll ever be profitable in those applications.

Powered exoskeletons, at least man-sized frames aren't mecha. They're closer to power armor and as was recently discussed in another thread that's likely to be an expensive item that fills very limited niches if it ever does become common.

Something like the Exosuit from Aliens is little more than a more breakdown-prone forklift that also, strictly due to design limitations, tips over more easily than any real forklift. In a warehouse, it's going to be slower and more prone to mechanical issues than a forklift. In rough terrain, you make your forklift four-wheel drive and add off-road tires, you don't go for a more clumsy and expensive walker.

Timberjack, a now-defunct company purchases by John Deere, tried to push the idea of walking tractors for forestry use as well as other fantasy applications like use in urban areas where any sane company would just use tracks or wheels. They sunk like 20 years of research into it, built a single prototype which got some buzz back in 2008 and failed to develop the idea further. Nobody wanted an expensive, slow-moving, mechanical nightmare with only limited upside over existing vehicles. This is the issue with walking vehicles, they're always going to be more complex than a tracked or wheeling design and you basically have to invent a reason why you'd need one in the first place.

The closest idea that makes sense for walkers is something like a mechanical pack mule and thus far the versions tested have been awful and none have seen service. These are useful if they can be small, quiet, go anywhere a soldier can, and have the battery life/fuel capacity to march as long as an infantryman can without placing a significant extra strain on the logistics train.

If you can point out a cost-effective niche for a walking vehicle that can't be filled by an existing vehicle or doctrine (such as blasting out rocks and building a road to get around bad terrain) or for which a walker with reasonably foreseeable technology would be uniquely effective I'll give it a fair shot. However simply saying, it's not mature tech yet we need to wait an indefinate amount of time to see if it ever pans out smacks of the same dishonesty that still tries to sell us flying cars. Sure, it could happen in some scenario but it's unlikely and often impractical given the information we have now.

As to the Antarctic, in real life it's not exploited economically on a meaningful enough level for the need to carry out heavy labor under Antarctic conditions to drive innovation in technology. People use scaled-up versions of the same cold weather gear they'd use everywhere else because "work in Antarctica" simply doesn't justify much of an R&D budget.

Or perhaps the same stuff that works in very other could place on earth also works there. Or do you really think that if Antarctica were to be exploited for resources we'd be sending out mechs and issuing powered snowsuits instead of building roads, bridging chasms, and using the cheapest cold weather gear that will allow a man to work outside for a productive length of time?

[Simon_Jester]

Flying cars are obviously not going to take off without radical improvements in power sources that are, as of this time, not foreseeable on the horizon. It's reasonable to project that they won't do so at all.

Mechanical walkers, including both powered exoskeletons and scaled-up variations on same, trip over two different obstacles. One is mechanical complexity, the other is physical ability to navigate terrain and, well, walk.

The former issue isn't going to get much better any time soon. There are some things that could probably simplify it (i.e. having some mechanical part that extends and contracts like a muscle, instead of needing a mass of actuators or hydraulics to move a leg), but there's no foreseeable path to that technology. But the latter issue is under ongoing development and progress is still being made. It is for that reason, not some smarmy dishonesty, that I say "walking mechanical systems today may be like heavier-than-air flying machines in 1870; a thing no one could imagine actually building, but that could feasibly be built with more advanced technology within our lifetimes."

That said, I don't expect walking machines to find anywhere near as many niches as heavier than air flying machines did, for all the many many reasons people have listed.

[LaCroix]

Walkers suffer a big problem that most likely will never have them implemented, size.

We do have all parts to build walkers/robots - hydraulic pistons work exactly like muscle (even better, since they can pull and push, thus being able to eliminate the counterplayer if needed), and are well understood.
All kinds of joints and gears exist that would mimic a human body's.
Sensors can monitor our movements and position like our senses do.
Computers can coordinate all this just like our brain does.

Still, we barely manage to make walking robots, and only a few prototypes exist that can do this in a near-human way.
Atlas is about the size of a human (175cm, 81kg) - but he is mostly mechanics and plastic cover. He can do acrobatics, though.

Still - he's more or less a walking roomba, with some options to remote control. I'd guess his batteries don't last long - depending on the pump he is driving for the hydraulics.

He's a working model, designed to go places a human can't (due to gasses/temperature, ets), and then do stuff there.
You could armor him a bit and give him gun hands, I'd think - the old version had 150kg, as some humans have, and they can still walk on most grounds. you could go to 200, just as well, with using slightly bigger feet.

Useful? I'd say yes. 80-120 kg of armor/equipment add up to quite a lot, and there is a lot less vitals you need to protect. The structure is solid, you can have redundant, auto-sealing hydraulic hoses, kevlar wrapping all of it, and putting some additional hardened sheet metal around the absolute essentials, proofing it against infantry calibre weapons. You'd need to hit that thing really hard to take it out. Useful to clean out houses - it can go anywhere a human can, and anything big enough to hurt him is ether not usually around in this context (cal 50 weaponry), or (explosives) would also kill the users in that situation. Actually, you could give him a (small)grenade launcher - he's most likely not going to care about it if the room gets filled with shrapnell or blast waves - at least less than his targets.

Now while there is some niche for this, scaling it up big enough to add a crew,serious weaponry, and armor, you have the problem of his feet not growing fast enough to keep up with ground pressure. Even if you were making them oversize, he's using only one for half the time, which means they'd need to be huge - which means wider hips, which means more weight in structure and armor, which means bigger feet...

While kind of plausible, these feet and wide hips would make it hard for him to maneuver on anything but flat, open terrain - where a tank is better suited.

He'd be a huge walking building that can be seen for miles. And while he could brace agains his gun's recoil, he'd be tumbling around under the amount of ordenance such a huge bullet magnet would attract.
Additionaly, the huge feet might mean that he can't even get up anymore if he were to fall.

Make him 4-legged box, you'd address all the problem, but then, that also makes him a tank on stilts. Slower, and also confined to pretty much the same terrain. In fact, a tank could force his way through wooded terrain, flattening trees, in a way this walker couldn't.

[Flanker_33]

This is the main reason why we didn't see mechas becoming a real thing, and won't see for a while.

Everything done by a mecha can be done better by a tank. And by the time we reach a technological level allowing mechas to be as mobile as today's tanks, these would have evolved radically as well. And even if mechas were to be able to fly, giving it a real advantage over a tank, then it would be cheaper in terms of budget, tech AND production times to produce a tank, an attack helicopter and a fighter jet that would fulfill their designed role better than the mecha would ; not to mention that the mecha would have to be either a fast flying combat unit, a slow hovering one, or a ground assault one, while the tank-helo-jet trio can play these three roles efficiently at the same time, and thus operate efficiently in combined arms operations.

I know, mechas are cool, but sometimes reality's too boring and doesn't want the cool things to happen!

Now, flying cars could fulfill an important role, but they'd be super expensive, would need a compact, powerful and long-lasting source of power, and would need a much higher level of training than what you already need to get a driver's license. So, it's much more realistic than mechas, but they'd still be a minority.

[Zixinus]

Are any of the problems with mechas lessened if more legs are used (and the humanoid form entirely abandoned)? So rather than bipedal robot, it is more like a spider, thus flatter, more stable, has more feet to distribute its weight around, etc? Is there any advantage to be had for legged vehicles, at all?

[Elheru Aran]

Are any of the problems with mechas lessened if more legs are used (and the humanoid form entirely abandoned)? So rather than bipedal robot, it is more like a spider, thus flatter, more stable, has more feet to distribute its weight around, etc? Is there any advantage to be had for legged vehicles, at all?

There are a few specialized applications where legged vehicles do have advantages. Most notably, rough terrain where wheeled or tracked vehicles do poorly, and low-environmental-impact transportation.

In particular, for the former, there's the General Electric walking truck all the way back in the 60s; for the latter, Timberjack, a subsidary of John Deere, created a walking tractor for logging purposes. Can't find a date on the Timberjack but looks ~90s-early 00s to me.

However as noted, a lot of times it's easier to simply change the terrain to suit the vehicles you have. Moving through rough hills with few roads? Bring up the armoured bulldozers. Want to move through a forest? Chop a road out. That kind of thing.

[Lord Revan]

The thing to remember is that when the number of legs go up so does the mechanical complexity (with the exception of bipedal robots due the complexity needed for balancing such a device).

The problem isn't we can't build walking vehicles but rather that in 99% cases tracked or wheeled vehicles are simply more practical to make, so there's no point in trying to reinvent the wheel (or in this case replace it with legs).

[Formless]

Can't find a date on the Timberjack but looks ~90s-early 00s to me.

1994.

[Batman]

Supernitpick-Geher absolutely IS a german word, just not one that would be used in this context (or elsewhere). A Geher would be a walker (and if memory serves that's what the AT-ATs from ESB were translated as back then) as in somebody/something that/who walks. (Jemand/etwas das/der geht).
Since in german 'laufen' encompasses the whole range from tiptoeing to sprinting best as you can do, i.e. the whole gamut of human bipedal motion, I thoroughly agree that they would likely have been called 'Läufer'.

[madd0ct0r]

there is this interesting thing here.

Wheels and tracks are better and efficient in all areas, but a casual look at the natural world shows that millions of years of evolution and intense selection seems we have nothing.

well, we have these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8fyUOxD2EA but no wheels or tracks. it's interesting

[LaCroix]

Supernitpick-Geher absolutely IS a german word, just not one that would be used in this context (or elsewhere). A Geher would be a walker (and if memory serves that's what the AT-ATs from ESB were translated as back then) as in somebody/something that/who walks. (Jemand/etwas das/der geht).

Extrasupernitpick (as a native German speaker)- Nope. The term for somebody that walks would be "Fussgänger" - "someone who walks on his feet". (yeah it is a stupid term, but that's how it is). If he were hiking it would be "Wanderer", or strolling around somewhere else - a "Spaziergänger". Using the word "Geher" in any of these contexts would immediately show you are non-native, and often even cause a follow up question about what you are meaning to say. The word is that weird and unusual.

The only time the word "Geher" can actually be used would be if you were talking about someone who is doing the sport called "walking", as a distinction to runners, but even then, we often use "walker" instead.

Even Duden only lists it as the sportsman...
https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Geher

[Elheru Aran]

there is this interesting thing here.

Wheels and tracks are better and efficient in all areas, but a casual look at the natural world shows that millions of years of evolution and intense selection seems we have nothing.

well, we have these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8fyUOxD2EA but no wheels or tracks. it's interesting

Practical response: creating a biological wheel or track setup would require axles. This is not practical. Limbs are simply easier.

That said, many snakes and gastropods do use a sort of 'track' in that they use a large, broad surface (their belly, generally) to move.

[Lord Revan]

there is this interesting thing here.

Wheels and tracks are better and efficient in all areas, but a casual look at the natural world shows that millions of years of evolution and intense selection seems we have nothing.

well, we have these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8fyUOxD2EA but no wheels or tracks. it's interesting

Practical response: creating a biological wheel or track setup would require axles. This is not practical. Limbs are simply easier.

That said, many snakes and gastropods do use a sort of 'track' in that they use a large, broad surface (their belly, generally) to move.

Basically this, due to how bio mechnics work, it's simply easier to have legs (bare in mind that with a lot of animals including humans limbs pull double duty as things used to grab stuff) then wheels.

the complexity on artificial limbs comes from trying to mimic what muscles do but with artificial means.

[Zixinus]

Since we are already talking about the preposterous: would it make sense to take lighter tanks/long-range guns and add multiple legs ON TOP of existing threads? Just to get it through bad terrain that otherwise you'd need to carve your way through?

[Elheru Aran]

Since we are already talking about the preposterous: would it make sense to take lighter tanks/long-range guns and add multiple legs ON TOP of existing threads? Just to get it through bad terrain that otherwise you'd need to carve your way through?

Nah. You can already equip tanks with dozer blades if you really have to, though it's not optimal. Armouring a bulldozer isn't particularly hard and there are even off-the-shelf kits, mostly Israeli, for such purposes.

You're basically talking about creating two separate motive systems, and incorporating them both into one vehicle. While they could certainly use the same power supply, the drive trains would be very different, and we're gonna start running into space and weight issues.

[Sea Skimmer]

Since we are already talking about the preposterous: would it make sense to take lighter tanks/long-range guns and add multiple legs ON TOP of existing threads? Just to get it through bad terrain that otherwise you'd need to carve your way through?

That hits a width problem mighty hard and fast, we already build tanks to within an inch or two of the maximum acceptable railway loading gauges. You couldn't mount the legs on the bottom because then you have just about zero space to work with.

If you really wanted, the thing to do would be to build a legged portee system that could either transport an AFV wholescale on it's back and be assembled from pieces somewhere in the theater of operations, or possibly accept an AFV turret removed from an existing vehicle as needed. This system could then also be your logistical platform. Which is one of the basic problems with 'needing' legged equipment. If you need it that bad, your certainly also going to need to that kind of support asset to go with it.

[Jub]

Is there any level of gravity where a multilegged walker which can jump more sense than a wheeled or tracked vehicle which needs to use an additional system to jump? This assumes that jumping makes sense in the first place which it very well may not.

My guess is no, mainly because a walker that jumps using its legs can't make the same level of in-flight adjustments that a vehicle using some sort of rocket or compressed gas system could make.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Most mecha-in particular BattleMechs-use jump jets to jump.

[Jub]

Most mecha-in particular BattleMechs-use jump jets to jump.

That's all well and good but not what I asked.

Picture something like a jumping spider in mech form that uses the fact that it only fights in low gravity conditions to make leaps of dozens to hundreds of meters with nothing but its legs.

BattleMechs also don't seem to change course in mid-jump either, at least not in most games or the tabletop, though that may not be the case in the novels/lore.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Not in lore either.

I have yet to see something you envision in fiction either. How do you see a low-grav jumping mach being employed on the battlefield? As ambushers, stealth commandos, or straightforward combatants?

[Jub]

Not in lore either.

I have yet to see something you envision in fiction either. How do you see a low-grav jumping mach being employed on the battlefield? As ambushers, stealth commandos, or straightforward combatants?

Mainly as ambushers. Hide behind a ridge or in a crater until an observer unit spots something, leap out and scatter a munitions load over the enemy, and then leap away before they can put too many guns onto you. The legs might also help them dig in depending on how hard the surface you're fighting on is. Making shorter more horizontal leaps might also be faster than walking and allow a walker to keep pace with a wheeled or tracked vehicle which would lose speed as it bounces over bumps taking its main form of movement out of contact with the ground.

The downside is that anything jumping would be on a ballistic trajectory and thus be pretty easy to shoot and that a dedicated rocket or compressed gas powered hopper might do this kind of mission better anyway. Ground warfare might not even exist outside of habitats with assault transport style boarding craft used to drop mechanized infantry into the enemy's domes/tunnels. Or maybe you just gain the high ground of orbit and threaten to blast them away and only keep a token SDF.

[Sky Captain]

If you look at dinosaurs, largest walking dinos were between 50 to 100 tons, comparable to modern tanks. That means ground pressure issues should be managable with suitable size feet or those dinos would get stuck all the time and die. Hovever big dinos probably couldn't reach speed a tank can on flat ground so in most of the circumstances tank has better mobility. Dino has a lot more surfaace area, if adding armor to such large area weight would quickly go beyond similary armored tank.