Sci Fi armour for Dummy's Part 1

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2002-11-29 12:56am

Tread Head's unite!!!!

Peregrin Toker · Post by **Peregrin Toker** » 2002-11-29 11:35am

Pablo Sanchez wrote:A transforming mech would be so obscenely expensive that no Department of Defense would ever order it in any numbers. A government could probably order a tank company and a squadron of interceptors for the same price as one transforming flight-capable mech.

Yeah, but THINK of the psychological effect of a flight of normal-looking fighter jets looking like they're going to land and suddenly transforming to enormous bipedal war machines.

Pablo Sanchez · Post by **Pablo Sanchez** » 2002-11-29 11:42am

Simon H.Johansen wrote:Yeah, but THINK of the psychological effect of a flight of normal-looking fighter jets looking like they're going to land and suddenly transforming to enormous bipedal war machines.

As they get shot to shit by SPAA and MANPADS during their low-level approach? If any of them got to the ground, it would frighten people until they got their LAWs unlimbered. A flying vehicle simply cannot have enough armor to repel even light anti-tank armament, a transforming aircraft would likely have even less.

Basically, you're proposing something that's slow and inefficient in the air, and weak and fragile on the ground. Any psychological warfare potential would be killed in the first engagement, about the time that a Jeep with a M2HB mount pokes it full of holes.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2002-11-29 12:25pm

Tau Crisis suits are not really mechs. They are basically a suit of powered armour with some form of mini jet on the back. And no i don't think that power generation is really a problem. On the battlefield they basically use short bursts to augment their movement and get them out of trouble (pop out from cover, unleash hell, pop back into cover, very annoying = Send a monolit after them, and laugh horibbly.)

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2002-11-29 12:34pm

Yeah, but THINK of the psychological effect of a flight of normal-looking fighter jets looking like they're going to land and suddenly transforming to enormous bipedal war machines

Think of the phychological effect when a flight of normal jets drops a load of napalm and continues on its way leaving behind a charred pile of junk. All that transforming makes for a waste of time and effort.

Since the transformation would take time thats when every ground soldier would light em up.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2002-11-29 02:34pm

Not to mention all of those moving parts and equipment makes for a maintenace nightmare, and more likely to break down in battle.

Typhonis 1 · Post by **Typhonis 1** » 2002-11-29 03:53pm

And imagine if a unit like that was to work in a very dusty dirty environment like say the Middle East? Man what would blowing sand do to the joints not to mention the excess heat

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2002-11-29 06:50pm

Simon H.Johansen wrote:
Pablo Sanchez wrote:A transforming mech would be so obscenely expensive that no Department of Defense would ever order it in any numbers. A government could probably order a tank company and a squadron of interceptors for the same price as one transforming flight-capable mech.
Yeah, but THINK of the psychological effect of a flight of normal-looking fighter jets looking like they're going to land and suddenly transforming to enormous bipedal war machines.

Think of the effect when they get destroyed by squad level machineguns and 1960's manpad AT rockets!

Alan Bolte · Post by **Alan Bolte** » 2002-11-29 09:39pm

One minor thing and then I'm out of a discussion I'm not qualified to be in:

Star Wars repulsorlifts "allow unpowered antigravity floatation" - ref SW2ICS

I like SW grav tech, don't you?

Peregrin Toker · Post by **Peregrin Toker** » 2002-11-30 03:55am

Pablo Sanchez wrote: Basically, you're proposing something that's slow and inefficient in the air, and weak and fragile on the ground. Any psychological warfare potential would be killed in the first engagement, about the time that a Jeep with a M2HB mount pokes it full of holes.

D'OH!! I must have watched too much Transformers....

gravity · Post by **gravity** » 2002-11-30 08:18am

Bah, stop being so practical :p. I don't necessarily see the point in making real-world comparisons when the tech needed to make a useful bi-ped mech is far beyond the modern real world anyway. Sure, tanks are better now, and may always be, but future advances in technology (and future movements of battlefields to ares less flat than say, the middle east) may change that.
The same thing goes for GEVs; sure, a modern hovercraft would have problems with recoil, but some sort of anti-grav thing might not have any more trouble than a normal tank.

gravity · Post by **gravity** » 2002-11-30 08:20am

But yeah, anime style mecha are probably never going to be practical. If mechs *are* ever used, they'll probably be quite different from most current SF visions, and probably will be used as a support unit rather than a replacement for MBTs.

Setzer · Post by **Setzer** » 2002-11-30 03:08pm

MANPADS? Wasn't Jerry Seinfeld dating a woman who was nicknamed that? Oh, no, that was man-hands.

You're on the money where Land to Air mecha are concerned. Real life soldiers aren't imbued with the magical girl villain mentality (It's transforming, so I can't attack it.)

Peregrin Toker · Post by **Peregrin Toker** » 2002-12-02 07:21am

gravity wrote:But yeah, anime style mecha are probably never going to be practical. If mechs *are* ever used, they'll probably be quite different from most current SF visions, and probably will be used as a support unit rather than a replacement for MBTs.

I've actually heard that many-legged robots are more practical than the two-legged mecha we know from Macross and Battletech.

They definately have less tendencies to fall over!!

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2002-12-02 06:36pm

Simon H.Johansen wrote:
gravity wrote:But yeah, anime style mecha are probably never going to be practical. If mechs *are* ever used, they'll probably be quite different from most current SF visions, and probably will be used as a support unit rather than a replacement for MBTs.
I've actually heard that many-legged robots are more practical than the two-legged mecha we know from Macross and Battletech.

They definately have less tendencies to fall over!!

Well NASA is still experimenting with using them for Robot craft....

SAMAS · Post by **SAMAS** » 2002-12-02 06:51pm

gravity wrote:But yeah, anime style mecha are probably never going to be practical. If mechs *are* ever used, they'll probably be quite different from most current SF visions, and probably will be used as a support unit rather than a replacement for MBTs.

Naturally. I don't think that any Sci-Fi mecha series has ever used mecha to replace tanks, even though they may have used them to suppourt or kill them.

Except for the case of Zoids, where it's usually cheaper to catch a mecha than build a tank.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2002-12-02 07:04pm

I saw this episode of MS Gundam, and this flying battlecruiser launched a MS in pieces, one at a time, and I kept wondering why, if these Zeon guys are so powerful, they didn't have a SAM battery standing by to blow the parts of the MS to hell.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2002-12-02 07:04pm

'Pieces' as in, first the head, then the torso, then the legs.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2002-12-02 07:08pm

That would be the original MSG I keep wondering that one too.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2002-12-02 07:29pm

Even worse, the ship had dispatched two fighters to duel against forty, and the two somehow lasted more than thirty seconds.

VF5SS · Post by **VF5SS** » 2002-12-02 07:32pm

Cyril wrote:I saw this episode of MS Gundam, and this flying battlecruiser launched a MS in pieces, one at a time, and I kept wondering why, if these Zeon guys are so powerful, they didn't have a SAM battery standing by to blow the parts of the MS to hell.

You have to remember that Mobile Suit Gundam tried to get away from the Super Robot craze of the 70's. Being the first "real robot" show, it still had some Super Robot elements like that funky launche sequence. Most likely it was put in to satisfy Clover, the toy company that was backing Gundam at the time. The G-Armor, bright colors on the mecha among other things were the result of pressure from Clover.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2002-12-02 07:33pm

No worse is that the ship only HAS two fighters and managed to last as long as it did....

VF5SS · Post by **VF5SS** » 2002-12-02 07:41pm

Don't you know that there were more fighters in White Base? Its just that the animators were too tired to draw them!

Sheesh its an ancient cartoon from 1979, give it some credit.

SAMAS · Post by **SAMAS** » 2002-12-03 09:32am

Actually, that's the reason for the general funkyness of the Zeon designs.

You see, Gundam was like the first Mecha Anime to use mecha in a purely military sense(as opposed to Voltron/Power Rangers-type fare, a.k.a. the Super Robot.) However, the producers wanted to have a few things still familiar, thus the alien-like design of the Zeon mecha(and I mean Mecha in the broadest sense of the term here), and the Core Fighter, midair link, and G-Armor systems in the original series. Later incarnations of Mobile Suit Gundam hae distanced themselves from that. The Movie version cut out all the docking sequences, and completely re-wrote the G-Armor into the Core Booster.

SAMAS · Post by **SAMAS** » 2002-12-03 09:36am

SylasGaunt wrote:
Simon H.Johansen wrote:What about Mecha which can fly, such as the Tau Crisis Suits of Warhammer 40K and the ones which transform to airplanes??
Tau Crisis suits are power armor not full sized mecha (the closest to that being titans or the Chaos Defiler). And as far as I can remeber Crisis suits can't do full scale flight, they use jet assisted jumps.

Crisis Suits are full-scale(albeit small) Mecha. Like the Landmates in Appleseed, the pilot of the suit is seated in the torso, and his legs extend out to the suit's knees. The arms and head are completely artificial.

They have limited flight capability, shown by their ability to Deep Strike(which is a good thing for your suits to do, BTW).