Why don't the U.S. military build heavy turret emplacements/automated towers?

[Khaat]

No, but the engineers are more than happy to slowly repair the damage over time.

With what? On the twisted chassis/frame? And how do they cut away the "kilometer of armor" to affect these repairs? Do they ask for a cease-fire, so they can erect the drydock around this thing? How much time do you think repairs on this scale would take? (Hint: it isn't RTS game mission time.) Where will these engineers get the materiel to make these repairs? Or is this like that APC RAR! that can be destroyed, "because the engineers can just remake it"? As pointed out many times, life isn't a game. Engineering isn't magic.

If it still retains 99% of it's capabilities after the "mission kill", then no, it's not a mission kill. The front is still 15 kilometres worth of length, which would take a decent amount of ammunition.

100% mobility loss for a "mobile fortress" is mission kill. It was 12km wide a second ago, with the surface scoured by high explosives and bunker-busters. It's an immobile fortress with a blind flank, in hostile territory, and zero logistical support.

The turrets can be outside the armor, and long cables and conveyor belts can bring supplies to them. Expensive, sure, but it doesn't matter since the fort is a good chunk of the entire country but moving.

Except that no weapons = mission kill, all over again. Now it's only a "fortress", with power over only as far as it can shoot (for as long as that will last.) Every one of those cable ports and ammo elevators is a gap in the "kilometer of armor". More parts to break! And who will be "more than happy" to run around on the outside of this target "fixing it"?

The runways would be sealed off by a massive metal door of steel that could block at least one penetrating bomb on the sides of the fort. More doors could be added throughout the entire runway until there are too many doors. It doesn't matter, the other countries have limited numbers of high altitude bombers and losing even one will be a major setback.

Now the enemy is stupid, blind, and poor. I guess we now know where Archinist gets his SWAT teams and other RAR! protagonists(?).

The doors would work for a while, as long as they still work after having massive holes blown through them, if not that would be a major problem.

... Bombs don't make "bullet holes" in things: they explode. The armored doors, the decks above and below, the mechanism that allows the armored doors to move - these are all affected. So not operational as an airstrip, not even functional as a plane park, and more moving parts to be repaired by these moron engineers, while their enemies continue to shoot at them?

In the meantime, after the offensive abilities and movement of this thing have been neutralized, standard ground forces move in: regular tanks, infantry, close air support (including helicopter gunships), continued air superiority overflights, additional coordinated high-altitude bombing. This armored coffin, stuffed with nuclear power plants, ordinance vaults, cavernous segmented useless internal runways, aircraft, and supplies sufficient somehow to rebuild the thing from scratch - how many people do you think are in it? What do they eat? What do they drink? Why did they sign up to be killed in this thing? Do they have a Lynn Mimay to sing the enemies into incompetence and surrender?

[Archinist]

Well since it is the size of an entire army, there would be about 1 million people in it.

Also, the idea was for the fort to consensually enter a country it foresees going to war with in a few months, and park outside their capital city/most important city to be used as a tourist attraction. Since everything is peaceful, the other country will most likely consent, and special roads and pathways would be laid out for the fort, which would be paid off from all the tourists coming to visit the fort.

Then when they declare war on each other, the fort is already inside the territory and less than a few kilometres from the other nation's capital city. From here the fort can just deploy it's entire army and do whatever they want.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Of course you will now explain how having more doors will magically make everything, seeing that they are button-controlled electric doors which can be opened simultaneously. Yes, thicker doors will generally open slower than thin ones, but..

Because even if you slaved all the doors to one button(which is just stupid from a practical or safety standpoint)there would still be a delay between each door opening.

Nah, there is more than one main power generator (let's say there are 10), meaning that at least (let's say 6) need to be destroyed/disabled before anything happens. After that, there will be no power for weapons, engines, or other power-intensive things, so that's when the fort is mission-killed. If you take out all 10 then the fort gets plunged into literal darkness except for some weak backup generators for the most required areas.

You can have 500 main power generators* on the damn thing, and my statement would still hold. Drop 31.5 metric tons of bombs in one area, especially precision-guided munitions, and the internal explosions from the bombs which fall through the hole blasted into the beastie by the first few will rip the fortress apart.

*And, it logically follows there would be more than one powerplant on this monster to even move the freaking thing. And, unless you're talking about a first-world, or even second-world country that has nuclear technology portable enough to be put into a vehicle, those powerplants will likely either be diesel or gas-turbine motors. Which means exhaust ports. Ask Grand Moff Tarkin about exhaust ports sometime.

Simon's covered your other points adequately enough.

[Khaat]

"We'd like to move our one and only mega-war-machine just outside your capital city and sell tickets to the amusement park build on top. Do you mind?" (You've watched Steam Boy, recently?)
1) only in your head would this seem a good idea
2) only in your head would cutting a 12km wide swath through your own country up to spitting-distance to any strategic-value asset (like a city) to accommodate a neighboring state's mega-war-machine's passage seem like a good idea
3) only in your head would a mega-war-machine seem like a good idea (no, I lie: Games Workshop had these in the WH40K setting, they were called Behemoths Land Crawlers (thanks, Unca George!) or something, and trucked around toxic worlds otherwise only suited for Hive-cities. The idea was that you could fight battles on the surface, and then inside - this was before the original Space Hulk game was released, back in the Rogue Trader days.)

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Also, the idea was for the fort to consensually enter a country it foresees going to war with in a few months, and park outside their capital city/most important city to be used as a tourist attraction. Since everything is peaceful, the other country will most likely consent, and special roads and pathways would be laid out for the fort, which would be paid off from all the tourists coming to visit the fort.

Do what now?!

What country, in its right mind, is going to consent to an O.G.R.E. wannabe crossing its borders, let alone drive up to anywhere near its capital city?! I'm sorry, I truly am, but not even real world politicians are this fucking stupid. Even the genetically-cloned bastard hellspawn of George W. Bush and Donald Trump wouldn't be this fucking stupid.

[Raw Shark]

I take one nap and this thread goes from balogna to full retard. I wish that I believed in Jesus so I could say Jesus with some real conviction right now.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

I take one nap and this thread goes from balogna to full retard. I wish that I believed in Jesus so I could say Jesus with some real conviction right now.

And, unlike you and IR, there's not even sex to get you through it.

[Lord Revan]

Also, the idea was for the fort to consensually enter a country it foresees going to war with in a few months, and park outside their capital city/most important city to be used as a tourist attraction. Since everything is peaceful, the other country will most likely consent, and special roads and pathways would be laid out for the fort, which would be paid off from all the tourists coming to visit the fort.

Do what now?!

What country, in its right mind, is going to consent to an O.G.R.E. wannabe crossing its borders, let alone drive up to anywhere near its capital city?! I'm sorry, I truly am, but not even real world politicians are this fucking stupid. Even the genetically-cloned bastard hellspawn of George W. Bush and Donald Trump wouldn't be this fucking stupid.

not to mention that it typically takes more then a few months to go from practically allies after all being at piece doesn't mean being friendly with each others to shooting war, from example if Putin asked to station a major weapon system outside Helsinki the finnish goverment would tell him to go fuck himself (well not in those exact words but still) and the Finnish Defense Force would be put on wartime setting (first time since 1945 that has been done) since the Republic of Finland and the Russian Federation are not in friendly terms even though they're at peace at this point in time.

[Simon_Jester]

Well since it is the size of an entire army, there would be about 1 million people in it.

Also, the idea was for the fort to consensually enter a country it foresees going to war with in a few months, and park outside their capital city/most important city to be used as a tourist attraction. Since everything is peaceful, the other country will most likely consent, and special roads and pathways would be laid out for the fort, which would be paid off from all the tourists coming to visit the fort.

Would YOU let someone do that to your country?

Actually, I don't really need to ask.

Of COURSE you'd let someone do that to your country.

Trust me, Archinist: never, never plan a war, or for that matter anything whatsoever, on the assumption that any person would ever do any thing as foolish as the things you would do.

[Isolder74]

This thread has become the equivalent of boys in a first grade playground at recess. My fortress is covered in invincible armor so it can roll wherever it wants!

No, planes would tear it apart.

The armor stops all plane hits.

No, it would lose its tracks and weapons and become useless….

Mix and repeat.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

This thread has become the equivalent of boys in a first grade playground at recess. My fortress is covered in invincible armor so it can roll wherever it wants!

No, planes would tear it apart.

The armor stops all plane hits.

No, it would lose its tracks and weapons and become useless….

Mix and repeat.

I wouldn't object to a thread lock at this point myself.

[Isolder74]

This is bad comedy…..

[Starglider]

If the US spent its entire military budget on this thing, assuming it has the same general composition as a nuclear aircraft carrier (excluding aircraft), it could build about a 1km cube per year. And that's allowing for economies of scale and handwaving the raw materials and manufacturing capacity bottlenecks. Even at a modest 1km thick with 100m of armour, the ground pressure will be several times greater than that of the largest supertall buildings. There is absolutely no kind of track system that could support this; the most robust possible design would still be squashed into a solid lump of steel by the ridiculously high pressures. Even if it wasn't, the structure would sink down to the bedrock and then fail to generate sufficient traction to burrow through the earth. The only way you could actually move a 1km steel cube would be to continuously drill deep foundation piles at the leading edge, in a huge grid, then lay superheavy support beams on the piles to act as sliding support rails, which the structure would then slide along via a huge array of horizontal jacks.

I suggest you try proposing a stupidly oversized arsenal ship instead, that is a somewhat less idiotic idea.

[Simon_Jester]

You're in HAB too, so you know as well as I do that we've had stupidly oversized arsenal ships done right. I don't want to see what happens when Parrot-brain tries to do it.

[Sea Skimmer]

[quote="Archinist"

Have you never read a science fiction book or a fantasy novel before? This being a site called with "star destroyer" and a massive picture of a star destroyer in the name, I would have thought that questioning whether a certain fictional build or design would be quite reasonable, but apparently not?

Many in fact. But that's irrelevant. What is relevant is that unlike you though I also read factual things, I know the difference between fiction, fantasy, sci fi, and reasonable predictions of the future. Differences we have seen you argue don't exist over and over again in the most painful way possible, all while invoking it as an excuse for ignorance. At every turn you've not only proven enormously ignorant of everything, but proved that you don't even understand why we have different forums and threads in the first place. Like you are doing right now polluting a factual thread with your elaborate imaginary nonsense.

It's not like it's a completely out of whack idea, it's a massive moving platform of artillery and guns.

You've proved my point. You don't know a god damn thing about anything real. Yes it is out of wack, blatantly so. You are asking about a moving mountain. Do you grasp this scale at all? How much even 1 cubic kilometer of rock, let alone any metal armor, would weigh? Do you even know that metal is heavier then rock? I suspect you don't really, and that you are a more visual learner then a reader, which is a problem on a message board. If you saw how big your idea is compared to a city you might grasp how dumb it is on instinct if nothing else.

It is one thing to disclaim knowledge of a subject and ask a question about it. It is another to engage in elaborate fantasies, attempt to defend them in detail, cry and scream injustice about it, and then ignore all replies. The former is reasonable, you are doing the latter. And so far I'm the only one actually being generous about it, other people wanted you banned a week ago. And yeah, we do ban people purely for being too stupid. Not easily, but your making a strong case.

I am not a military expert, so I was just asking if it would be at least somewhat effective in real life. How am I supposed to know that it wouldn't be? If you showed a giant brick filled with guns and turrets to the average person, they would probably think it incredibly strong and impenetrable for the present-day military.

Actually they'd probably ask what happens when it simply gets bombed, given that we are now a full generation removed from the Gulf War and been peppered with ever higher quality videos of precision bombing and missile strikes destroying crap ever since that war. Bombs are big and numerous is a pretty simple idea for people. In fact a more likely problem is that average people would overestimate how easily it would be destroyed.

They'd also probably question why you would ever build such a thing, when no such things exist in real life and has no purpose. Things usually don't exist for good reasons. Think about that idea next time. If we have not done it, why might we not have? You can learn something on your own by thinking like that. But of course we have constantly seen projections of your own vast sweeping ignorance thrown into every statement you make. Your arrogant over your own stupidity, and just try to project it onto others. That's why your scenarios are so painfully stupid. You don't understand any of the basics, but instead argue for much more complex combinations of ideas, and then reject even detailed explanations of why, which is why we don't bother anymore in favor of mocking you. People are only so patient.

Meanwhile people have in fact already pointed out why massively thick protection won't work in this thread, before you ever posted, but by your own damn words you didn't even read the thread to find that out before spouting off nonsense. Which makes your attempt to defend your deliberate illiteracy kind of hilarious, but mostly just sad, pathetic and troll like.

Hell, there are plenty of people who think that a modern military could be defeated by a medieval military of similar or smaller size, and that bullets would simply bounce off the knight's armor, and that apparently every single soldier is a knight but also runs faster than a horse and is impossibly accurate with a bow and arrow, and that archers could just snipe the noisy helicopters out of the air, trebuchets could one shot tanks with extreme precision, and knights could charge through infantry lines like a hot knife through butter.

Your just making up more painful projections of ignorant nonsense here. Thanks for proving my point. A lot of people are stupid certainly, but not like that. The average person understands that guns were better then swords, which is why ass nobody uses a sword anymore. If your going on forums where people argue crap like that then that's exactly why you should go read something about reality instead.

If they can think this and function perfectly normally in society, I should be allowed to fantasize about giant mobile fortresses decked out with artillery and turrets being a threat to other, mobile modern armies and be completely fine.

You should be allowed? What you think freedom exists on a private web forum on the internet? You're that kind of arrogant stupid hun. I'm not surprised. Oh you can do whatever you want inside your own head, and guess what, the rest of us are allowed to mock you for telling us about it. You get that right? You have no rights here. What Wong says, and by extension the admins he has appointed say, is law. And those laws say the point of the forum is to make fun of people like you. Deal with it or leave. I'd rather you just stupid being so dumb, but nobody will miss you.

And do remember, many people in this world, most in fact, are poor, unemployed or simply stuck in menial dead end jobs. Some better then otherss but just because blithe follower is a description of many people does not make it a desirable one.

But that's why I encourage you to stop fantasying when you don't even understand why your fantasy is fantasy. And clearly don't understand that fantasy that's just nonsensical is usually far more entertainment when it's deliberate comedy then serious. That's why animie is so successful.

Learn something about real things. I'm not telling you to go learn how to calculate a stress curve or the tensile strength of steel in detail, you won't need that. But a few damn basic concepts would do. You might also try reading a military fiction novel from say, Harold Coyle or Larry Bond instead of whatever the hell it is you claim to read now. Even fantasy with Elves or what not, does not have to be otherwise unreasonable or outright stupid, you seem to think that's the only possible point.

You might be 18 to 20 I reckon, your brain keeps developing fairly seriously through age 25, so not all is lost, but with the attitude you have it's currently mission impossible. You aren't just ignorant, you reject improvement. That's called being a fucking idiot.

Reading reddit and internet news websites does count as reading the newspaper or any physical form of news, except it's actually better. Instead of gathering news from only one local source, which was relevant to a few days ago, you can get hundreds of different sources from around the world all at once, some reporting only hours after an incident has occurred.

And.... ignorance again. You don't understand how international news services have worked since the telegraph was invented. Much of the worlds legitimate international news comes from the Reuters newswire service as it is, a shared collection of thousands of world wide reporters who can file stories instantly to an online pool. What a site like reddit does is remove trained gatekeepers who normally filter that stuff and cross check it, and replace them with a mob mentality favoring populist trash voting. But I doubt you understand why that's detrimental to learning, since you're the poster child for what's wrong with it.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

You're in HAB too, so you know as well as I do that we've had stupidly oversized arsenal ships done right. I don't want to see what happens when Parrot-brain tries to do it.

Twenty bucks says it will be like his land fort proposal, only it sinks like a sto—err, floats. Somehow. The laws of physics are strange in Archinist World.

[Sea Skimmer]

I'm sure whatever he'd dream up would float in a lake of mercury. Well actually I'm not, but it might. But how about a ceasefire on the spam while waiting for him to reply to what I put up, because discussing his actual ideas in detail is pointless, and if he can't make a useful reply to that then he should just be banned now that he's actively polluting other peoples threads.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

I'm sure whatever he'd dream up would float in a lake of mercury. Well actually I'm not, but it might. But how about a ceasefire on the spam while waiting for him to reply to what I put up, because discussing his actual ideas in detail is pointless, and if he can't make a useful reply to that then he should just be banned now that he's actively polluting other peoples threads.

I'll honor the ceasefire.

[Jub]

Given that this thread, or at least everything after "Jackets = Hypothermia" posted, should be flushed down the tubes is now a good time to ask why Anarchist hasn't at least been titled yet? After all, some village's idiot has figured out how to work the magical internet box.