Best and worst Mechanical Designs in science fiction

[Cykeisme]

What do you guys think about the Heavy Gear universe from Dream Pod 9?
Despite being set pretty far in the future, they still use a lot of present-day technology that is identical or just slightly improved, so I'm not talking about those.. just the Gears and Striders themselves.

[Darwin]

What do you guys think about the Heavy Gear universe from Dream Pod 9?
Despite being set pretty far in the future, they still use a lot of present-day technology that is identical or just slightly improved, so I'm not talking about those.. just the Gears and Striders themselves.

They had to basically design a whole world to be ideal walker terrain, (tons of rough, broken terrain and soft sand) and even then, when you've got some hard dirt or any open country, tanks and air power are still going to own the day. I ran a demo game back in the day, and a couple of southern light tanks were able to completely stop an urban northern gear attack with their AA lasers. The gears themselves are probably about the maximum of what actually could be practical for walking fighting vehicles. Striders may be a bit overboard, but at least nearly everyone has secondary wheeled or tracked movement.

[Gunhead]

What do you guys think about the Heavy Gear universe from Dream Pod 9?
Despite being set pretty far in the future, they still use a lot of present-day technology that is identical or just slightly improved, so I'm not talking about those.. just the Gears and Striders themselves.

Well they had to make some concessions so the tabletop game made any sense. Now aside from the usual humanoid mecha don't make any sense stuff, they did get some concepts right like the effects of high powered laser weaponry on air superiority, use of combined arms and atleast they made a plausible excuse why combat takes place at relatively short range.
Now if talking according to SOD and normal gears take the place of IFVs on the battlefield, it still leaves striders that to me are a bit of a mystery. They're like light tanks but don't really have the functionality of a tank.

They do make a lot more sense than say BT. But that's like saying the sky is blue.

-Gunhead

[VF5SS]

I thought the whole point of Heavy Gear was to steal as much as possible from Armored Trooper Votoms and get away with it because the only people watching Votoms in the US are friends of Tim Eldred. Because that's basically what it is.

[TheMuffinKing]

For some of the better designs in fiction, I turn to stories such as Hammer's Slammers by David Drake. Their hovercraft tanks seem a little far fetched, but not out of the realm of plausibility and most of the vehicle and equipment designs are evolutions of what we have today. Actually, a lot of stuff can almost be considered a sort of Vietnam in space...owing to the author's experience in Vietnam.

The Orphan's Journey series of novels is pretty good, though the main antagonists are a little bland. Much of the designs are existing designs or a kind of "in the next decade" sort of stuff.

[Darth Wong]

The ME guns aren't as bad in my mind as the big fuck off cannon on the IFV, I'm still trying to figure out where they store the huge block of ammo it must use.

Considering their rifles can fire thousands of rounds when they're about the size of a submachinegun when fully compacted, I wouldn't be surprised if the ammo block on the Mako wasn't too large. Most of the rounds fired by ME weapons are the size of a grain of sand anyway.

If the rounds are so tiny, how can they do any damage? They'll slow down rapidly due to air resistance.

[Peptuck]

The ME guns aren't as bad in my mind as the big fuck off cannon on the IFV, I'm still trying to figure out where they store the huge block of ammo it must use.

Considering their rifles can fire thousands of rounds when they're about the size of a submachinegun when fully compacted, I wouldn't be surprised if the ammo block on the Mako wasn't too large. Most of the rounds fired by ME weapons are the size of a grain of sand anyway.

If the rounds are so tiny, how can they do any damage? They'll slow down rapidly due to air resistance.

They're apparently fired at hypersonic speeds through use of "mass effect" fields and magnetic accelerators. In other words, technobabble coilguns.

Judging by in-game ranges, most of the hypervelocity rounds in ME seem to have shorter effective ranges than comparable real-life weaponry anyway, though the sniper rifle seems to fire larger rounds - the in-game firing animation involves the shooter pulling some kind of charging handle to load the next round.

[Patrick Degan]

One of the most elegant SF designs was Klaatu's saucer from the 1951 The Day The Earth Stood Still. Simple and clean. Not only because the filmakers did a really terrific job effecting the "seamless" opening of the craft, but because of the overall plan of the vehicle. A single semicircular corridor leading to the central command deck, and within it a pod which could close over with it's own bubble-top. I'd bet that would make it possible to depressurise the rest of the ship which would be under Gort's monitoring and management while Klaatu sits in his lifepod doing the actual piloting.

[Darth Wong]

They're apparently fired at hypersonic speeds through use of "mass effect" fields and magnetic accelerators. In other words, technobabble coilguns.

That doesn't solve the problem: the particles will still be rapidly decelerated by atmospheric drag and heavily affected by wind, only now they'll be rapidly heated to melting point too.

Judging by in-game ranges, most of the hypervelocity rounds in ME seem to have shorter effective ranges than comparable real-life weaponry anyway, though the sniper rifle seems to fire larger rounds - the in-game firing animation involves the shooter pulling some kind of charging handle to load the next round.

Videogames are full of useless short-ranged weapons. It's really aggravating.

[Stark]

It's probably a design decision to enable players to see the five million shaders or polygons on the badguy's nose. After all Flashpoint had decent ranges in the 90s, and it was basically 'shoot at green dots'.

[Darth Onasi]

It's probably a design decision to enable players to see the five million shaders or polygons on the badguy's nose. After all Flashpoint had decent ranges in the 90s, and it was basically 'shoot at green dots'.

More likely it's so that the Krogans can bumrush you.
Much like Klingons with knives in Star Trek, few things in Mass Effect can withstand the almighty power of an unarmed hunchbacked lizard. God they're annoying.

[Aaron]

If the rounds are so tiny, how can they do any damage? They'll slow down rapidly due to air resistance.

It doesn't match up with the size of the weapons barrel in game anyways, which appears little different then a conventional firearm.

[SAMAS]

I still think the funniest thing about the various "Sword" Gundams in SEED was that, out of all of them, only one actually used those Anti-Ship swords on an actual ship. (Seen here at about 2:30).

But need I remind you all of the true worst Gundam Mechanical Design of all?

The Adrastea-class Land Battleship from Victory Gundam.

[Sidewinder]

There's also the monumental stupidity in the Gundam Epyon's design philosophy.

In keeping with Treize's philosophy, the Gundam Epyon eschews cowardly long-range weapons in favor of chivalrous close combat.

Have cowardly soldiers wielding long-range weapons, ever triumphed over warriors wielding heroic hand-to-hand combat weapons? Oh, yeah: they did so repeatedly in the Hundred Years' War, the Mongol invasions, trench warfare in WWI (saber & bayonet versus machine gun), jungle warfare in WWII (katana versus M1 Garand)...

[Spanky The Dolphin]

The Adrastea-class Land Battleship from Victory Gundam.

Jeez, land battleships in Gundam are usually awesome but that is just the worst.

Since they're usually built like giant hovercraft or tanks, a motorcycle configuration doesn't even make any sense. It's like they're begging for it to fall over.

EDIT: I see, Zanscare's ground forces had an emphasis on bike designs. It's still totally mental.

[Isolder74]

How does that land battleship stay upright?

[VF5SS]

EDIT: I see, Zanscare's ground forces had an emphasis on bike designs. It's still totally mental.

It's one of those things that looks better in motion. Even the MS sized wheels look pretty nifty tearing up the place.

[Ford Prefect]

EDIT: I see, Zanscare's ground forces had an emphasis on bike designs. It's still totally mental.

That's Victory Gundam for you. It's full of patently ridiculous shit, like beam rotors. As I hear it, Tomino really wanted it to fail. It has a great looking Gundam, though. The V2 is amazing.

[Stark]

Have cowardly soldiers wielding long-range weapons, ever triumphed over warriors wielding heroic hand-to-hand combat weapons? Oh, yeah: they did so repeatedly in the Hundred Years' War, the Mongol invasions, trench warfare in WWI (saber & bayonet versus machine gun), jungle warfare in WWII (katana versus M1 Garand)...

ITT we learn that yes, Sidewinder really is that stupid. It's called a dramatic conciet.

[Zor]

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

[Commander 598]

EDIT: I see, Zanscare's ground forces had an emphasis on bike designs. It's still totally mental.

That's Victory Gundam for you. It's full of patently ridiculous shit, like beam rotors. As I hear it, Tomino really wanted it to fail. It has a great looking Gundam, though. The V2 is amazing.

The beam rotors themselves aren't THAT ridiculous, the fact that the mech they're on is a transforming helicopter AND combiner however is exceptionally ridiculous.

[TheMuffinKing]

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

Just about every vehicle has issues in that game. The ISA and Helghast tanks at least seem well enough in design, though I seriously question the armaments. 400 years in the future and now CROWS? No gunshields? WTF?

[Sidewinder]

Have cowardly soldiers wielding long-range weapons, ever triumphed over warriors wielding heroic hand-to-hand combat weapons? Oh, yeah: they did so repeatedly in the Hundred Years' War, the Mongol invasions, trench warfare in WWI (saber & bayonet versus machine gun), jungle warfare in WWII (katana versus M1 Garand)...

ITT we learn that yes, Sidewinder really is that stupid. It's called a dramatic conciet.

You are equally stupid if you buy Sunrise's belief that a killer robot with a lightsaber-wannabe is more "dramatic" than one with a dozen guns, i.e., the swords-bot is more popular among the kids and tweens who watch Gundam and buy action figures and model kits of their favorite robots than the gun-bot.

[Formless]

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

Good greif! It looks like they wanted to have an air analogue to a Normandy style invasion, and then forgot all the armor those D-day boats were covered with.

[Stark]

You are equally stupid if you buy Sunrise's belief that a killer robot with a lightsaber-wannabe is more "dramatic" than one with a dozen guns, i.e., the swords-bot is more popular among the kids and tweens who watch Gundam and buy action figures and model kits of their favorite robots than the gun-bot.

ITT we learn Sidewinder doesn't know what 'dramatic conceit' means. It's pretty sad that he's so retarded he thinks someone should make a show HE LIKES even though the market is SOMETHING ELSE. 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?