Best and worst Mechanical Designs in science fiction

[Commander 598]

Oh wait, people make anime robot shows without melee combat all the time! I guess it's some kind of signature or deliberate style of Gundam at work here!

WHO KNEW?

Well, actually, melee specialist units in Gundam are kind of rare in comparison to general purpose (Who have a melee weapon but only occasionally use it) and long range specialist units (Who may not even have a melee weapon at all).

[VF5SS]

my gundam is effectively invincible. who cares if it is purple and turns into a griffin.

Epyon is no fun to play as in Another Century's Episode 1. Granted, that game also has the most unbalanced representation of the Tallgeese so its not entirely accurate.

Gundam Wing always had a strange idea of team balance. Three of the five Gundams were melee specialists and neither Sandrock nor Shenlong had any particularly notable traits. This is one thing I felt Gundam 00 got right with the Gundam team. Even the melee specialist Exia was equipped with a good amount of projectile weapons that could never be forcibly removed like a rifle. Of course Season 2 made all the machine equally melee oriented which kind of destroyed their individuality. I suppose Arios didn't get a melee upgrade which made it seem more useless.

[Sarevok]

So you got your market survey on sword bots and gun armed mecha finished and published yet Stark ? Because, given how many people like stuff like Battletech, Sidewinder might have an actual point unless you have something more concrete than your unfunny blocks of texts to back it up.

[VF5SS]

Because, given how many people like stuff like Battletech,

You've never actually played Battletech have you? Do you have any idea how many Battlemechs have hatchets, swords, flails, claws, maces,SPIKES and other close combat gear? A lot more than you think. Nevermind the fact that the game is structured to make close combat possible.

[Nephtys]

Because, given how many people like stuff like Battletech,

You've never actually played Battletech have you? Do you have any idea how many Battlemechs have hatchets, swords, flails, claws, maces,SPIKES and other close combat gear? A lot more than you think. Nevermind the fact that the game is structured to make close combat possible.

Not that many actually have those weapons. There's like, eight mechs out of 200+ models with them. And most of those because the nations fielding them use them as symbols more than effective weapons. And they're not nearly as effective as just shooting the target with a comparable tonnage cannon.

Plus, the only 'official' weapons are Swords and Hatchets and I think Claws. The rest are from those optional for-fun add ons that never were official.

...

Even if stuff doesn't make sense when a TREE is an effective impromptu melee weapon.

[VF5SS]

Not that many actually have those weapons. There's like, eight mechs out of 200+ models with them. And most of those because the nations fielding them use them as symbols more than effective weapons. And they're not nearly as effective as just shooting the target with a comparable tonnage cannon.

Then why do 'Mechs like the Hunchback entertain the notion of being close range fighters? Even without a melee weapon, it has hands and is meant to be a brawler. Melee fighting is a great way to get consistent damage in the game.

Plus, the only 'official' weapons are Swords and Hatchets and I think Claws. The rest are from those optional for-fun add ons that never were official.

Except everything I mentioned is in the TROs (3075 and I think 3055U) and the Battletech Tactical Handbook.

Even if stuff doesn't make sense when a TREE is an effective impromptu melee weapon.

Up to 20 damage on the punch table is nothing to laugh at. Fear the mighty oak.

[Nephtys]

The Hunchback is a close ranged fighter because it has an AC20 and jump jets, both of which make a competent urban combat mech, not because it has hands. Melee fighting is not a good way to get damage, and the most effective moves are based on knocking your opponent down (Kicks, DFAs and Rams)

TRO3055+ has a few more melee mechs, mostly designed by the Draconis Combine and Capellan Confederation to serve as national symbols (it's even stated so, which is why the Sword is used, despite being downright less effective than a Hatchet).

Also, we probably shouldn't consider 3075. That's that new Wizkids nonsense where chainsaws are around, and battlemechs are powered by gasoline. I don't even think 3075 is in standard CBT since it's all about that Word of Blake crap.

[Furlong]

It was mentioned earlier, but the APC from Aliens deserves another mention. It has almost no ground clearance, so it seemingly is usable only on flat terrain, and God help you if you need to go over something and get stuck, even a small elevation seems like it would render it useless. It seemingly has no way for rapid exit, such as a large rear door for the troops.

But in terms of other designs, I have to mention the Alliance Cruiser's from Firefly. One of the few capital ships that don't feel a need to concern themselves with aerodynamics,

[SAMAS]

Also, we probably shouldn't consider 3075. That's that new Wizkids nonsense where chainsaws are around, and battlemechs are powered by gasoline. I don't even think 3075 is in standard CBT since it's all about that Word of Blake crap.

Nope, I got TR: 3075 a few months ago.

And yeah, they've had chainsaws in CBT since Total Warfare. They're just regulated to IndustrialMechs and arena fighters.

[Sidewinder]

ITT we learn Sidewinder doesn't know what 'dramatic conceit' means.

And here we learn that Stark is a moron who doesn't know when "suspension of disbelief" is completely and utterly broken.

Treize is the charming, charismatic leader of Oz - and of the Specials, the elite Earth Alliance taskforce which serves as Oz's disguise.

This guy is the leader of a post-WWI military organization, i.e., someone who should know better than to send a war machine that has no long-range weapons, PERIOD, against enemy machines with rifles- mass-produced machines with mass-produced rifles, which means his "chivalrous" war machine is practically guaranteed to be outnumbered and outgunned on the battlefield.

my gundam is effectively invincible. who cares if it is purple and turns into a griffin.

Epyon is no fun to play as in Another Century's Episode 1.

I think the mobile armor mode is supposed to resemble a two-headed dragon, but the design epic fails because the forward looking sensors are on its feet, which means they're next to useless in mobile suit mode.

[VF5SS]

And here we learn that Stark is a moron who doesn't know when "suspension of disbelief" is completely and utterly broken.

What stopped you when Shenlong, Sandrock, and Deathscythe showed up? What stopped you when the Gundams walked around being nearly invincible? Seriously, you have the most picky and choosey method of debating everything.

most effective moves are based on knocking your opponent down (Kicks, DFAs and Rams)

Which are still physical attacks. I must admit something I use physical and melee interchangeably, but my point is you're still right up in your opponents face. The range of an AC20 is so god awful you have to be in spitting range so you might as well go the physical hits. Honestly, the way I've seen the game played it feels more like a shin kicking simulator.

[Commander 598]

It really should be noted that Epyon was designed by quite possibly the most extravagant Noble ever conceived in fiction.

This guy is the leader of a post-WWI military organization, i.e., someone who should know better than to send a war machine that has no long-range weapons, PERIOD, against enemy machines with rifles- mass-produced machines with mass-produced rifles, which means his "chivalrous" war machine is practically guaranteed to be outnumbered and outgunned on the battlefield.

And it was granted near invulnerability to most ranged weapons and honestly pretty much everything thanks to it's stupid speed, armor materials, and plot device mindfucking CPU system that feeds predictions of what's going to happen into the pilot's brain.

I think the mobile armor mode is supposed to resemble a two-headed dragon, but the design epic fails because the forward looking sensors are on its feet, which means they're next to useless in mobile suit mode.

What? You think Treize didn't shell out for more sensors? A man who bathes in rose petals simply because he can didn't put sensors in the head?


You seem to be under the silly delusion that Epyon was actually designed to be a mass produced war machine.

[Gunhead]

most effective moves are based on knocking your opponent down (Kicks, DFAs and Rams)

Which are still physical attacks. I must admit something I use physical and melee interchangeably, but my point is you're still right up in your opponents face. The range of an AC20 is so god awful you have to be in spitting range so you might as well go the physical hits. Honestly, the way I've seen the game played it feels more like a shin kicking simulator.

For once (and this will not become a common theme) I'm willing to BTech some slack. Just like Heavy Gear they made the weapon ranges what they are so it doesn't require a footballfield to play the game. Now they could have just gone and say a hex is 300m instead of 30m, but then the mechs would have been stupid fast or moving a hex at a time at top speed.

-Gunhead

[VF5SS]

Now they could have just gone and say a hex is 300m instead of 30m, but then the mechs would have been stupid fast or moving a hex at a time at top speed.

-Gunhead

Considering that I think FASA had Starship Troopers in mind (flamers and jump jets and all) and that there's no basis of comparison when it comes to the speed of a giant robot, who is to say what's stupid fast? If the goal of the robot (on a thematic level at least) is speed, power, and mobility who is to say that the RX-78-2 Gundam is stupid fast with a top speed of 165 km/h while the similarly sized Dervish Battlemech is only goes about half that. I guess my whole point is that when you have something as outrageous as giant robots, the biggest thing you need to worry about is presentation. For example, when I watch the invasion of Jaburo in Zeta Gundam, I can get a sense of the speed, power, and mobility of Mobile Suits as both protagonist and antagonist forces make their way through the jungle into the mouth of Jaburo. As I watch them maneuver past airplanes, SAM defenses, and even the terrain I don't feel like my suspension of disbelief is in danger of being shattered because of how its all presented. My point of contention with Battletech is that I don't feel like its found that niche in terms of presentation. Like it isn't really committed to its own premise. I know a lot of people say they're walking tanks, but I find much of that comes from people who have only played the computer games where you couldn't do much more than walk around and shoot. I guess I tend to over emphasis the physical combat because it just makes everything feel more dynamic, you know?

[Gunhead]

I'll just snipzor this -G

I think you bring up a good point. The problem is they had to include into their game other units than mechs. If it had been a game where you get just mechs duking it out everything would have been fine. But add infantry and other vehicles...
We'll you have to balance the system so mechs are the best but the other units are no completely useless.
And then they just went from "A single mech is worth a company of normal troops" to "We can field entire armies of mechs".
In anime it's usually the case of mechs totally dominating the field and the only point of comparison is the basic model used.
Other types of units are largely ignored, or have to lucky or outnumber the mech by a large margin to be effective.
I do feel physical combat is a later addition to BT, even if the rules have been there. The increased effectivness of melee/hand to hand combat is in line with the whole "shorter range weapons do more damage" theme in BT.

-Gunhead

[Imperial Overlord]

The Mechwarrior RPG stated that Btech ranges were nerfed for gameplay reasons (40K does the same thing) and that the practical battlefield ranges were actually around 1 hex=100 meters.

[Nephtys]

Not to really turn this into another Btech range thread, but Aerospace Fighters with identical weapons to Mechs get kilometers worth of range out of even the short ranged weapons. Which goes against the entire 'My AC20 only fires good for 270 yards' gameplay mechanic issue.

And physical attacks in an urban setting aren't that egregious. And trying to knock over an enemy Mech isn't the same thing as relying on giant swords over laser guns to do the brunt of your damage.

[Gunhead]

Not to really turn this into another Btech range thread, but Aerospace Fighters with identical weapons to Mechs get kilometers worth of range out of even the short ranged weapons. Which goes against the entire 'My AC20 only fires good for 270 yards' gameplay mechanic issue.

This is no different from HG using 500m hex for aerial combat while using the "same" weapons as ground units.

-Gunhead

[GuppyShark]

Clone Wars has the worst designed vehicles ever.

Like the spaceship with the GIANT PISTON FOOT attack.

Seriously, that was more retarded than any Gundam.

[Sidewinder]

And here we learn that Stark is a moron who doesn't know when "suspension of disbelief" is completely and utterly broken.

What stopped you when Shenlong, Sandrock, and Deathscythe showed up?

They slipped my mind, but those three also had (short) ranged weapons (head-mounted Vulcan cannons, something notably missing from Epyon's GundamOfficial.Com profile). Their pilots are also kids with limited training and combat experience before they entered the Gundam cockpits, unlike Treize, who's a combat veteran and who received injuries from infantry using "cowardly" long-range weapons against his MS (Heero Yuy firing a rocket launcher in the Episode Zero manga, though Heero's target wasn't the MS, it was the HQ of the base Treize defended). Basically, Wufei, Quartre, and Duo didn't know better, but Treize did.

[Formless]

Clone Wars has the worst designed vehicles ever.

Like the spaceship with the GIANT PISTON FOOT attack.

Seriously, that was more retarded than any Gundam.

Remember the speeder bike jousters? cool retarded, but and impractical taken to its logical extreme.

That said, I'd say this only applied to the series original vehicles; the stuff from the movies were just as practical as they were in the movies, and saw excellent use in the series, IMO.

[Patrick Degan]

Clone Wars has the worst designed vehicles ever.

Like the spaceship with the GIANT PISTON FOOT attack.

Hey, that showed a determination to stamp out their enemies once and for all.

[SylasGaunt]

Plus wasn't that some sort of converted mining thingy?

[Samuel]

For the worst, i am going to say the ISA Indruder Landing craft from Killzone-2 as the most god-awful airborne transports ever. This ugly little number has the men sitting on top of it with no more fastening than a guard rail and is used to deliver men into the heat of battle. If it was a civilian vehicle working on the moon, it might have been passable, but as it stands it is the air transport equivelent of those mechs in the last two matrix movies.

A good look at these peices of shit

Zor

Also, apparently the good guys believe helmets are for wimps. Seriously, do they have a death wish or are they just retarded?

[SylasGaunt]

It gets better.. given the altitudes those things seem to be launching from (i.e. from hovering ships way up in the clouds) how the fuck are those ISA guys supposed to BREATHE nevermind hang on?