Mobile Suits

[Abacus]

So, what does everyone here think of them? As war machines? As tools?

Which series did everyone enjoy the most?

Mine was "08th MS Team," "Char's Counter-Attack," and "Gundam Unicorn."

Which was your favorite (non-Gundam) Mobile Suit?

I'm a big fan of the original MS-06 ZAKU and ZAKU II.

Which character did you like the most?

Myself? Treize Kushrenada. The only good thing to come out of that awful series imho.

[Typhonis 1]

As weapons of war? They suck donkey balls. For the same weight of gundanium a TANK will still be far better protected. It will still be far harder to spot and have a far more powerful weapon due to the fact it's center of gravity will be much lower. The tank will be easier to produce and maintain.

Stick a Minovsky reactor in a tank, arm it with a beam gun, and watch as the enemy collectively shits themselves.

In space combat something designed like a Babylon 5 Staryfury will be far more mobile and manueverable than a mobile suit and easier to maintain as well.

I like mecha, I really do but pound for pound a tank , even with a crew of three or four, is still the better investment.

[Sky Captain]

They would be most useful as construction equipment. Kind of like very agile forklift that can go to places and do stuff normal wheeled forklift can't. Mecha suits in Avatar were good example of this. Although they were used for military applications, but that was mostly because they were already available multipurpose tools in an environment where there were not enough resources to have large amounts of dedicated military hardware.

[Corvus 501]

I agree. though BattleTech explores that issue, it seems to me that the only true advantages that a 'mech would have over a tank would be maneuverability and adaptability. A 'mech could walk in places where tanks could not, and they could drag other mechs off the battlefield, and mechs with over sized shovels might work better for entrenching than a tank with a plow on it.

[Purple]

and mechs with over sized shovels might work better for entrenching than a tank with a plow on it.

Now that I find hard to believe. Soviet tanks all came with a self entrenching tool on the front that could be used to dig them self in within minutes.

[Purple]

Because of the god dam edit time limit. May it burn in hell.
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And even if you are reduced to 3 guys and their hand shovels it's still easier to dig one of these than to dig a foxhole sized for a 10+m sized robot. And than we also have the issue of all the earth you need to displace. Like have you seen how big mechs are? What are you going to with all the dug out earth? You can't just leave it there or it will give you away.

[Abacus]

I think battlesuit VOTOMs did a good job of showing realistic mech combat.

[Crossroads Inc.]

I"ll prefacer all this with the note that I am a pretty huge Giant Robots fanboy and tend to LOVE silly, goofy and wacky Giant Robot series.
That said, in terms of a Plot device, Giant Robots have only ever made sense in shows where they came about as a result of Giant Monsters. (for the most part, it's a better excuse than most)

In shows like Gundam, where both sides are Humans with similar tech levels, there really are no reasons for them.
In truth the biggest "Power" to them... is Plot Device and Main Characters. I mean, does anyone think if you fought the war with just "normal" soldiers and not utilize "Heroes" that they really would be that much better than say a Space tank with a large barrel main gun and lots of PD weapons?

[Zeropoint]

I liked the mecha in the anime series "Gasaraki". They seemed pretty realistic to me in terms of size, advantages, and disadvantages. For instance, it was made clear that they had no chance of surviving, let alone winning, a head-to-head encounter with a main battle tank, because they only carried armor and firepower about equal to an armored car or infantry fighting vehicle. Their big advantage was mobility, being able to accelerate and move in any direction at a moment's notice, and even climb buildings. This made them very dangerous in an urban environment, or a sufficiently crowded natural area.

[Enigma]

Give me a Bolo any day.

[biostem]

A small, fast, man-sized suit of powered armor makes sense, (especially if it's compact enough to fit in an APC), but once you get much larger than that, they become less feasible. Maybe, just maybe, something like a spider tank would make sense, if the tech to make said tank simply hover is too costly/delicate/inefficient to be a good alternative, and if terrain is such that treads or wheels simple would work, (imagine a whole battlefield covered in several meters of thick mud). Barring that, treads would be a better use of resources.

[Zeropoint]

I was going to make a comment about treads being better than legs on soft ground, but then I remembered that there's also such a thing as ground that's too rough or broken to drive across. Legs would help with that.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Yeah I'll agree that 'Power Armor' for individual infantry makes much more sense than "Giant Robots" for ware (under 'normal' circumstances.)

I would rather have a whole army of trained soldiers in 'Iron Man' type armor, than say a dozen 'Gundam' giant robots.
But of course thats the rub, thats in "Normal Circumstances" Most Anime and Giant robot shows have the Giant robots for "Plot" (see Evangelion). And the reason for this is of course, it makes for a good story. The irony of the Giant robot situation, is they are fantastic machines that only work in fantastic situations.

I cannot for the life of me think of an Anime or book that had "Giant robots" where the hero or main characters did NOT pilot said Giant Robots.

[Typhonis 1]

I agree. though BattleTech explores that issue, it seems to me that the only true advantages that a 'mech would have over a tank would be maneuverability and adaptability. A 'mech could walk in places where tanks could not, and they could drag other mechs off the battlefield, and mechs with over sized shovels might work better for entrenching than a tank with a plow on it.

In Battletech tanks are....nerfed. Let me be blunt they are NERFED with the Nerf bat. The same Fusion engine your Warhammer enjoys needs to have 50% more mass added to be put in a tank. That is complete and utter BULLSHIT. Double strength heat sinks don't work in vehicles because of reasons...unless the damn rules have changed...



Basically Battletech is the Italian Renaissance in space. complete with a Pope and Catholic church espy. Just hope you don't get "Excommunicated". Or Btech is the space version of Twilight 2000. One of the two

[Sea Skimmer]

I was going to make a comment about treads being better than legs on soft ground, but then I remembered that there's also such a thing as ground that's too rough or broken to drive across. Legs would help with that.

Very unlikely that legs would in fact help with any ground a tracked vehicle cannot cross. For vertical obstructions a leg is limited by how far it can lift, while they would be no advantage on say, fields of volcanic rocks or large amounts of loose material. And ground pressure will be horrendous not just from the limited contact area but the very nature of walking locomotion, and it's soft ground that's usually the problem for MBTs. Cliffs will stop tanks sure, many things will, but very rapidly they are also going to stop any plausible mech that isn't 50 feet tall and simply fodder for long range weapons. That's why attack helicopters exist. As it is tanks have been built that can climb 70% slopes and ones with lower ground pressure then a walking infantryman.

Meanwhile good luck putting any kind of mine clearing plow on your mech. Or armoring it. Or finding anywhere to put protected ammunition ect... it goes on and on. Even if you found a chunk of land where they had a mobility advantage its still very unlikely they'd be able to be militarily useful for the cost.

[Temjin]

In Battletech tanks are....nerfed. Let me be blunt they are NERFED with the Nerf bat. The same Fusion engine your Warhammer enjoys needs to have 50% more mass added to be put in a tank. That is complete and utter BULLSHIT. Double strength heat sinks don't work in vehicles because of reasons...unless the damn rules have changed...

In the Star League source book, there's a written account of the very first battlemech's (The Mackie) first combat trial. The put the mackie up against three remote controlled tanks to see how it would do in an actual combat situation.

Except, even here, they have to so obviously nerf the tanks to make the concept work that it's sad.

A tank manages to get the first shot off (because it's shooting at something the size of a building)... and it's stopped by the mackie's magical fucking armour. Armour that they didn't bother giving the tanks (because REASONS!), so of course the mackie has no trouble whatsoever piercing the armour of the tanks with it's advanced weapons... which they also didn't bother giving to the tanks (for REASONS!).

The result is an obvious curb stomp, with him literally stomping the last tank to death.

It was hilarious to see how far they were bending over backwards to make the concept work.

[Typhonis 1]

Weren't they supposed to be remote controlled Merkeva's? Then again it sounds like the entire test was a showpiece staged for all to watch and ohh and ahh over.

Besides 'modern' Battletech is a supply officers nightmare. Imagine the Hell the supply officer of a mech battalion goes through making sure he has enough of the right spare parts for his machines and then, then their is the ammo issue. How many tons of ammo does a battalion go through?

[Sea Skimmer]

I suppose one problem is people tend not to realize that even the armor on tanks is very limited in what it can do against heavy caliber weapons. Missiles of 50lb or more, about the limit for reasonable manpack of a single round with canister, and tank guns of comparable caliber to their own weapons. The reality is only very narrow bits of armor can compete at all. The purpose of most of the the armor on a tank is to make it immune to area bombardment weapons, and reduce the number of enemy weapons which can defeat it to a number it is plausible for the combine arms task force to counteract with its own weapons. Kill the enemy before he kills you. This requires that you either have a training or firing range/accuracy advantage, or you outnumber the enemy. Otherwise all your tanks die. Its ironic that so many people parrot the line 'the best weapon against a tank is another tank' without recognizing that the logical conclusion of that statement is that both side's tank forces evaporate, leaving the battle undecided. That actually has happened more then a few times in war too.

Mecha don't help with a damn bit of any of this. All they do is make the vehicle a bigger target, increasing the number of simultaneous enemy threats it will face and the odds of facing concentrated indirect fire, even were it to possess the same armor and firepower of a tank, which it never would.

And if the mech can't replace a tank, it certainly cannot be useful in the artillery role, while the infantry role puts us back to square one because it absolutely demands something small enough to enter a building which means even the larger forms of power armor in sci fi become tactically dubious.

Weren't they supposed to be remote controlled Merkeva's? Then again it sounds like the entire test was a showpiece staged for all to watch and ohh and ahh over.

Yeah they were, and yes, it read like a blatant stage act.

But for some real developmental testing of awesome, see video of LOSAT's final trials. Notice the utter lack of reaction time a real target would have against this sort of weapon, and that the explosions are from fuel/shear KE impact as the thing has no warhead but five times the KE of traditional 120mm sabot rounds and more then triple that of the class of its own US M829A3.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiojguQy8pI

Audio is wonky because it was released silent, typical for this sort of release, and someone added effects. Keep in mind nothing prevents scaling this sort of missile up as much as need be.

[Tribble]

Mechs are silly, but I've always wanted to pilot one of these:



Timberwolf is def my all-time favourite mech.

Hey, and speaking of which, anyone remember this intro?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X3GD0UnBCk[/youtube]

I spent wayyyyy too many hours playing this game.


On a related note, what do you think of Clan elementals?

[Sea Skimmer]

Aren't they supposed to be eight feet tall or something like that? Such that they would have trouble standing upright in normal buildings and be impossible to cram into anything resembling a modern APC of any type? Doesn't seem like a real big advantage at that point, certainly not across a diverse range of situations. Such a person would be so large we could calculate a significant increase in the probability of them being hit by enemy fire!

Also like so much in sci fi, a quick googling suggests writer emphasis was on brute strength, when endurance under a load is a far more relevant criteria. You can train people to be stronger in bursts fairly easily, endurance is something that genetic engineering could immensely help but the best body types for endurance are not giant over muscled brutes. Ideally endurance under a load would be limited only by the need for sleep.

As far as powered armor goes it would seem to be me you would want the smallest body type possible because that would result in a much less bulky suit, and if you wanted bulk to store more energy or allow more load lifting then you could position that bulk around the exterior, rather then having to wrap it around a large body. Wide shoulders and wide hips would be useful though to facilitate armoring the limbs. Physical strength of the user ought to be meaningless, except perhaps as an escape aid if the suit is broken and pinned in place, since the user should otherwise only need to move their own mass.

[bilateralrope]

As far as powered armor goes it would seem to be me you would want the smallest body type possible because that would result in a much less bulky suit,

That would be one factor. Another factor is that I doubt adjusting the power armor for larger than expected occupants would be easy. So the maximum occupant size would have to be set large enough that getting enough people to wear it is viable. Set the maximum size too low and you may have to lower the fitness standards of the occupants in order to get enough soldiers who can fit inside it, because you can only draw from a minority of the population to begin with.

So I'd expect power armor to be designed so that most soldiers can fit inside it.

[Joun_Lord]

My favorite models are a tie between the original RX-78-2 and the Turn-A Gundam. My favorite non-Gundam is probably the Zaku.

On the viability of a gundam or other giant mech, as others have said its to big and too unwieldy compared to a tank.

However in my opinion I do think there might be some uses for a mech. Not a huge mech, fairly small though not man sized. Something maybe 10 or 12 feet tall-ish and closer to an armored exoskeleton then a traditional mech meaning the person controls it with their body rather then joysticks and junk. Essentially it occupies as space in the order of battle between an infantry soldier and a tank. Could carry heavier weapons and armor then even a power armored soldier and move differently then a tank, pretty much just like a infantry soldier with all the advantages a soldier has moving in the environment compared to a lumbering tank.

The mech wouldn't replace infantry or tanks but act like a more agile version of an armored vehicle like a up-armored and armed humvee to provide support for infantry. Sure it can't go everywhere standard infantry can but neither can a humvee. Like a humvee you wouldn't send it alone but nor would it integrated into infantry squads as a replacement for something like a SAW gunner as it can't go into a building. It like a armed humvee would be outside providing fire support .

Might also have some advantages over treaded vehicles if flight capability is common. Legs could probably absorb some of the shock of landing better then a wheeled or treaded vehicle. Plus it could probably jump to get it off the ground faster. Though I'd assume that any mech like that wouldn't be a humanoid shape but closer to a birds.

Most likely though any advantages a mech would have probably aren't enough to warrant much adoption. Sticking with more conventional vehicles and aircraft plus power armored infantry would probably get the same advantages as sending mechs in battle with some of the disadvantages eliminated except the disadvantage of not looking as cool.

[Purple]

However in my opinion I do think there might be some uses for a mech. Not a huge mech, fairly small though not man sized. Something maybe 10 or 12 feet tall-ish and closer to an armored exoskeleton then a traditional mech meaning the person controls it with their body rather then joysticks and junk. Essentially it occupies as space in the order of battle between an infantry soldier and a tank. Could carry heavier weapons and armor then even a power armored soldier and move differently then a tank, pretty much just like a infantry soldier with all the advantages a soldier has moving in the environment compared to a lumbering tank.

Problem is that we already have stuff in that niche. Light armored vehicles. Something like a wiesel can go anywhere a 3m tall mecha might. After all, it's not like you are going to be climbing stairs or moving through doors with either due to the weight and bulk.

[Sky Captain]

And if the mech can't replace a tank, it certainly cannot be useful in the artillery role, while the infantry role puts us back to square one because it absolutely demands something small enough to enter a building which means even the larger forms of power armor in sci fi become tactically dubious.

What would be the acceptable size/mass limit for entering and clearing buildings? Assuming design goal is to make armor suit proof against assault rifles and grenade shrapnel. Anything more durable probably not realistic while keeping size and weight down.

A lot would also depend on where the suit will be used most. Public buildings, warehouses, factories and such would be more favorable because of large doors, walkways and floors designed to support heavy stuff. Third world shantytowns probably would be most problematic because narrow doors, low ceiling and substandard construction would make soldiers in heavy armor suit prone to breaking through stairs, floors and generally less agile than soldiers without armor suit.

[Purple]

What would be the acceptable size/mass limit for entering and clearing buildings? Assuming design goal is to make armor suit proof against assault rifles and grenade shrapnel. Anything more durable probably not realistic while keeping size and weight down.

A reasonably fat and tall man. So something like 2 - 2.5m tall (otherwise you can't move through doors) and no wider than just over 1m. And probably not over 200-300 kg unless you want to risk breaking stairs.