f13.net

http://www.rgtr.com/news/latest_news/an_open_letter_from_general_br.html

The game is called "Richard Garriot's Tabula Rasa" for chrissakes. Would american mcgee leave "american mcgee's house of american mcgee presents: american, a mcgee, a game in three acts"?

I'm really surprised he's leaving NC outright and not "moving to a more supervisory capacity" involving not coming in to work and playing a lot of golf. Would love to hear the backstory on this one.

And what happens to Robert Garriot and Destination Games?

someone should send Lum a cookie basket

(yes, saw his post already)

Dang, it sounds like he's totally leaving game design. It's kind of a shame. He had a part in creating this industry. I get the feeling he just couldn't keep up with it.

It's not a shame at all in my mind.  Yes, he was part of history.  That part is over.  Time for fresh ideas.  Let's hope this is a start... though I'm doubtful. 

Short backstory: Guy wasted millions. Guy writes letter instead of revealing he was chased out with pitchforks laced with a poison-like memory called nostalgia.

While that may not been what it looks like visibly, if you ran a company would you leave him around in ANY capacity, let alone a supervisory one?

I was going to go with an infection from an alien parasite, but yours is more probable.

I liked RG better when he was coding games in his closet on an Apple II.

Assuming that I wanted to stay in the tabula rasa business, yes, I would keep Garriot around as a figurehead. His name is on the game. If I had to force him out for whatever reason, I'd make a positive statement detailing how we're planning to change the game for the better and are committed to TR long-term, talk about new upcoming features and content releases, introduce the new game director, and so on.

Since they did neither of these, my assumption is that TR will be EOL'd in the very near future.

So did NCSoft.

Do TR's sub numbers give it any reason to stick around and continue to throw a paycheck at it's figurehead?

It's a life lesson in not putting people's names on a subscription service.

Too late to do any good since NCSoft America has already been gutted.

I suspect they'll leave it alone as long as people are willing to pay for it in sufficient numbers to warrant rebooting the server whenever it hangs. It's NCSoft.

This does mean that they have essentially washed their hands of it and are moving on. That's a good thing, because NCSoft could still be a much more important company in the US than they are.

Guys, Tom Clancy sold the rights to his entire name (in the digital space) to Ubisoft. Unless ya'all have some actual insider knowledge, there's no connection at all between RG leaving and TR being shut down or just being allowed to persist as it exists right now. I'm quite sure he wasn't allowed to just pack up and leave without riders and contracts and NDAs and continued licensing arrangements etc etc. They could simply remove his name from the loading screen and do business as usual. Heck they'd probably planned that already anyway. Anyone who cared about his name being on the game made the purchase decision long ago at this point.

I'd sell my name in a second.  You would have to ask me twice!

Sell me your name.
Sell me your name.

This simply wasn't handled in a way that suggests TR is going to be around in the future. I suppose that could be attributed to incompetence on the part of NCsoft.

If you've played TR, you don't have to wonder whether it will be around in the future or not. Because like Tom Cruise, you'll JUST KNOW.

I'm guessing the head honchos wants to give the new game director a blank slate instead of having Garriot hanging over them.

 :rimshot:

Dick Garriott is a shiny douche. Oh well. At least he can afford to be vinegar.

I play TR and I don't see any particular reason it will be shut down. Its a good game, better than WOW in many respects and all it needs is some kind of end game. There are 2 full updates planned that I know about. After those even if it was left there it would still attract custom.

RG stopped having a direct involvement with the game 6 months ago. To be honest i am inclined to believe his statement. He had a life transforming experience in fulfilling his life's dream, he realized he has been involved in the game industry for most of his life, and he decided to move on. Life is too short for regrets.

For a game with his name on it, that letter couldn't make him sound any more disinterested and detached from it if he tried.

Yeah, we can speculate all we want, but it's likely a combination of things; life-changing space voyage, an industry he doesn't quite fit into anymore...and of course Wrath of the Lich King launching in two days.  :grin:

The movies were called "Ian Flemming's James Bond" long after Flemming had stopped having any input into them too.


Actually that was not mentioned once in general chat and I was online in TR for a lot of today.

You do know you were talking to NPCs right?

NPCs don't talk about other games and Star trek Online, for one thing

Huh?

They'd ask him to come out every so often to do some PR, but let's face it, this stopped being the sort of game people expected from RG the moment they tossed the first game. I can easily see why middle management thought adding his name would help (recognizable IP vs unrecognizable one), but that only worked for the subset of people that'd by anything with RG on it regardless of the game. And nowadays whoever's playing couldn't care any less whether he's involved with the project.

This in no way means the end of TR. It just means they can no longer lie about whatever thin thread of connection he had with the game that is.

I would have fired him while he was in space.

I like your reasoning. But I'm still on the "because they didn't know better" side of the fence.


They probably could've saved money at the offset by firing him into space instead of hiring him.

bravo, so many levels in that one

I'm glad to see him leave the industry. I hope he's able to do something more constructive with his time. His design days have been over for a long time.

I meant like Garriott quit so he would have more time to play. He's gotta get to 80 too like everyone else! Um ok, so explaining the joke just ruined it and now I am sad.

I got the joke.  If I had his money and taste, I'd probably be getting ready to catass WoW, too.  I have to say everything I need to say to Killjoy in the next couple of days because he won't be available for a month after WotLK.  Today he was pushing Ninja Town very hard... I didn't know he even liked tower defense games.

I'm not surprised. He'd been pretty distant from the game for a long time, it could have been called Starr Long's Tabula Rasa for all the good the dev name did and after it flopped there have been a lot of rumours about how unhappy NCsoft have been with the Garriott boys.

The big question is: what is RG qualified to do outside of develop games?

Well, he does have astronaut on his resume.

LARP?

Actually no, he's not allowed to call himself an astronaut, only a "space tourist". There was a bit of to-do over this in a "we've got your $30m now shut up and take it like a good little girl" kind of way.

Garriot was responsible for ultima7, which remains the best game ever made, and nobody can take that away from him. But I've got to say, it sure must suck to have peaked in 1992. All we ever wanted was a real sequel to ultima7, and we never got it. All of those origin franchises were all left to rot. They were bestselling titles in the early 90s at an astonishing sixty dollars apiece, and EA just let them all die. It's a damn shame.

I'm deeply saddened by this news, especially if that means leaving the industry altogether. I don't give a fuck if this is considered rose-tinted glasses, nostalgia or whatever, but lots of my favourite games have seen Garriott involved, in one form or another, from 1984 with Ultima IV, when I was six, 'til now.
-------
Still, when we talk about Ultima VI-VII and the Underworlds, which are arguably among the best roleplaying games ever made, we should not forget that guy called Warren Spector, a creative force on par with Garriot's (as shown years later with Deus Ex).

Damn Spector and his seekret project at Junction Point.

I'm not even sure he's qualified to develop games with the current state of technology.


They were bought by Disney. Harvey Smith and others involved with Deus Ex are worth keeping an eye on, not to mention folks from Planescape: Torment, but that's all I'll say on the subject.

Garriot does NOT in any way, shape, or form rank up there with those people. The industry left him behind a long, long time ago.

Edit: I don't hate Garriot or anything like that. It's simply a matter of respecting reality. Also, Ultima VII is not one of or the greatest RPG ever made, that is simply insane. Back then, pretty great. It did not age as well as some of the other games from that period.

Venture capital.

No, you misunderstood. U7 isn't merely the best RPG ever made, it's the best game ever made. All-inclusive.

lol

Why doesn't anyone else think the alien parasite he carried back from space is making him act this way?

Cause he was already mostly out the door before he went into space.

Honestly you're the first person I've heard who doesn't rank Ultima 7 "among the best." I'm curious what your criteria for greatness is.

Big eyes.

Also, he wears a tiara, you know.  Only important people wear tiaras.  Like queens and Paris Hilton.

[1. General] SirT: Anyone else online?

/who 1-50

SirT

I want a tiara.  :heartbreak:

Being Japanese. He'll trash the early Ultimas and then heap praise on the Japanese imitations that came out a couple years later on the NES.

Final Fantasy IV came out before Ultima VII.

Also, Street Fighter II came out in 1992. Simply put, better games consumed my time. Remember, I was 10 years old when it came out and I hadn't been slobbing Garriots knob for a decade as I thought his shit looked and played piss poor - and still does.  :oh_i_see:

Seriously though, the first western RPG that even blew my hair back was probably Daggerfall. I was blessed enough to have access to just about any game I wanted while I lived with my parents, I'm sure if I had been more limited, I would have narrowed my scope and ended up loving shit like Ultima VII but that just wasn't the case.

Ultima VII is not an "early Ultima".

How did you extrapolate that from what I posted?

You're not alone, Schild.  I bought a package of Ultima VII & Serpent Isle years ago (I want to say 1997ish) and played it and was unimpressed.  I had more fun with the SSR D&D games like Menzo or Eye of the Beholder than I ever did with Ultima. That game just dragged on and on, hell I never even bothered to finish it. 

I'm speaking specifically of having previously heard Schild trash the Ultima series, then heap praise on shit like the original Dragon Warrior, which was literally just a Japanese Ultima-knockoff. I'll say again what I did at the time: Ultima V came out in 1988, could be played on a Commodore 64, and made every single pre-SNES console RPG look like bullshit designed for retarded kids.

I played U7.  92?  I was 15 then I suppose.  I really enjoyed it.  I didn't see, however, anything deific about it.  I played most of the Ultimas, and as I recall, they didn't have a certain pull for me to want to keep paying more and more.  It was a quick burn to 'meh.'  First time through, pretty damn enjoyable.  Not much in the repeat.

Find where I heaped praise on the original Dragon Wariror. Oh please do. Please please please do.

I would not call this heaping praise on it. (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=6214.msg168522#msg168522)

Might and Magic II-VIII for the win bitches.

Seriously, I played U7 back 11-12 years ago and while it was all right at the time (for what I can remember) I seriously don't remember much about it or it being great.  It just wasn't me or stellar in my opinion.  I actually enjoyed U4 better despite never finishing it.  I enjoyed the Eye of the Beholder series, the M&M series, and Dragon Warrior\Quest more than Ultima.  I probably just wasn't in the right place or the right time for it.  Same with the Final Fantasy series as I felt the games peaked with the first and went downhill from there (which every single person on this planet disagrees with me on).

And yes, it is sad that a man who influenced so many others realizes he peaked years ago and hasn't had any interest or desire to make or work on revolutionary games anymore.  Despite how people may feel about his products now, he did influence quite a few game developers in the 80's to get us where we are.

It was sad until he burned through somewhere in the ballpark of $80 million USD and cost a shitload of people their jobs. Then it's no longer sad, it's corporate murder.

Obviously.  It's not exactly a great way to go out.  But then when you look at Hollywood and musicians who do one amazing album\film and then spend the next 20-25 years trying to re-live that one hit all the while failing miserably, it's pretty much the same thing.

 

Checking out the list of games released in 1988: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1988_video_games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1988_video_games)

Wow.  Besides U5, it's MM2, Wasteland, Nobunaga's Ambition, Battle Chess, F-19, Pools of Radiance and more.  Countless hours of my childhood.  Even played that War in Middle-Earth game.

I had no idea these games all came out in 1988.  

Heh, I remember when a bunch of JRPGs settled out of court for directly copying Ultima stuff. Yeah, the M&Ms were pretty good. I still go back to World of Xeen once in a while. Some of this is about personal tastes, big open sandboxes versus tight directed experiences. But honestly, too much of this sounds like "I knew he sucked back when you guys liked him and that makes me insightful!" Garriott is clearly the Lucas of video games....

Not really. How many of the people around them lose their jobs? Do they keep working at whichever studios or does the whole thing basically shut its doors because one person leaves? Does it take 5 years worth of funding to make films and movies? Are you saying Cuba Gooding Jr. and Richard Garriot are somehow alike? I don't understand. Either way, I disagree because I get the gist of it.

United Artists and Heaven's Gate. While not 100% exactly the same thing, a project that bankrupts the studio to the tune of $40M in 1980 and nearly puts everyone out of work associated with it because of one person (Michael Cimino) is a similar situation.  Yeah he made Deer Hunter which was a stellar movie in its day, but that doesn't excuse the debacle that was Heaven's Gate.  He got another chance sometime in the 1980's but thankfully the studio at the time saw a repeat and fired him before he screwed up their business too...

StarTropics and Scheharezade were at least different enough that I can chalk your inclusion of them up to a matter of taste. (Personally I found them both very unremarkable games when I played them as a kid.) But putting an Ultima knockoff like Dragon Warrior on a list of games "light years beyond" was just head-explodingly ill-informed.

Is this one of those times you say something obscenely stupid to get people to pay attention to you? 

Looks like it.  I don't even know how you go from Ultima to Dragon Warrior ( a series I don't hold in high regard).  Seems more intentionally incendiary. At least I hope it is, otherwise it's just pure myopia (oh, hey, grief title) or ignorance of the genre. 

Hell, I think I'd put U7 on a list of mine.  It's not a real favorite, but I liked what it did. Hasn't helped that I really haven't liked the environments I've had to play it in (Exult) and that the graphics have aged worse than any of the great SNES RPGs.

It's not like Garriot actively participates in the development of games anymore. He's just a figurehead that gets his name printed on the package.

JRPGs are a result of game designers in Japan ripping off artwork from Origin in the 80's. Garriott sued, they settled out of court, and thus Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy/etc were born.

I'm not saying I don't believe you, I'm interested in the details...

SINCE I CAN'T FIND ANY OF THIS ON THE WEB. I strongly suspect we're going to be the top google result for some bizarre combination of final fantasy, origin, and "garriot" pretty soon.

Edit: Seriously, you'd think I'd have heard of this. The common story for the origin of Final Fantasy is that it was a game born out of desperation and Origin isn't mentioned anywhere near it.

Ah shit, my $15/month has gone AWOL due my new mortgage. I've killed Tabula Rasa.

1988 is golden. Wasteland would be enough to make it the best year for CRPGs ever, but add to it some known faces from that list and, of course, Bard's Tale 3 and Mars Saga (most underrated CRPG ever in my book, first game from Eye of the Beholder's and Command and Conquer's Westwood Associates).

I tried to find details too; I would have linked if I could. I suspect since this happened before the Internet was invented, then it can't be on the Internet or something. Like the butterfly effect and time travel. Be that as it may, here's the book I learned this from:

http://www.amazon.com/official-book-Ultima-Shay-Addams/dp/0874552281

Ok, find the book and transcribe it. I'm sure you have it on your shrine with the lincoln log UO replica house and paper doll of your toon. :oh_i_see:

Edit: That was too easy, I apologize.

Edit 2: But seriously, find and transcribe that shit. I want to read it.

And now I must find it in my OSI Shrine. >_< Yeah I'm surprised too. I figured this was common knowledge.

It's not, and I'm still not buying it.

You do know that Wizardry was probably in development when Akalabeth and Ultima were in dev as well and that it was made jointly by a NY studio and 2 Japanese studios, right?

I mean, that's common knowledge. Also, I'd like to know which Japanese game designers ripped off artwork from origin and I'd like you to have words with Yoshitaka Amano who was doing that style of art before Garriot had plans to buy a sputnik let alone design an RPG.

Yep. If it weren't for Ultima, I'm sure Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest would have been first-person, and not top-down.


The specific piece of artwork was, if memory serves, a picture of a merchant drawn by Denis Loubet, used in one of the Ultima manuals.

And yeah, I know it's terribly uncool to attribute anything to Garriott. Be that as it may, he did create a few things in his time.

First of all, if it wasn't for Dragonstomper, not Ultima, FF and DQ might've been first person. MIGHT'VE. Megaten went the first person route back in the NES days. Dragon Warrior is basically a Japanese Dragonstomper. Final Fantasy is an entirely different animal.

Second of all, lol. I'm not buying this Denis Loubet shit, find it. Yes, I have practically every image from Japanese RPGs from that era scarred into my brain. As such, I have a keen interest in this.

You're right.  Final Fantasy, the original one, stole alot of it's monster designs from dungeons and dragons.  A lot of games in that era did.  They weren't just strictly stealing from Origin.

... and D&D stole much of its design from fantasy literature and mythology.  I think I'm missing your point. 

There were a handful that were fairly specific to dnd, that at best, had loose ties to lovecraft or mythology, like the mind flayer and beholder, which were pretty heavily adopted by alot of rpgs.

edit:  Went and looked up some info just to make sure I wasn't talking out my ass.  Wikipedia claims that both the beholder and mind flayer are very specifically considered part of the product identity for dnd, which probably came out when they went open source with 3.0.  So while TSR might not have sued anyone using them, WoTC/Hasbro might definitely.

The beholder, mind flayer, and some others were specifically excluded from the SRD, so they were never open content.

I had that Ultima book too. I don't recall it naming the company that was ripping off OSI artwork, but I do recall the story. The Garriots were in Japan, having some kind of business with this company, when the artwork in question came up right in their faces during the presentation for an as-yet-unreleased game. More than one piece of art, actually, and the poor presenter not knowing what the fuck to do. So I don't think any consumer would have seen it, no. Especially not one who was probably like five years old when this was going on.

The entire top-down, tile-based, walking around an overland map stepping on little miniature cities/castles/dungeons to enter, party represented by one guy until you enter a separate combat mode, stand on top of the little treasure chest icon to open it, towns full of NPCs that hork up their one line of dialogue when prompted, go into the Weapon Shop and buy the fighter a sword since it's better than an axe, style of RPG was pioneered by Richard Garriot in 1980 and was fully realized by the time Ultima 3 came out in 1983.

Anyone who can, with a straight face, try to tell me that series like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest don't owe a huge debt to Ultima is just being deliberately obtuse. Those guys would have come up with something fun regardless (this was, after all, the era in which I actually liked JRPG) but if there hadn't been Ultima, it would have looked totally motherfucking different. Dragonstomper my ass.

EDIT: As an aside not directly related to the discussion, I recall that same Ultima book describing how aggressive OSI was about going into the Japanese market, with several different Ultima manga series being produced, and billboards of Garriot in full Lord British nerd regalia going up. Even the aesthetics of the NES ports of Ultima 3 and 4 were pretty blatantly aimed at Japan, looking back. I kinda wonder if that's why UO did so well in Japan when it was released there. It was way the hell more popular in Japan than it ever was the US or Europe.

This is the first I've heard of this Dragonstomper theory. Weird. Looks like a fun game, but I can't imagine why anyone would emulate that over Ultima.

Some of the similarities between Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy and Dragonstomper are far closer to eachother than Ultima.

In fact, Enix credits Dragonstomper as the inspiration behind Dragon Warrior.

Edit: I'm fairly sure Dragon Stomper invented the turn-based battle system and random encounter systems that would be the love and bane of JRPGs for the rest of time as well.

Here's a bit from Forbes magazine about it:

Menu system, randomized monsters, music cues, tiles that look like they were dropped from Dragonstomper into Dragon Warrior.

I don't know what to tell you other than, across the United States, some dude in New York (who I'm assuming knew the guys at Sirtech) basically gave birth to the JRPG.

Jeezus, what the fuck was that "review"? That looks like something you'd say on release day  :oh_i_see:

Was that from Forbes or some dunk that sent a Letter to the Editor to Forbes?

http://www.forbes.com/personaltech/2005/11/23/microsoft-xbox-videogames-cx_el_1123oldgames.html

I've never seen you come into a thread just to throw down snark. Did something break you, D?

Sounds similar to what Gygax said when he was accused of ripping off hobbits for his halflings. "No really! I got the idea from someone other than these people who are suing me!" And the tiles from Dragonstomper look nothing like the tiles from Dragon Warrior. I don't know what to tell you, other than sometimes people lie for money.

You've got to be pretending to be all rose-eyed and altruistic here. Either that or you switched places with Darniaq!

See, had you posted the link (or I was arsed to look it up), I would have seen the part about the Atari 2600 and gotten the context.

My problem with the statement was the context, or for me, lack thereof. It sounded like fanboi frothing. But the article frames it nicely in a great nostalgia piece about how far things have devolved in the market that could push out the derivative "AAA" titles that were for the X360 launch. Their points about that I completely agree with. I do think though that the X360 "killer app" was the console itself though, with the framework for future integration that still has them lightyears ahead of Wii (which really doesn't seem to need to care yet) and still ahead of PS3 (though that gap could close in the next 12 months feature-wise). Basically, they were first with a system that years later the others are still trying to get right. Even if the games weren't the best, that counts for something.

However, it isn't the same as there being good notable labors of love that created entire genres unto themselves for an audience eagerly waiting for each one. Sure we could get into casual games and call match-3 or seek-and-find games a genre that is hugely successful (in that context, they are). And there's probably a Space Invaders in Bejeweled. But it doesn't feel like the same thing. Of course, Space Invaders didn't either.

Eh. Snark turned to directionless rant. Time for bed.

/shrug

At this point I'm willing to split the difference since it's patently fucking obvious that Dragonstomper introduced the mainstays of the JRPG rather than Ultima, but Ultima (and by extension Akalabeth) obviously inspired Dragonstomper into existence.


Though, it's possible Dragonstomper was inspired directly by D&D rather than Ultima as it was made by ONE dude, so it may have very well taken 2 years, which would predate Ultima. Impossible to know without straight up asking the guy though.

I personally think Conan created Jon.  Anyone who says otherwise is WRONG!

(http://www.cling.gu.se/~cl3polof/64games/pics/Ultima3game.gif)(http://www.interordi.com/romhack/dw1plus/before.gif)

No resemblance. Clearly the latter is based on this below, and has nothing to do with that other game up there.

(http://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/dragonstomper/dragonstomper2_1.png)

 :uhrr:

I had this whole series of "Talking to Lord British in his five-tile 'throne', talking to the King in Dragon Warrior in his five-tile 'throne' and such" comparative screenshots, but it seemed excessive.

Stop killing the delusion that my childhood wasn't spent looking at that crap.  Stop it now.

Actually I'd always assumed that JRPGs took the combat system more from Wizardry than anything else....  :grin:

Some did. Some didn't. I mean, there's two distinct branches of early JRPG - Wizard/Megaten and Dragon Warrior/Final Fantasy - though the structures in the latter 2 are fairly different and megaten _eventually_ became far more like the latter 2 while Wizard nearly fizzled and died with a few strange exceptions and throwbacks.

Yay, Wikipedia. Hybrid of Ultima world design and Wizardry combat mechanics and stats.  Whether that dictates knockoff, influence, or whatever, I don't really see a point.  Early games influence later games.  :awesome_for_real:

It was interesting as a child, having played both Dragon Warrior and Wizardry in that order.  Different experiences, but I was like 10 or 11.  It's been a while since then, heh.

/shrug

Okay seriously.

(http://www.c64-wiki.de/images/e/ec/Ultima3british.PNG)(http://www.consoleclassix.com/info_img/Dragon_Warrior_3_NES_ScreenShot4.gif)

It's obvious that they just dumbed down a PC game for the console.

So your party of adventurers, represented by one figure, is trucking along the tile-built overworld map, occasionally fighting random monsters in a separate combat mode where you can see all your characters, when you realize that everyone is getting low on HP. So you walk to the nearest town, represented by a town-shaped tile on the map, and stand on it. Now you're on a separate smaller map of the city itself. You can exit back to the overworld by stepping back off the city map, but instead you go inside and look around for the inn. You walk up to the counter and talk to the innkeeper NPC. He asks if you want to pay a few gold to stay the night. You say yes, watch a few seconds of a little scene where your character falls asleep, then wake back up "the next day" with everyone's HP full again.

The first Dragon Quest won't be out for another year, the first Final Fantasy won't be out for two years, the NES is brand spanking new to American shores, and you're on your computer playing the fourth title in a series that's already five years old.

The seminal titles of the JRPG genre were basically "Japanese Ultima" and anyone that can say otherwise hasn't fucking played any of the games in question. Period. End of motherfucking story. If you don't think so then You Are Wrong.

Wow this thread reeks of nerd. Let me ask a question... Which is the better captain, Captain Kirk or Captain Picard?

Captain Rex!

Since Riker said in that one episode that lasers can't penetrate their shields, that means a federation shuttlecraft could take a direct hit from the Deathstar since it fires a laser. 

OMG GARRIOTT INVENTED VIDEO GAMES AND I HAVE PROOFS!

Whatever his background, I will absolutely concede that he's lost it now and needs to either work under someone and learn the business of games all over again, or just do something else with his life for a while. Or play WoW for the rest of his life! In SPACE!

Han Solo.


The fact that you're even aware of this argument makes you my brother-in-nerdistry.

Yea, because a captain of a light freighter is the same thing as captain of a battleship.  :roll:

Best captain: Riker of the Titan. Anyone who says otherwise obviously hasn't read the series. End of motherfucking story.

Back to the nerd fight, it seems painfully obvious that it was Ultima first. One either agrees or doesn't care. "Remembering it different" doesn't count. Of course, 25+ years later, it really doesn't matter either. Any more than who was the best fake captain of a fake ship on a fake TV show about a fake IP anyway...

Lasers in Star Wars (not just Blasters) have recoil and shell casings.

Take that physics!  :grin:

Therefore lasers in Star Wars are not the same lasers from Star Trek.

And the Borg (for example) are immune to phasers but are never, NEVER immune to physical attack. Like tommy gun bullets or klingon knives and swords. How come they can adapt to a big ass beam of energy but a slug of lead from a primitive firearm is a surefire way to put them down cold?

Answer in all these nerdy cases: Writer fiat.

There is an article with another rumour about NCsoft dropping Tabula Rasa floating around but I forget where I saw it.  I'm prepared to believe this one!

The shells contain capacitors which power the laser.  By pre-charging and using 'ammunition', bulky power supplies which would make the weapon unwieldy aren't necessary.  The recoil is from the mechanism which ejects the capacitor-shell, not the laser itself.

Physics is saved!

Except even then your "lasers" are distinct visible bolts that travel vastly slower than the speed of light. I think there's some EU crap that attempts to explain that, but then there's also EU stuff explicitly stating the "gigatons of recoil" produced by the heavy guns on a Star Destroyer, so whatever.

Man, this thread has completely turned into Star Wars. I want you pricks to remember, it was Triforcer that started it! Not me! I always get blamed for shit like this!

Think this is what Spengler meant when he said not to cross the streams.

It's still on topic. Ultima had lasers and blasters!

And a "first person" dungeon mode :awesome_for_real:

The first one did? I'm trying to remember when I first saw the first person one and keep thinking 3.

Yah, they all did, even as far back as Akalabeth.

Yep.

I played Ultima to death back on my x286.

It looked like this (couldn't find an exact Ultima dungeon screenshot in a quick google):

(http://bp2.blogger.com/_3WacBST0pXU/RdZJB54fWqI/AAAAAAAAABA/9KnA0j6gres/s320/AK-Daemon.jpg)

Lest we forget, Ultima had lasers, space combat and time travel along with swords and magic. And a way to not be able to finish the game if you got to level 9 before you completed the space combat objective ("A princess will help a lvl 8 space ace travel through time", or some such, where an 'Ace' had to kill 20 enemy space ships).

(http://www.angelfire.com/ak4/ratman/trekWars.gif)

It's become more entertaining that talking about crazy moon man.

Scale is totally off.

Wasn't Solo a general by the end of the RotJ? Should he still be referred to as Captain Solo?

Anyone in command of a ship is referred to as "Captain"

Is every X-Wing pilot a captain then?  X-Wings are capable of independent hyperspace (unlike TIEs).  At the Death Star Attack, I don't remember everyone calling everyone else Captain.

X-Wings are snub fighters. Their real world analogy is a fighter plane. Whereas the Falcon is big enough to be a ship. Actually the Falcon is right on the edge of fighter and starship, being a very light freighter.

Solo squeaks by. Like Mal from Firefly.

An X-Wing would be a boat not a ship, hence it's not a consideration. Assuming the MF carried some kind of other vessels (life pods for example) it would qualify as a ship and thus Solo would be referred to as 'Captain Solo'. If Star Wars followed Earth traditions. Which it doesn't have to.

God damn, I feel my virginity growing back from getting into this debate.

Everything looks bigger in porn.

Call him Master Solo

Just to go back to the point of this article, it was nice that they let him leave the building before they put a bullet into this title.

They didn't wait long, though :awesome_for_real:

How do you know he wasn't the one who fired the gun?

Pride. Nobody who's been around that long ever says "yep, I peaked early in life, lightning doesn't strike twice, and I screwed the pooch on this latest title. Sorry all, I'm killing my game".  :grin:

Pride can also cause you to detest working on a project where people do not accurately follow your vision or forced you to make changes you did not agree on as well.

I speculate... I know not how that project actually went.
- Removed Comment -

I am sure they let Garriot do his farewell speech before pulling the trigger for some misguided sense of loyalty so in some twisted fashion it can be claimed the game folded after he left.

If it was Garriot who did the pulling, and I don't think it was, then it was a cowardly thing to jump ship then announce the closing a few weeks later.  Of course this way I wonder if he got a nice farewell present while everyone else gets the boot and a lump of coal for Christmas.

Hollywood answer:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNxhrPaaCA4

Geek answer: Star Trek TNG is around TL 20, while Star Wars is around TL 15 - the TL differential is obvious in terms of things like transporter technology, shields, and more efficient warp drives. However, the Empire is far more of a militarized society, with the equivalent of Dyson sphere stations ("Death Star") and consequent multiplicity of weapons hard points. It could be assumed that a ISD-class ship vs a Galaxy-class Federation vessel would attempt a first strike using swarms of expendable TIE fighters and bombers, trying to overwhelm the Galaxy-class ship's shields and point defense systems, which would go a long way to mitigating the Federation ship's technological advantages.

God, I can feel my virginity returning while typing the above paragraph.

I had a really geeky response, but it even embarassed me  :grin:

Going all OGRE on each other, the starship loses, even if it's just a Galaxy-class pounding an ISD. But once you compare the numbers advantage of one against transporters and far superior targeting computers of the other, I think it's a clear Star Trek win.

Assuming the writers would let you loose of course. It took them two and a half series before they deployed the freakin' transporter bomb... !

A similar battle in terms of scale was the USS Valiant's attack (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Valiant_(episode)) on a Jem'Hadar battleship (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Jem%27Hadar_battleship) several order of magnitudes its size, although somewhat lagging technologically.

It ended thusly:
(http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/en/images/9/9a/USS_Valiant_destroyed.jpg)

Admittedly, the crew was all on drugs at the time. (I freakin' *love* DS9.)

Star Wars wins. Period.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/ (http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/)

This is a site by some engineer nerd who did things like take dialogue from each of them and do screen measurements  to figure out things like how fast are the fragments of Alderaan moving? How much energy would it take to make a planet explode like that?

He compares Fett's seismec charges to the Enterprises photon torpedoes based on Riker's line about needing all of their torpedoes to destroy one hollow asteroid vs fett destroying multiple asteroids with one seismic charge.

Etc etc. The guy is an obsessed nerd. And it's handy to pull his page out for these discussions.

Then an Erebus-class Titan hotdrops the lot of them and doomsdays.  :awesome_for_real:
(Then a Plate-class GSV appears, effectors the fuck out of all remaining computer systems and tells everyone to stop being silly.  :grin: )






And Sisko was the best captain anyway.

Awesome site. This page alone (http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/) is full of win :-)

DS9 <3 <3 <3.

Neither the Empire nor the Federation can come anywhere near the Culture for quality ship names....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_(The_Culture)

BSG > DS9 but Galactica would always lose to any other sci-fi basically.

Oh that reminds me, I need to download Babylon 5 and watch it again.

Damm you, I hate *aspects* of Crusade so much but love the Victory/Excalibur (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_class_destroyer) ships.

I'm sorry I posted in this thread to remind people it existed.  :sad_panda:

I used to hang around that site a lot years ago. It's actually the one other place I was posting the old "box office roundup" back when I was doing that. Yeah, sorry Lum, the ISD can stand there and laugh while the Galaxy runs its guns dry and it won't make any difference.

I mean Voyager gets lost in a different quadrant and the near-impossible task of getting home is the narrative of an entire series. Qui-Gon and friends need to go from the Outer Rim to the Galactic Core in Phantom Menace, and they spend more time procuring a new hyperdrive from a backwater junkyard than they do traveling. That's the difference in technology we're talking about, transporters and fancy machines for making tea aside.

It's also the deciding factor in any campaign larger than a one-on-one ship battle. Even if a Star Destroyer hit no harder than a shuttlecraft, the Empire is going to win a war due to the fact that any Federation fleet is virtually immobile by Imperial standards.

Yes, I know I'm a horrible geek. What the fuck ever.

As an aside, even the most rabid Star Wars partisan knows that the Culture would wipe the floor with the Empire without even breaking a sweat. Suggesting otherwise on stardestroyer would get you laughed off the boards. If I recall correctly Dune, Star Wars, and 40k are all supposed to be in the same ballpark in terms of strength.

I think SW is exagerrating a WEE tad regarding its Galactic scale, simply because an Empire spanning millions of stars would be impossible to control, even for the guy in the funky purple robe. Thus similarly I tend to blow off "official" figures like 70 quadjillion megajoules of shielding on an ISD!!!1!

Because, yes, Star Trek and its dilithium powered warp factor squid is SO much more realistic.  :why_so_serious:

Regardless, Batman could kick everyone's ass.

I couldn't decipher this post with the Rosetta Stone.

How exactly does one story or side "exaggerate" when it's a given that everything being discussed is total fiction?

Parsecs.

(Although I'm on the side that thinks Han was bullshitting the rubes and the Kessel Run is the equivalent of muffler bearings.)

That's not exaggerating, that's just George Lucas failing at vocabulary.

Or maybe he just used it because it sounded cool and would do for a measurement of time in a universe which is unbounded by the constrains of our own laws of physics.  I mean we could go all Frege and argue Sinn und Bedeutung but really, what's the point?


The ability to fight crime while dressed as a flying rat is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

Those are some mighty fine ship names  :heart:



Halo has some good ship names too, little more prophetic then those from Culture.

UNSC:

In Amber Clad
Pillar of Autumn
Forward Unto Dawn
All Under Heaven
Point of No Return
Two for Flinching


Covenant Ships are all 'righteous' in their naming.

Sublime Transcendence
Ascendant Justice
Shadow of Intent
Triumphant Declaration
Truth and Reconciliation

Coming up with cool names for things like ships is purely a matter of mental masturbation. Even the dimmest of wits can come up with spiffy names.

This obviously does not include Joss Whedon, George Lucas, or any of the Star Trek guys. Remember, I said dimmest of wits, not people who constantly go full retard.

(http://www.subversiveinfluence.com/images/brothermaynard_168x190.png)

Brother Maynard! Bring us the holy shooting script!


http://www.starwarz.com/starkiller/scripts/thestarwars_revised_fourth_draft_jan.htm

... said a man with a latex fetish who shows little ability to do anything other than minor telekinesis.

I think you'll find it's mostly leather.

I looked at that Wikipedia article. Calling a warship the 'So Much For Subtlety' is some damn fine masturbation.  :drill:

I give a pass to Star Trek because they, for some bizarre reason only Roddenberry could tell us, are following Naval tradition with names.  Potempkin, Enterprise, Hood, etc.   

Which doesn't matter at the end of the day, since they're about to kill the flying rat off... again, if what I've read is correct.  So there won't be much ass kicking going on, unless we're talking a zombie Batman, in which case, I'd have to hide in a cellar and keep a chainsaw handy.

Wuh?

And yet none of these would be able to stand up to one little man in a funny little blue telephone booth with a silly little tire pressure gauge that goes 'whiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrr'.

What the hell was this thread about again?

It's somewhat fitting that a thread about Richard Garriot should devolve into who's space peen is the largest.

Google the words "battle for the cowl" if you really want to know.

I think this thread is beyond having a topic and has condensed into a pool of pure geek, having gone from an MMO, to JRPG versus Western RPG, to Star Trek fighting Star Wars, to comic books.

Anyway yeah, anything related to Dr. Who is in the heavyweight category as far as versus-fights go. Star Wars and things on that level are pretty much middleweights, and Trek is toward the top of the lightweight class. I was never THAT into these sorts of debates, but I always found them good clean nerd fun to read.

Not to derail the high quality nerd fight but I thought it was common knowledge now that TR was getting canned.....

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/87610-Tabula-Rasa-Shutting-Down (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/87610-Tabula-Rasa-Shutting-Down)

Ah. Everything's about who'll replace him. But what can you point me to that talks the origin of the Batman RIP story arc? Or will this be a graphic novel I can pick up in the Spring or something?

I love the debates about who'll take over, but heck, I remember the same debates from when Bane broke Wayne's back and Archangel took over for a bit (Nightwing turned him down and the third Robin was too young yet) while Wayne got himself all trained back up. What was that, 15 years ago now?

I honestly don't know anything about Batman RIP.  I haven't actively followed comics in a long long time.  I just randomly stumbled across this a few days ago somewhere, and it annoys me.  I mean, at the end of the day, we all know they're going to magically bring him back from the dead.  Again.  Just like they've done for every major super hero in DC or Marvel for the last 20 years.

It's why I don't read comics from the "Big Two" anymore. It happens so often the need to hang a lampshade on it and just have all the bystanders shrug and move on whenever a major hero character dies.

So I've never heard of The Culture.  I think I'll have to read it after I finish the Malazan series.

The interesting thing is that WEG made a way for Han's statement to make sense. See, the most direct route to Kessel passes by a bunch of black holes so most pilots have to swing wide. But Han is so good at astrogation,and his ship is so fast, he was able to pass really close to the black holes, so he made the trip in "less than 12 parsecs."

I do feel better to know that the script shows it was BS. Which explains the look on Ben's face like he just ate something that tasted bad when Han says it, while Luke looks impressed.

Start with Excession or Player of Games. The more recent ones are longer and more introspective. Still great but there are a lot of base assumptions that you won't get if you haven't read at least a couple of the earlier ones.

This exact topic came up in, err, shit, I think the Indiana Jones Crystal Skull thread in Movies. And I made the exact same point. And they're still mocking me.  :cry2:

Kidding. The cw on this is that GL screwed up and the expanded universe material fixed it by creating the events that made it plausible. Back in Ep4, there was nothing said of a Maw Cluster [the region of black holes around which he went] nor that Parsec was specifically stated to be a distance in Han's use rather than time. My personal opinion is that the script was accurate and that parsecs was used as intended because in the way hyperspace works in that universe, time in hyperspace is less important in determining "speed" and efficiency than the distance traveled. It's not unbelievable that there were a few geeks like us working on the geekiest film to launch in that decade.

This also corrolates with 3POs use of the quote "spice mines of Kessel". Kessel was an established place. Han was an established smuggler. Spice was an established good to be smuggled. QED, "Kessel Run". Once there, it's not so hard to believe that some writer mapped the galaxy, mapped where Kessel was and it's destination (the name escapes me atm), and figured out why the distance between those two points is more important than the time, in corrolation again to how hyperspace was said to have worked (plotting courses, not running into stars, etc).

I like Darniaq's response best.

Astronavigation is clearly a component of Hyperspace travel in Star Wars, as Han Solo tells Luke, "It ain't like dustin crops boy, we could plow through an asteroid field or bounce to close to a super nova, that'd end your trip real quick!". The fact that Han gives a distance rather than measure of time is simply a boast of his navigation skills.

It just smacks of Tarkin's Disease where everything said is the literal truth therefore Grand Moff Tarkin actually smells bad because Leia mentions his "Foul Stench".

Ah well.

I always imagined he smelled like garlic.

*Wonders if anyone will get it.*

I don't get it.   :awesome_for_real:

(http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/5554/petercushingvanhelsingzb5.jpg)

Yea, there's a whole bunch of shit like that in expanded universe stuff. Of course, there's also good stuff like IG-88, Mara Jada, Ysalamiri and the existence of the cityworld too. YMMV.

Anyone who doesn't get it is a fucking newb, though I'll admit it's weird watching an old Dracula movie and seeing Moff Tarkin interact with Count Dooku.

I found it weird that Baron von Frankenstein was a bigwig in the Empire when I first watched Star Wars.

I found a '77 print of the Star Wars novel today, supposedly written by Lucas. I flicked through it to find the 'parsecs' bit, but it actually say "less than twelve standard timeparts!".

Ghost written by Alan Dean Foster.

I'm not sure if I'd start with Excession (it's one of my favorites, but might make more sense a bit later on).  I read Consider Phlebas first (randomly stumbled over it in a Seattle bookstore a number of years ago) and it seemed like a good starting point -- maybe a bit rough around the edges, but sets up a lot of the Culture universe.  I also loved Use of Weapons, and it seems pretty self-contained.

I kinda miss the old nerd debates of "who could beat who" overanalyzed science fiction I used to read and/or participate in. Fun fact: Your average Battletech force would find itself soundly defeated on the battlefields of WW2, and I think you'd have to go back to the 19th century to find anyone the guys from the Starship Troopers movie could beat.

I'd sure like to hear the rationale behind the battletech one.

Probably something to do with too many resources in too few vehicles. 

Plus a twenty metre tall biped is a pretty fucking huge target.

Somebody crunched the numbers and found that a Long Tom would have made a mediocre artillery piece in WW1, that mechs were getting outranged by panzers, and all sorts of hilarity. Weapon ranges in Battletech are generally laughably short, and with their large size and great visibility, the mechs would supposedly find themselves bombed and artilleried into oblivion.

That and there's a whole litany of reasons why a humanoid form makes for a piss-poor armored vehicle under pretty much any circumstances.

Really weapon ranges were that short for playability.  Even with the backslide in technology the Inner Sphere suffered, it was still superior to 20th century weaponry within the context of the universe.  Were all ranges and destructive capability scaled accordingly, 'Mechs would make a fearsome ground force.

Their space capabilities were pretty limited though, so they'd still have a rough time pitting Aerospace vehicles against other sci-fi universes' space forces.

Yeah, the ranges are for playability and the mechs are because... well... they're selling a mech game. Stormtroopers can't hit shit because they're disposable cannon-fodder for the heroes to kill, and Starship Troopers fight like retarded kids because Verhoeven was deliberately making a smirky send-up. The fun lies in stripping away those rationalizations and seeing who blows the shit out of who on a strict "it is what it is" basis.

Mechs/walkers/whatever just always burn my ass just because there's no logical reason to build them, at any technological level. A tank-shaped vehicle is always going to be more stable, handle recoil better, have a lower target profile, and a lower ratio of surface area to mass that needs to be armored, in comparison to an upright humanoid vehicle. Putting aside gameplay conventions intended to keep mechs supreme just because it's a mech game, I have to imagine any Battletech military could mount the biggest autocannon or gauss rifle in the fucking universe on a huge-ass tank chassis and one-shot practically anything.

Or like some thread years ago where us Star Wars nerds were yammering on about the design of AT-AT walkers. I'm like hey, put that thing on treads so assholes can't trip it with tow cables. Then put the head with the guns on top, instead of the front, so it has a better field of fire. Woops, now suddenly it's a tank.

Though I will say, Clan Elementals would probably rape face against 99% of everybody, and need to be attrited to death by artillery and air strikes. Mechs are stupid, but powered armor is the sort of thing the Pentagon is burning money researching right now.

That's because Phlebas was the first one. I'd say read Phlebas first, follow it up with Use of Weapons and Excession, then Player of Games, the short story in State of the Art and then Look to Windward.

You remember that TV show battlebots awhile back?
The cheese wedge always ruled with an iron fist.

Simple design, small target, heavy payloads.
The only reason I can see power armor being useful is if it allowed for a bunch of marines to basically run into combat fully mobilized with mini guns, rocket launchers and high caliber rifles that normally could not even be carried by a person, while being impervious to small arms, explosives, poison gas ect.

A mech suit would only work if it was basically the same size as a normal person. Get any larger than that and it stops making as much sense.
Mobility would also be key here. If your mech suit is two stories tall it better be able to move like Jackychan on meth or the whole idea falls apart.

I've always rationalized mechs based on this.  That they had this really kick-ass powered armor, but kept putting bigger and bigger weapons on it, that required bigger and bigger exoskeletions.  At no point did anybody stepp back and say "hey, you know it'd be better if we did this as a vehicle right now..."

The thing that always kills me on giant robots isn't when they look like mechs.  It when you get to Gundams/ Robotech and they've got Fingers.. or hold weapons that are separate from the mech.  Wtf. why?

They want it to be considered a super soldier not a super vehicle.
It goes along with the age old idea of making the ultimate warrior.

I dunno, there's been a few semi-convincing situations I've seen.  

In space, it would theoretically be very helpful to be able to shift your mass around without having to spend thrust, and something with a lot of moving parts (like a humanoid) could do that fairly well.  Could theoretically just throw a bunch of orbiting weights on a fighter or something, but it would be more awkward to control, and you'd have most of the same problems that a humanoid would anyway.

There's a few universes where tech is just so stupidly advanced that a giant humanoid makes as much sense as anything else.  Zone of the Enders, for example.  The robots in there can float around like they weigh nothing, they fly through space and fire homing lasers and take direct tank fire without flinching, so if you can make them humanoid, why not do so?  Let them toss around girders if they feel like it, it's not like they've got any kind of weakness you need to cover up.

Something like Heavy Gear handled it fairly well, in my opinion.  In that game, tanks were way stronger than robots (Gears), and cheaper (easier to maintain), but Gears were more "versatile."  They were only about three or four meters tall in that game, so they can get in to a lot of places that tanks can't, as well as being able to do stuff like pick up or move things.  The "in game" rationale was that they were like the ground forces equivalent to fighter pilots; maybe doing less damage than a bomber, but their gear is state-of-the-art, they are all extremely highly trained, and they're just all around "cooler" even though they aren't, strictly speaking, as effective by themselves.

Also, weapons can be swapped out on the fly. Weapons built in to the frame can't be switched out with ease when/if damaged or when situations call for different ammo types/roles, etc...

I'm totally geekspent on Star Wars. No way am I getting dragged into a mech discussion.  :oh_i_see:

Yeah, well, while we're in pretend land, why did the Battletech Clan mechs have modular mount points when they all have HANDS.

Edit:  Oh god, why do I even know this, much less remember it.  It might be time for me to just end myself...

I don't care how uber the technology is or what role is being filled, anything a mech might do could be done better by a vehicle not hobbled with arms and legs because of a design fetish. Powered armor is only theoretically viable because it's an infantry thing where the humanoid form isn't up for discussion.

Legs are not a particularly efficient means of locomotion compared to wheels. Else you wouldn't use them to pedal a bicycle.

Not to mention that joints are generally a single point of failure that kills your locomotion immediately if disabled.  And we're right back to Star Wars again.  Wheee.

Thats basically the whole reason for them isnt it?

Legs aren't particularly awesome when it comes to walking around.  But in a lot of giant robot stuff, the robots fly everywhere anyway, and the legs are just there as something to stick the engines to, or to walk in and out of the hangar on.  Or they have wheels or treads on the bottoms of their feet.  Or they're used in a role where feet would be more useful than treads.

Arms/hands are useful for a lot of stuff.  You can carry things around without needing special attachments, clear away rubble, climb steeper inclines, all kinds of stuff.  Having tanks doesn't mean your infantry is now obsolete, there's a lot of stuff you can't really do if you're just a big gun on a pair of treads.  

All of this is assuming that the stuff actually works and so on, of course.  Yes, if you build a robot arm that breaks half the time, you'd be retarded to try to use it as a weapon.

I don't really consider power armor in the same category as mechs.  One is a giant robot being controlled by something, the other is just mearly a better version of the shit our soldiers already wear.  Our soldiers are already covered from head to to in armor, electronics, and weapons.  The idea being to just fuse them all together into one package that lets them be even more bad ass.  The ability to effectively carry more shit around would be immensely useful by itself (and if the suit is self contained, immunity to any environmental issues like heat/cold/dust as well as chemical weapons).  Unlike the giant walking robot/target which is asking to get shot by everybody in a 2 mile radius.

So I do support research into power armor, because there is a lot of use that could come from that (we are still a loooooong way off from it being viable though).  Its a very different concept in every way from "mechs" of any sort.

The only thing worse than sticking legs on a ground vehicle is sticking them on an aircraft where aerodynamics and weight are absolutely critical. A flying mech should be target practice for a purpose-built fighter aircraft, given tech levels anywhere even remotely within the same realm.


Things like moving around rubble are tasks that rightfully should be relegated to the realm of special attachments. You don't compromise the design of a fighting vehicle by giving it integral hardware which is only suited to an infrequently-required task. A task that's usually going to be left in the hands of engineering units anyway. There are bulldozer blades and other things that sometimes come in very handy when attached to the front of a tank, but there's a reason we don't build them into every single tank we make.

And nobody in their right mind would let a mech use it's hands to climb the side of a steep incline, just so it can topple to a grusome crash the first time some rock gives out unexpectedly under it's multi-ton weight. There are lots of things tanks can't do, but that's why we have infantry, artillery, air power, and light vehicles. There's no realistic circumstance where something as vulnerable and bizzare as a mech actually becomes the most viable solution.

EDIT:

As an aside, I'll mention that being able to snap additional weapons onto a vehicle in the field is hardly some sort of new high-tech idea, even if "modular armaments" does sound cool.

(http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n88/Hagen_01/T-34-rocket-launcher-France.jpg)

Well, it depends on the setting (I'm having a hard time arguing the general case here when the term "mech" applies to everything from Escaflowne to Robot Jox to War of the Worlds) but generally it's based around the idea that a mech has superior versatility to a tank and superior armor/firepower to heavy infantry.  Even if there aren't a lot of scenarios where you'd pick a mech as the ideal candidate, there are a lot of situations where it would make a decent second choice.  If you have a limited amount of people, then keeping around a few units which can kinda sorta double as a crappy tank and a crappy infantry and a crappy transport and a crappy minesweeper or whatever you need it to do that day, I can see it making sense.

And that's assuming that they're used in a military role, which they're often not.  Certainly in most of the RPGs I've seen, mecha are generally used by private individuals or organizations who can't pick up a phone and place an order for a tank brigade.  Being able to use a mecha to tote around whatever gewgaw they've been tasked with retrieving, or being able to force open a door without blasting it with a weapon, this kind of thing is useful in a lot of situations.

Robot Jox is the only example I can think of where mech combat is merely bizzare and not outright absurd, since in that movie it takes place as a ritual in lieu of actual military conflict. They don't need to be practical or economical when they're basically just tools in a really weird sport.

Because the thing is, mechs really aren't versatile at all. They're impractical and unduly vulnerable. They have a greater surface area relative to their mass compared to a normal vehicle, which means armor is going to be proportionately thinner unless compromises are made elsewhere. Their joints represent vulnerabilties, added components that can cripple the vehicle by being damaged. Even catastrophically so, since a tank with crippled treads can rotate it's turret and defend itself, while a mech with crippled legs is likely toppled over and helpless. That broken tread is infinitely more likely to be field-repairable, too.

They're using an inherently less efficient drive train, they're an easier target, and their high center of gravity makes them less suited to dealing with impacts. That high center of gravity, and the fact that their weapons are typically carried off-center, also means that they're more limited in the weapons they can carry since they're far less able to deal with large recoils. They have an inferior field of fire since they can't typically rotate their torso 360 degrees the way a tank can rotate its turret. Even if it can, it has to deal with staying balanced as it does so while also trying to run.

The huge number of complex moving parts is likely to make them hideously expensive. That combined with the sheer physical wear and tear incurred by a multi-ton machine stomping around on legs is likely to make maintaining them in the field a nightmare relative to conventional vehicles.

They make shitty tanks, worse transports, and aren't remotely appropriate for infantry roles unless they're so small that we're back to talking about powered armor again. Which as Teleku said, is in fact an entirely different beast, superficial resemblances aside. The ability to carry a "gewgaw" amounts to "hey it's got a built-in crane" and I'm not sure how pummeling down a hypothetical door is supposed to be any better than blasting one down.

Mechs are just silly on a conceptual level. Making an armored vehicle that resembles a human being is no more inherently logical than making one that resembles a giraffe.

(http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/images/2008/05/03/giraffe.jpg)

I don't think this ever went past the prototype stage, and the only reason it exists is to tear up the forest less while... helping cut down trees... but it's still the closest thing to a mech you'll find in real life.

(http://www.technovelgy.com/graphics/content08/logging-spider-robot.jpg)

Clan Elemental's would be one of the most terrifying things you could ever see on a battle field, their nigh invincibility compared to normal infantry, coupled with their superior firepower and obscene mobility. Imagine a Star of those bastards hopping onto your tank, ripping the hatches open to fill the cockpit with fire and bombs.  :ye_gods:



I think the biggest mechs that would remain 'practical' would be the stuff you see in the Ghost in the Shell series. http://www.theanimehouse.com/6Apr08/gitsarmsuit.jpg or http://www.serenadawn.com/GITS-Armor.htm (thanks google!) Which is just really power armor that you half pilot, half wear.



Probably some of the most realistic 'true' Mechs, would be from the Patlabor movies/shows. The mechs aren't the kings of the battlefield, not even remotely. They are specialized tools that are expensive and only fill specific niches. They haven't replaced anything, tanks and fighter jets still rule the warzones.

The Movies themselves are rather clever and worth watching regardless.  :grin:




Really, if you wanted to make a tank with legs (which you probably wouldn't), there would be no reason to stop with just 2. A tank with legs would be better off as a spider then a humanoid.

Heh. Can't resist.

(http://www.zooscape.com/dataimg/zoo0040/7/big/407086_b.jpg)

It's not a giraffe, but they do have snails and apes.  :grin:

Im sure you are kidding but i will respond anyway since it ties into the whole viability of "mech" debate. In the movie the Mobile infantry had the ability to deploy armies from space that were capable of carrying tactical nuclear weapons. I think that kind of trumps anything in the 19th century. Ignoring the air support that was shown in the movie. And the natural assumption heavier armor existed.

Now in the books the Mobile Infantry used power armor. Im not sure if we are making a distinction between power armor and mechs in this conversation. But power armor in Starship troopers is basically a mechanized infantry unit that can be deployed from space. Its superior in every conceivable fashion and is most certainly where "mechs" are going to be developed and used in reality. Its basically a man sized light armored vehicle that can fly, has an integral command center all the while being more agile,more heavily armed and mobile than an infantryman or m2/m3.

Now say a mech 10 feet or so tall that had near the agility of an infantryman with the mobility of a M2/M3. That has the ability to alter its armament on the fly without the requirement of additional support crew or time to equip, transverse obstructed urban environments and be operated with a single pilot? You obviously aren't very aware of the existing weapon systems deployed in large scale and their faults when pointing out the pros/cons of a mech.

Research the Bradley fighting vehicle for some comparison of the cluster fuck that is military development of weapons.

Yes, a flying mech would be vulnerable to a high tech air superiority fighter plane. Just like 99% of all other military vehicles that can fly. But it would also be more mobile than any land based counterpart. Yes, it would be vulnerable to artillery and tanks. Just as MBT's are vulnerable to the very same things. Given the probable outlook for near future military engagements emphasis is going to be placed on the ability to operate in an urban environment. Smaller mechs would excel at this.

A mech doesn't have to be "superior" in every domain to be a viable weapon. The ability to maneuver and function in an urban environment alone would make it viable. And you cant really compare the giant sized titan mechs to the existing military since we don't deploy ANY weapons that size. There is no reason to do so and the technology doesn't exist to even make the option viable.

Some general reasons on why a humanoid shaped vehicle could conceivably be used in a fictional universe are many. Defensive technology (shields,armor etc) far exceed the capabilities of ranged weapons. Making close range physical combat the only viable means to damage large military vehicles/structures. A humanoid shape is used due to the fact that a single pilot is all thats required to utilize a system that mimics the pre-exsting neurological mechanisms to operate a humanoid vehicle. And regardless of the training for non humanoid vehicles a control system based on the evolved functions of a human brain will always be superior.

In the far future with the advent of common place world destroying armaments combat has become highly ritualized and based on personal skill rather than sheer destructive capability. Which isnt outside the realm of possiblity given the current situation with similar treaties that exist. Things like "weight" and aerodynamics are supplanted by futuristic lightweight materials and projected energy fields. where the aerodynamics of a vehicle isnt based on its physical shape but the field it projects.

If the technology existed smaller mech's would already be in use. The mechanization on the scale of an infantryman is the wet dream of the military. And existing vehicles like the Bradley fighting vehicle are so flawed from conception to make the ones you bring up about the viability of a mech to seem laughable.

You could have saved yourself a lot of typing if you just read the last page or so and realized that yes, yes we are making the distinction between Power Armor and Mechs.  :awesome_for_real: Seriously, you just argued a point no one contested.



I have to whole heartily agree with WUA about the Starship Troopers movie soldiers and their incompetence. They were essentially the Sci-Fi version of RedCoats crossed in with what your average 10 year old does when he plays "army".

Well by then your tank is likely to have replaced the traditional machine gun with an auxillary weapon that can kill guys in powered armor, assuming you're a member of a first-class military. And you'll have power armored guys of your own protecting your flanks, if your commander isn't an utter moron. There's a reason the typical armored division consists of two armored regiments and one infantry regiment.  Namely the fact that even plain old modern-day infantry is a nightmare for unescoreted tanks, under anything but the most favorable circumstances.

Of course anyone a generation behind, lacking powered armor or the means to efficiently kill guys wearing it, would be assfucked in a hypothetical future where it's become viable. Which, I should point out, would be a very long ways off from today. The Pentagon spends money researching the topic, but only in that kooky DARPA "we're also researching how to mind-control sharks" sort of way.


Seriously. They might eek out a victory over a 19th century army just based on having automatic weapons, if they manage not to get cannoned to death, but that's about it. (Remember I said they'd have to go back that far to find someone to beat.) But just imagine those dipshits and their 'run about like morons' tactics transplanted into WW1 where they're facing entrenched guys armed with machine guns and mustard gas.

They had to sustain millions of casualties and a crushing defeat to a bunch of melee-fighting bugs before breaking out the air support, and we never saw any armor at all. People THAT stupid will almost always find a way to lose.

Which is a running theme for the first 10-15 years of Clan vs. InnerSphere conflicts. The InnerSphere infantry was little different from our current modern soldier, sure he had a laser rifle instead of a machine gun, but he was essentially the same kind of soldier. Then the Clans show up with their Elementals and the Sphere just doesn't have a damn answer for it.



I'm lead to believe the largest obstacle between Power Armor and reality, is the power supply and mass production issues. They have working exoskeletons that already flow with natural human movement to a fairly impressive degree, and it isn't very hard to imagine them refining that technology out and building it around a enclosed suit/system, but all these things require ridiculous power supply units. Usually they have to be tethered to some external source, or try to walk around with a Refrigerator sized engine on their 'backs'. If the power cuts, the user is basically stuck in a giant metal rock. The other issue is any kind of wearable armor would have to be custom built to the user. That always makes shit way more expensive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFXEFPco8l8 Sure, that isn't hitting a warzone anytime soon (probably not even hitting a warehouse anytime soon  :-P ) , but it isn't that hard to imagine something like it in another 20-40 years covered in armor and carrying around a really big gun.

-edit- This guy just cracks me up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqa08UGZGtk  :heart:

Video was awesome. But yea, external power is a problem. Reminds me of how Batman suited up for his fight with superman in The Dark Knight Returns.

Yeah, I've seen that video before. It's cool shit. But what you see there is more or less the easy part of the research. The hard part is mostly the power supply, yes, but also making it inexpensive, relatively easy to maintain, and dependable after lying in the bottom of a ditch caked with mud for a week.

Of course the Military's wet dream for power armor would be something like the Mjolnir armor from Halo or simply the Ironman suit.


We just need to develop pocket sized fusion reactors!  :grin:

Edit: Meh.  Hotlinked in a hurry.  Already killed it.

10 foot tall piloted mech with the same mass of a LAV i think qualifies in the "mech" department. And the distinction between a mech and power armor is fairly irrelevent as long as the mech has the mobility and agility to maneuver with infantry through an urban environment. Agility and mobility are going to be the only things a bi-pedal machine is going to have over wheels/treads.



Pretty sure the argument is based on the technology displayed and not the demeanor and tactics of the soldiers in the 2 hour movie.  I think you also drastically over estimate the fighting efficiency of soldiers and actual real world tactics as well. Until very recently only around 20% of combat personnel would actually fire their weapons with intent to kill in combat (Hard military data only exists for about the last century). Its a pretty interesting subject if one is inclined to read about it. The "Red coats" were also one of the best trained and disciplined armies in the world.

The fictional Mobile Infantry fighting the bugs to real world conflicts like US involvement in Vietnam and Korea paints a pretty similar picture of military idiocy.

The whole "Americans hid behind trees while them dumb redcoats just stood and died" is 50% myth 50% lack of understanding of military tactics.

A light armored vehicle can dismount and recover troops while providing fire support without all the negatives in terms of armor, recoil, target profile, cost, efficiency, maintenance, and so forth associated with a mech. The nebulous "agility" argument is thrown out there as a last resort, without bothering to ask which can come to an immediate full stop without risk of falling over, a mech or a standard vehicle? Which is best suited to making a sharp turn at speed? Which can simply plow through light debris, and which will have to carefully pick its way across to avoid tripping?

Powered armor is a piece of infantry equipment, a mech is a vehicle. Powered armor is human-shaped because it needs to be worn by a human, a mech is human-shaped because Japan has a robot fixation. Their roles are completely different, and claiming otherwise is like thinking a tank and a self-propelled howitzer are the same thing just because they share a superficial resemblance.


Their tactics were unspeakably horrible, and their decision to engage hordes of giant bugs with unsupported foot infantry and small arms was mind-bogglingly stupid. Stormtroopers are widely regarded as morons, but even they will bring heavy weapons and armored vehicles to a major battle. Granted they use mechs, but that's better than absolutely nothing.

Mechs, in a sense, are practical, and it's only a matter of time before you start seeing them used in combat. The real caveat is that they won't be bipedal, and won't be made for 'agility'. Rather, they'll probably be hexapods or octopods, used as a kind of mobile all-terrain light weapons platform. Think a tank that looks like a spider or insect, and can travel over uneven terrain, wreckage, urban debris, deep mud, and shallow water.

Tanks already plow through almost all of that crap already and most stuff that will stop a tank, will also stop a mech.


While a spider mech would be far more practical then a bipedal one, it would still be a complete niche piece of equipment.

They definitely wouldn't replace tanks, but you're overestimating the scope of a tanks ability to cross various terrain. And tanks getting stuck is a big pain the ass, not to mention a copious source of image macros.

I would argue you are overestimating the usefulness of legs in crossing that same terrain. Thing's like Elephants and Rhino's are hardly agile or majestic. A lot of a insects mobility is due to it's size, or lack of.

To say nothing of when the system fails. What are the consequences of 80 tons of war machine careening down the rocky hillside?   :oh_i_see:

A spider-mech eliminates some problems in exchange for others. While it's still expensive as hell and difficult to maintain, it's even more likely to be crippled by leg damage than a standard mech. With a couple joints per leg, we're talking about a dozen or more prominently exposed failure points that can't be armored particularly well without the whole thing going grossly overweight.

Honestly it's much simpler, safer, and more efficient to take a given weapons platform and make it fly, rather than put it on legs. At least a helicopter has some real agility, and you can quit worrying about terrain entirely.

Who needs agility when you can build a heavily armored flying bathtub around an extremely high calibur minigun.  Go Warthog!

Edit: oh, and so as not to derail the derail, the Warthog is also a fine display of military stupidity.  One of the most popular and successful planes ever to come out of R+D, and the air force spent years trying to mothball the whole concept.

I've never understood why they call it a 'mini' gun.


Nothing mini about the damn thing at all.

Refers to the firing mechanism.

And why is another gatling derivative called the Vulcan, I sure don't see any pointy ears on that thing.

I believe that the name became common because they were sized down from the truly larger Vulcan cannons for use on helicopters in Vietnam.


So a minigun is the smallest of the largest Gatling guns for awhile but I suppose the name stuck and is still being used when talking about the fiercest Vulcan canons on A10s and shit. *shrugs*

edit: Its the same thing that happened with calling a m60 a light machine gun. Nobody can actually carry a heavy machine gun.

And what's the deal with Ovaltine?  It's not oval!

It's become a catch all lately, but it's not actually what's in the A10.  If the internet isn't lying to me, the minigun name mostly applies to gatling guns with an external power source, which isn't true of the gatling in the A10, since the whole plane is built around the gun to begin with.

Edit:

Why haven't we weaponized this shit yet?  Who's in charge here, get on that.  Fuck powered armor and mecha, this is the real WMD.

Ummm lets start with armor. The US army IFV has an aluminum based hull that can be penetrated by even older generation RPG's. It also tends to burn filling the troop space full of toxic fumes. Also the most vulnerable aspect of any tracked vehicle is the tracks themselves. So check "armor" off the list of disadvantages. And in fact its means of locomotion is its weakest structural area. The main armament is a 25mm cannon whose recoil is absolutely negligible for an object with the mass of a 10 foot mech. Naturally this weapon doesn't need to be mounted or held in a mech's arms. In fact an actuated limb would allow for far higher caliber weaponry to be mounted due to the recoil it would absorb.

Lets move on to target profile. A mech has the ability to alter its target profile an IFV does not. More to the point it can take cover and provide its own cover through the use of shields attached to its limbs. In fact a mech could be used as a mobile fortified firing position for infantry easily.

I will discount "cost,efficiency,maintenance" since none of those seem to be a qualifier for the development of current military vehicles/aircraft why should we apply it to potential mechs.

So far every objective arguement brought fourth in fact exemplifies what a piece of shit the armies IFV is compared to a theoretical mech!




I dont think the ability to navigate refuse strewn urban environment is very "nebulous" seems pretty easy to understand concept. I suppose you could reference the Nato Reference Mobility Model for an objective deffinition. But since walking and running robotics is in its infancy it might not apply very well.

Lets see what the US military and various other experts in the field have concluded about the various pros/cons of bi-pedal locomotion to tracked vehicles?

“According to a U.S. Army  Report, only 50% of the Earth’s land surface, is accessible to wheeled or tracked vehicles whereas humans and other animals can access  almost all of it using legged locomotion.  This explains part of the intense research efforts in area" -Logistical Vehicle Off-Road Mobility.” U.S. Army Transportation Combat Developments Agency

"In general, the advantages of walking machines can be classified as follows: better fuel economy, higher speed, greater mobility, better  ride quality, less environmental damage, and greater range of possible terrain"-Bekker, M.G. Off-the-Road Locomotion.  University of Michigan Press

A mech is a vehicle that mimics a humans bio-mechanical movement. And without exception a machine that can mimic human movement is superior in ability to navigate difficult terrain compared to a tracked or wheeled vehicle. Its not a matter of opinion.



Their "roles" isnt the topic its their potential viability as a vehicle. Its the advantages of a vehicle that moves like a human does. Those advantages are obviously present in power armor and a mech. So the distinction is irrelevent when discussing a mechs potential usage and advantages. Since its an argument based on the advantages human locomotion has over tracked vehicles.



Yes, they engaged an enemy based on false information and entered the battle ill prepared for the war they found. Surely no real world circumstances exist that mirrors this.

You just don't seem to understand the advantages that fucking man portable nuclear weapons,space ships,ability to rapidly deploy infantry units to any area on the surface of a planet,body armor,automatic modern firearms,instant communication between units has versus WW2 era technology. Let alone anything earlier. It wouldn't even be fight.

Yes, they are idiots in how they fought. In the meat world humans tend to be idiots also.

Hell, even anime/manga tends to split mechs into Super Robots and Real Robots...and the Real Robots generally need some sort of absurd handwavium for them to be favoured over more traditional military units e.g. "The mecha are powered by small fusion reactors that give off a special type of radiation that makes any targeting system more advanced than the Mk I Eyeball inaccurate"/"The mechs are actually giant protohumans possessed by the ghosts of their first pilots, and the 'armour' is actually control shackles"/"The mecha were created to go toe-to-toe in melee combat with giant humans from outer space". (Name those series!  :grin: )

Super Robots, of course, go beyond the impossible and kick reason to the curb anyway, so logic and reason get to sulk in the back seats while the Rule of Cool drives.  :drill:

And back to the Star Wars vs Star Trek thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4ijDlbvAxw

I am going to help my friend finish banging out a level in WoW, then I am going to come facerape this fucking moron.

I laugh only because I thought the same thing for a while in my teens.  Then I was educated on that whole tongue of fire/ greek god thing.

Oh shit.  I hadn't even thought about that angle.  Consider my ass handed to me.  I only wish I could use age as my excuse here.

Time for super serious internet business. Apologies to the board in general if this comes off a little (or a lot) SirBrucey, because it's going to be really fucking long, but there's just so much bullshit here to dissect.


The fact that one IFV out of however many hundreds have existed is badly designed has exactly what to do with anything, dipshit? How the fuck is any of this improved by putting it up on legs so every asshole in a three-mile radius can see where it is? What fucking parallel universe do you live in where someone would be persuaded by shit like this?


Of course when a track is damaged, the vehicle doesn't fucking topple over onto it's face, does it moron?


Far higher caliber than what? That 25 milimeter? Chuckles, it gets away with being that lightly armed because it's able to tote around half a dozen troops. Unless six guys are disgorging themselves from your ten foot mech, it's going to be expected to carry something a lot heavier. And no matter what they tell you on whatever Gundam fanboard sewer you crawled out from, using complex moving parts to dissipate recoil is nowhere near as effective as having a much wider base and lower center of gravity to begin with. That's on top of the fact that since it's side mounted, your shitty turret (I mean arm) is going to be thrown off to the side with each shot and have to completely reacquire its target every single time.


Great, it can duck. Too bad it can't really move while it's doing this.


AND THEN IT CUD KILL EVERYONE WITH A LAZER SWORD AM I RITE? LOLOL! This shit is the most retarded thing I've heard all day, and I've been playing WoW with the chat left on. So now your manuverable agile mech is carrying giant sheets of fucking armor attached to its forearms, wide enough for the entire rest of the mech to take cover behind. What the fuck would that even look like?

Not only are you grossly exacerbating all the weight and balance issues I've mentioned before, you're loading your mech up with armor that provides no meaningful protection all during normal operation. Great. And hey dipshit, a vehicle can take cover too behind something too, and it won't even need to duck in order to do so.


You're clearly an idiot teenager who doesn't know shit.


Meanwhile back in the real universe, you've been comparing a poorly-designed IFV to some kind of anime faggot fever-dream while talking out your asshole.


Oh fuck you, you generic little fanboy cumwad. I sat around for years watching them ritually crucify little dickhole kiddies like you on stardestroyer. Ooh, the Nato Reference Mobility Model! Man, you must totally know what you're talking about! Whoops, wait, actually you sound exactly like every other little mech fanboy cumwad does when he's trying to sound smarter than he is.


Let's see what other tired arguments you managed to cull off some musty Robotech forum!


Of course humans and other animals aren't made of fifty tons of metal, but that aside, what research? You might want to supply a date with that quote too, since most of this "Seriously, walking vehicles!" crap was proposed back in the fifties and sixties and then proceeded to go absolutely nowhere.

It's interesting to note that googling "U.S. Army Transportation Combat Developments Agency" nets a grand total of seven results.


Oh Jesus, fucking Bekker. I could practically write a script to have this argument for me. Bekker was speaking of four-legged machines, the book was concerned primarily with agricultural and construction applications, he had no actual walking vehicle to base any sort of comparison off of, and he was writing somewhere on the order of half a century ago. I mean grats, some guy in the fifties wrote that walking vehicles would be totally rad on the farm.

Blah blah blah, I'm tired of reading your thoroughly routine "anime wanker trying to sound smart" drivel. All I'll say on the Starship Troopers thing is that it doesn't matter what they're equipped with. They routinely ran up to giant bugs so they could shoot them from ten feet away and be impaled by their claws. Fucking claws. If those bugs could hold muskets it would have been an even worse assraping than it was.

That your arguement of "superior" armor on an IFV is ill informed? Maybe read slower?


Hmmm let me think of how to dumb this down so you can understand this. See footsies and legs can go places wheels and treads cannot. Its not an extremely difficult concept to grasp really.


No when its track is damaged its essentially worthless and requires extensive repairs that can take days. Also due to the very nature of a tread it cant be as well armored as for example a fucking leg. Kind of exemplifying another great weakness in tread based locomotion. Especially as it pertains to military usage.


Entirely possible


Lets see, the thing about an articulated mech is that it can alter its base and center of gravity on the fly. You also seem to be somewhat limited in your understanding of where a weapons hard point could be located on a mech. hint hint not just the arms. Of course a a 25mm cannon is going to be throwing a mechs of that sizes arm out of alignment regardless. I guess you haven't ever seen an articulated cannon on an apache before?


Duck,crawl and climb! Its an amazing machine! And a very astute observation! When someone ducks they cant move! Yet for some strange reason infantrymen find the need to duck and go prone...i wonder why  :why_so_serious:



I keep confusing you without meaning to. Ill try to dim it down some more. Ok we are discussing all possible applications of a mech type vehicle and the benefits of articulated limbs. Now all these possibilities naturally aren't going to be applied constantly in all situations. Ever see a human carry a riot shield before? Do you understand its function and purpose? Now apply that concept to a 10 foot tall mech for the purpose of providing cover for infantry. What it looks like is a big amazing metal man! Think optimus prime if you get confused.



The concept of specialization and being able to alter armament on the fly seems beyond you so ill stop trying to explain. Weight and balance issues are irrelevant to your assertions that any form of mech type vehicle just isnt viable. (more on this later i even have charts!)


Your knowledge of the maneuverability of MBT/IFV is truly astounding.



Clearly  :ye_gods:


Please dont cry its unbecoming.

.

Those sound like some wild times!


Its the standard applied for their development of new robots for various purposes. I know this because i took the time to read about the subject before entering an arguement on the topic. Im sorry if knowledge threatens your star wars induced psychosis.


I sourced the claims thankfully! And i didnt even have to reference the vaunted stardestroyer forums :awesome_for_real:


Irrelevant to your assertion that by its very nature a mech type vehicle isnt viable.


The bio-mechanics of bi-pedal and quadrapedal locomotion isnt something that becomes dated. Current technology isnt near the level required to make it work. Ive provided the source of the information im sure you can research it yourself.


Not everyone can be stardestroyer.com good sir.






Incorrect  in that passage specifically he is talking about bi-pedal walking and running robots. I didn't include the various sources on other forms of legged locomotion since i was focusing on bi-pedal.



Ummm  :awesome_for_real: He is pioneer in the field and his work is used extensively today. Jesus fuck for awhile i thought you were just pretending to be some kind of full blown retard but now its all but confirmed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mieczys%C5%82aw_G._Bekker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mieczys%C5%82aw_G._Bekker) Ya guy sounds like a total jackoff good call.

My primary source of the information was from a presentation by Dr. Gorsich to the US Army about the findings and research of Bekker and Mobility as it applied to current technology.

"Dr. David Gorsich was elected to the prestigious
status of “SAE fellow” by the Society of Automotive Engineers Oct. 9, 2008. Gorsich is the
Associate Director for Computational Simulation and Motion Base Technology at the U.S.
Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) in
Warren MI. 

Fellowship status is the highest membership grade bestowed by SAE and recognizes an
individual’s outstanding engineering and scientific accomplishments resulting in
meaningful advances in automotive, aerospace and commercial vehicle technology.

He has authored more than 150 articles in publications and journals and has supported and mentored
numerous major research efforts in ground vehicle standards and technology.

According to his nomination package, Gorsich has been active in the ground vehicle community for more than 18 years."

The sources i listed where sources he listed in a presentation to the US military. Now im not an expert but for some reason im thinking the Associate Director for Computational Simulation and Motion Base Technology at the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center just might be someone who knows what the fuck he is talking about....

http://tardec.army.mil/default.asp (http://tardec.army.mil/default.asp)


So true, my thoroughly routine supported by fact and the opinion of military design experts is all an elaborate ruse to fool a veteran stardestroyer like yourself.  :why_so_serious:

I dont even like mech anime...

WUA doesn't really need any help here, but I thought I'd bring up a few points that haven't been mentioned yet. Because I fucking love futuristic weapons. I guess it's a fetish or something.

One of the major reasons armor is tracked, other than traction and mobility, is because the vehicles are too fucking heavy to use anything else. Without tracks, it would sink right into the ground and be mired. Let's scale up a bit and imagine for just a second what that would mean for these glorious walking mechs. Even assuming structural construction material that's sufficient to keep the thing together under the rigors of actual ambulation, back of the napkin math says that with the forces involved, anything you try and walk on would be destroyed. Concrete? Gone. Stone? Gone. Not on hard ground? It would be like fighting in ankle-high mud. So, basically, your mobility is complete shit. Needless to say, you would leave huge holes wherever you went as well. Not so good for cities. So no, in the size we're talking about, "footsies and legs" can't even go places that wheels and treads CAN.

As WUA mentioned, one of the most important advances in artillery in the past 100 years has been consistency, not accuracy. The ability to be able to fire a shell, and then put a second as close as possible to the first is of supreme importance. Any gun mounted on anything but a stationary platform fails this test and would be all but completely useless for anything except line of sight or self guided munitions. Having it as an 'arm' of sorts would be even worse.

On armor: A simple surface area required to be armored versus volume of the object shows that mechs are hugely inefficient in this regard and would be quite outmatched by almost any other design. Not to mention being a larger target, obviously.

Smaller is almost always better. The larger a thing is, the less you have of it, and the bigger a target it is, both due to it's size and cost. It's why dreadnoughts died out, it's why battleships died out (well, that and carriers), and it's why no sane army would ever field a multi-ton walking mech - not when you can field power armor for 100 troops or weapons for 1,000,000 for the same price. Hugely expensive materiel is nothing more than a gigantic flashing sign that says "Shoot me for 10,000 points!".

Holy crap.

I wish I hadn't come back into this thread.

omg shit just went down in here.

Alright guys here im going to drop a bomb so get ready!
Floating orbs with machine guns!!
Beat that! no wheels nothing just a floating fucking orb!
Fuck legs this shits FLOATING IN THE AIR!!!!
They will use Vulcan cannons because word has it vulcan cannons feel no emotions!
pffftt.. haha  :grin:
Sorry had to do it..

I think I might need to ignore my own existence for a short while after this.

My example was a 10 foot mech of comparable weight to an m2. Kind of invalidates everything you just said. But in reality the discussion is :

I supported my opinion with fact from experts in the field of developing military weaponry.  Really nothing else to say its no longer the domain of internet tard opinion. A mech would be able to go places a tracked or wheeled vehicle cannot. And its for that very reason various mech like methods of locomotion are being developed. Aslo tracks are not used for mobility they are far less efficient compared to wheels they are less mobile than tires.

Debate over thanks for playing.  :why_so_serious:

My example was a 10 foot mech of comparable weight to an m2. Kind of invalidates everything you just said. But in reality the discussion is :

I supported my opinion with fact from experts in the field of developing military weaponry.  Really nothing else to say its no longer the domain of internet tard opinion. A mech would be able to go places a tracked or wheeled vehicle cannot. And its for that very reason various mech like methods of locomotion are being developed. Aslo tracks are not used for mobility they are far less efficient compared to wheels they are less mobile than tires.

Debate over thanks for playing.  :why_so_serious:

Floating orb would NEVER work its just not feasible in any fashion. Psssst floating orbs what are ya a fucking retard?

NERDFIGHT!

That plus half the armor is apparently hanging off the arms in the form of giant nonsensical shields, for some unfathomable reason. I'm still wondering how six fully-geared soldiers, a pilot, an engine, weapons, armor, and ammunition are all supposed to be crammed inside a ten foot mech when half that height is going to be eaten up by legs anyway. You couldn't fit all that shit in there if it were a 10x10x10 foot hollow cube.

But hey, he can name a particular non-mech vehicle that is badly designed, so apparently he wins. Given that every actual vehicle is a non-mech vehicle, the existence of any crappy vehicle anywhere seemingly must validate the idea of throwing it up on legs.

Anyway, I'm done with whats-his-face here unless he somehow comes up with something better than "someone in the army talked about legged vehicles at some point". Anyone who follows this sort of shit knows that all sorts of flamingly idiotic ideas make it at least that far. That thing about DARPA and mind-controlled sharks? I wasn't making that up.

DS9 really was the best Trek of the post-TNG era. I still like the original better though.

Good god, I'm a programmer and even I understand the physics of why those two things aren't even comparable.  The static forces alone working under the legs is SO much greater than the tracks of a tank it's not even in the same ballpark.  And that's just standing still.  Once you get into movement dynamics, the weight to surface area of the feet alone would do catastrophic things.

hay guise, i herd draguns arent very reailstik?

 :ye_gods:

Lies!

No wait, LASERS man! Like in Starwars  :oh_i_see:

Gryeyes reminds me of this guy (http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/no-us-anime.php).

"I'm sorry Jerry, but perhaps you are not aware of the Nato Reference Mobility Model?"

LOL
*cracks knuckles* Its perfectly feasible under the context of giant robots. However tanks, those things have been around for awhile only waiting to be replaced by cheap to make floating orbs.  :grin:

With lasers

(http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s183/ec1016/black.jpg)

"Meanwhile back in the real universe, you've been comparing a poorly-designed IFV to some kind of anime faggot fever-dream while talking out your asshole. Jesus Christ!"

Aw shucks!  :oh_i_see:

The guys at this forum have periodic 'discussions' about mechs.  Generally the sides line up with the anti-mech guys being the ones who have actually been in the military and operated armored vehicles and the mech proponents having played a lot of video games.  http://208.84.116.223/forums/index.php?showtopic=25827

Yet somehow we got to tanks versus mechs from Star Trek versus Star Wars.  Which one doesn't belong?

Edit: How one gets one out of how I don't know.

We went from JRPG vs Western RPG, to Star Wars vs Star Trek, to mechs vs tanks. All in an eight page thread that wasn't about any of those things to begin with. This thread is a fucking monument to geekery.

FIFY.

Don't forget floating orbs with lasers. I'm going to stand by my floating orbs as the ultimate future death machines. :awesome_for_real:

This thread makes me realise I'm not actually a geek after all.

I would bow down before your geekdom but, um, I've got sore knees. Yeah - sore knees.  :why_so_serious:

Such a silly little guy.  :awesome_for_real:


Your arguement was based on a comparison to existing vehicles and technology. So naturally i used one of similar dimensions and usage as the point of reference. amazing huh?


Better than experts in the field of robotic locomotion who currently work in major military vehicle development? Nope sorry got nothing better than that. But in contrast i somehow view this as a better base for ones opinion than a star wars forum.


I dont think you properly read what my comment was in response to. The refutation was mech locomotion being unviable due to its size as a target to the enemy. My response was a mech doesnt have to be 50 feet tall. That arguement doesnt function well to the scale im speaking of. If your debate is that the mech locomotion is in itself inherently inefficient you would be 100% incorrect.

You're still here? Give it up dude.

But you picked a design flaw in the IFV to hang your mechs are better than non-mechs that has nothing to do with the method of locomotion, target silhouette or any of the actual issues that are being debated. By the same logic you could say that a potential mech might be made out of cardboard and thus will catch fire easily thus all mechs are fiery deathtraps.

Great! So why is there an argument precisely?

You are trying to hard.

Wow.   The Culture Series is awesome.

-post removed-

Screw it, checked the date and the whole thing's irrelevant now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVwbUljGs3g

End of discussion!   :grin:

Fewer.

That's technically the right way to say it, but not how Han Solo actually did :-)

Are you saying that Solo Broke the laws of Grammer as well?

The cad!

I'd think the benefit of addings legs to the tank is fairly obvious.

You can kick the other tank in the balls with them.

That only works if you add balls to the tank, in which case we're back to square one.

Damn you all. I had blissfully missed this thread into a thread.

Here's my two cents anyway :

Modern military development is already proving that you don't really need humans anymore.  Were not there yet but we'll slowly see less and less human pilot and infantry.  It's all going to be  about bombs, rays, bots and medium sized mobile energy sources/mobile carriers.  The next step will probably be a mist of nanobots fighting an other mist of nanobots.  Hell, the first to unlock a functional and self replicating nanobot technology will probably dominate the planet in an instant.

My prediction is that a secret lab will find a way to create a super AI or link a human brain  to a super computer.  The speed of his inventions and researchs will grow exponentially and the AI/cyborg will become God.  :why_so_serious:

So yeah, maybe a couple of years left for a functional power armor.  Mech will never be usefully. Unless you can make a biologic one (Evangelion).

Well i thought that part is rather obvious -- once you have legs on the tank something has to be put between them. Otherwise people would question why you're making a vehicle that looks like it has a vagina, but is lacking breasts.

:pedobear:

Since people already add them to their trucks, we won't have to wait for long.

what have you done.

We still can't fucking make flying cars. Nanobots indeed!


Why would an Evangleiion be any more or less useful than a machine mech? Unless you mean the bullshit AT fields, in which case you may as well start factoring in Jedi and dragon cavalry.

I should point out that while nanobots are cool and all, being that small also makes them very fragile. At any semi-plausible level of technology it should be trivial to kill them en masse with thermal radiation. With their tiny mass they would tend to heat up very quickly. I seem to recall one discussion years ago where it was considered likely that direct sunlight would kill them, though that may have referred specifically to conditions in space.

WUA: Pointing out that all your sci-fi dreams are stupid since 2008.  :oh_i_see:

What about a mech made of nanobots? 

Then they cancel each other out and it becomes completely plausible.

Flying cars would be even more impractical than mechs, without even mentioning the increased fuel consumption when compared to land vehicles.  We would see nanomachines long before any flying personal vehicles of that type.

Flying cars.

Fucking people can't even put their turn signals on before plowing across an intersection, and someone wants to put them all in aircraft? If this ever happens, I'm moving into a bunker.

Amen. I can only imagine the Darwinian population-thinning that would go on around here as the complete fucktards who can't drive worth a rat fuck with 2 axes on a dry empty road are suddenly given a Z-axis. It's raining fucktards, indeed.

Only way flying cars work is fly-by-wire with cars relegated to air lanes based on size, direction headed, and number of people in the car.

In fact, I wish they'd get cracking on dirve-by-wire to prevent the idiocy on highways. Mass transit is the only other option but cars Save Jobs!!1/.1

Like most of this debate, it depends of the context.  Having them in an age of advanced technology where machine beat bio would not make them useful - by then, human soldiers would also be out of the equation.

Near future however : a bio mech could be great for agility, autonomy and stealth.

meh

Flying cars: Yeah, that's why I said there were impracticalities outside of just fuel.  Even assuming you only give licenses to people with a 10+ year history of 0 ground incidents (Including speeding tickets.) you then run into the problem of maintainability.  People don't maintain their cars, so they wouldn't maintain their flying cars either.  Which leads into the next problem, if your car gives up the ghost you're stranded on the side of the road.  If your flying car dies, so do you and hapless ground pounders.

What the hell is a "bio mech" and what the hell is it supposed to be good for? Because "bio" anything is usually right up there next to "nano" and "quantum" when it comes to sci-fi nonsense-wanking.

I'm guessing you're not gonna like the quantum state nano bio mech I was about to propose... :sad:

/rambling

I'm a private pilot and I can tell you your tax dollars are already being filtered into an eventual system to enable more "normal" folk to fly planes (errrr.. flying cars).  HITS (highway in the sky) is already a reality and radar systems are currently being upgraded to provide improved traffic awareness and better automation.  Just the mere fact that planes are no longer using "steam gauges" means ease of transition into quality/safe flight;  fact is, if you buy a new plane these days, you'll be staring at the same computer screens that you are right now in this forum.  Your entire flight plan can be represented digitally (including topography) in front of your eyes... literally flying the plane like you're flying a simulator.  The automation between WAAS GPS, digital autopilot, computer system, and ground-based systems now allows planes to make it all the way to the ground in zero visibility.

Take all this and throw in the fact that there's no way in hell they're gonna undo post New-Deal Eisenhower infrastructure (i.e. an airfield every 20 miles or so) and composite construction (no maintenance needed) is getting simpler and cheaper every day, and you've got the recipe for the average joe to drive 10 minutes to the local field and fly to grandma's for dinner, and vice versa.  Throw in mandatory ballistic parachute recovery systems (the whole plane floats to the ground if there's a problem), portable traffic separation, and 35+ mpg (sometimes better, even in planes that haul ass), and you get more people flying to work.

Next year we'll see the 1st real viable "road-driveable plane," but it's emergent tech. and definitely not high performance by any stretch.  But it's a start.  IMO, there are so many goddamned airports in America that having a plane and a bicycle is usually enough.  And since your fuel and tax dollars pay for the fixed-based operators, most of the time they'll loan you a car or drive you wherever you need for FREE.  Not really necessary to have a "flying car" 'cept to appease American garage egos... you still have to takeoff and land at an airport regardless.

The amount of resources the American pilot is given for free is mind-boggling.  If anyone has the ability to put cars in the sky it's definitely us.  As of now though, these resources are seriously underused and in danger of being scrapped.  And if it werent for the fact that the General Aviation special interest was so powerful I'm sure it would've.

In re. Biomech:
We can now grow pretty much anything over a protein framework (organs, skin, etc.).
Power suits ala Iron Man are already a reality, even ones with neural interfaces that run muscles OR machine... even remotely.
Only a matter of time before the two are combined or someone just goes balls-out and makes a 100% biological mech, engineered from the ground up to fight.

A biomech with the heart of a giraffe would be powerful enough to run a fairly large internal generator...  as long as it's not too big.  Want bigger?  Just engineer a larger heat-pump mechanism.  Either build it or genetically engineer it.  Or, just stick a halfnium reactor in there.  The mech. needs no brain because it's basically a "Golum."  Its operator is sitting in a couch somewhere sipping brandy while wearing an HMD and an EEG.

It can be done.  I'm pretty sure it has been.  We just dont know about it.  :)

Uh...

Um...

Why the hell would anyone want to make one of those?

My 3025 Technical Readout has a picture of a Marauder on the cover.  Who *wouldn't* want to make one of these?

(http://www.sarna.net/wiki/images/thumb/2/20/3025_bmaster.jpg/191px-3025_bmaster.jpg)

In practical terms, Japan and the US have both developed the powered exoskeleton frames that would be at the core of true "powered armor", slap an inch-thick steel sheel around this and you've got Starship Troopers or Forever War combat suits:

(http://i27.tinypic.com/jr79mp.jpg)

Once you've done it for a powered armored shell, turning that into a 50-foot tall avatar of the God of Mechanized Death is just engineering.

--Dave

A biomech (over a standard mechanical mech) is quite literally the difference between the Alien (from the movie Alien) and the mech. suit Ripley wore to kill one.  A biological mech. can heal itself, react more quickly (due to the advantages of chemistry), and only needs to be fed organics to function... as opposed to some exotic power supply.  Cut a limb off and just regrow a limb.  Need power?  Eat a human... etc.

Also cant be seen on radar.  And why risk human flesh in war or anything dangerous for that matter (like running into a burning building, or building a skyscraper) when you can send a stronger, faster remotely operated artificial biological "Golum" instead?

Hell, eventually people will store their own consciousness' in these things; maybe even transplant their brains.  Sounds phreaky, but it's all plausible.

Reason why I'm even talking about this crap is because I actually had a game idea that revolved around this concept.  A player would basically control his own near-lifeless form (a psionic being in a stasis chamber) and that being would then control a quasi-slave biomech race via his/her mind.  There's then a resource/land grab fought out via the Golums and those "controllers" that were ever gotten to were permadeathed.  The UI is actually a next-gen gaming EEG; which you'd (as the controller) use to control the Golum(s).

Anyways, damned thing hasnt released yet...  http://www.emotiv.com/
You can DL an SDK with an emulator though if you want to try it out.

I'm feeling excessively kooky tonite... gotta be the x-mas food/drink  :uhrr:

I want a Robot for Christmas (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=B7QEU4GDrUk&feature=related)

Holy shit who let the nerd bomb off in this thread?

Dave, that's a Battlemaster not a Marauder.

Shit....

Mahrin, that last post of yours was a horrifying failure and you really need to go back and read the last few pages of this thread where every single thing you said was shown to be utterly and completely wrong. I'm just being blunt here.


So basically "biomechs" are about as sensible as bringing back war elephants unless you wank them out with so much "Wolverine healing factor and steel-hard biological armor" masturbatory nonsense that, as Ratman said, you're in the realm of dragon-riding Jedi and shit.

Listen you fucking people, I think everyone's waking up and it's almost time for the Christmas morning ritual, so I'll keep this short: Anime is not realistic, so quit felching this shit up and making me weep for humanity.

(http://art1.server05.sheezyart.com/image/40/405063.jpg)

(http://www.themadhat.com/images/flying-tanks.jpg)

Now stop it.

I don't remember Obi-Wan looking quite that cheerful during his wartime mission to eliminate a rampaging atrocity-committing cyborg general. I mean just look at him. It's like they're riding together to Candyland.

I would love to have one of those chicken-lizards to ride to work.

That's a Battlemaster.

Marauders have reverse-joint legs and twin PPC arms.  They're the Macross male Zentradi battlesuit rip-off.  (Incidentally one of my favorites.)

Can you name the original mech that the Battlemaster was ripped off from is based on, though? (I knew but had to google the exact name and anime.)

No, it gets better actually. Evangelion bio-mechs are grown from angel flesh.

Or something; the whole 'let's use bunch of random names to appear deeeeep' thing never quite compelled me to figure it out.

It's sensible because you would only need to GROW a biomech, rather than build him from diminishing resources (metals, composites, etc.).  And nothing is more efficient than biochemistry.  Eh man, it's either that or just make a Clone Army, but clones creep me out, I'd rather just grow a fresh new being.  Either way, it's more swarm tactics than anything else unless you laden them in armor as you suggest and make them walking tanks.  Technically, a biomech designed to push 100's of lbs of armor is better than trying to build armor that pushes itself with a human inside IMO.

Speaking of Dragons... how long before someone genetically Engineers one?  hmmm... make a good x-mas present

I don't think anything here is really being "proven" here, so much as it's just people explaining different opinions on an extremely vague and hypothetical machine.

As far as I can tell, your argument is that because we don't have the tech to make it work/worthwhile now, it's never going to be feasable, and positing hypothetical tech which would change that is cyborg unicorn territory.  Which is a fine position to have, but it's not exactly GAME OVER for everyone else or anything.

I mean, come on, we're talking about grafting your brain to a giant, radar invisible cyborg-golem made of bacon... You can't argue against that.  Nothing can.

All you're really talking about, once you strip away the anime giant robot fetish terminology, are genetically engineered supersoldiers. Which I suppose is a viable idea, so long as it can be done economically, and so long as you don't make them forty foot tall bullet magnets just to satisfy said fetish.


Wrong. Building an armored combat vehicle shaped like a human isn't stupid because we don't have the technology right now, it's stupid because it's stupid. It's not really any different than insisting that submarines would be better if they were shaped exactly like whales and propelled themselves with mechanical fins, or that airplanes should flap their wings like birds.

I don't think anyone here is insisting that a mecha can "out tank" a tank, though.  The point behind it would be that they can do things a tank can't do, while the whole "flapping airplanes" thing doesn't provide any advantage over fixed wing aircraft, as far as I can see.  If it did, and we could hypothetically get them to stay in the air, then sure, why not build a few of them?

There are very few things, if any, a giant humanoid robot could do that wouldn't be better served by something else. Hence the 'stupid for being stupid' part.

I know it's a freaking Battlemaster.  The significance of "Marauder on the front" is that only the first two printings of the 3025 TR had one, it was one of the designs that got sold to both FASA and to the Japanese anime series, along with the Phoenix, the Wasp, and a few others (including the Battlemaster).

(http://www.sarna.net/wiki/images/thumb/7/72/TR3025_Front_Cover.jpg/250px-TR3025_Front_Cover.jpg)

They were not "Ripped Off", the artist sold them once in Japan and once in the US, and without specifying limitations on the license, since the Japanese sale came first they had the winning claim.  Later editions had an Atlas on the front cover, and for a while the disputed designs were not present, eventually they returned with new artwork.
(http://www.battlecorps.com/catalog/images/FAS8603.TR3025.gif)
IOW, I bought my freaking 3025 TR in 1988, and it was from one of the first two printings (I believe it's a first edition, but the second printing did not have a separate date and it's far from mint so it doesn't matter).  And I know that mecha are completely impractical as war machines, and if you did build a walking war machine you'd go with something with 4 or 6 legs, not something that can get kneecapped and immobilized with one good shot.  Which is *not* entirely sci-fi, the Army is currently experimenting with automated walking transports to carry supplies and ammo for light infantry units (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpBG-nSRcrQ).  Going from that to a weapons platform (manned, remote, or automated) *is* just a matter of engineering.

(http://brianscache.com/unseen/tro-goliath.jpg)

(http://brianscache.com/unseen/tro-scorpion.jpg)

I just like the look of the Battlemaster better than the Marauder, and it was a humanoid design rather than a digitigrade bug mech like the Marauder or Locust.  I was geeking out when most of you punks were in diapers and Bill Gates was a mere millionaire.

--Dave

Precisely. Not to mention the huge pitfalls inherent in large lifeforms.

For example, the larger you are, the greater the impact when you fall over facedown in the dust.

There is no way possible for a wheeled/tracked vehicle to carry the amount of armor and weapons equivalent to what a mech carried.  If you read the lore they express that as a viable reason for why they went that route (once they had the power supply to run them).  Fact is, a 'noid type armored "vehicle" is inevitable if they wish to achieve a certain level of armor/armament (escalation is a fact, so do the math).  You just cant put that much weight on tracks or wheels; aside from being ungainly and less maneuverable in tough terrain, the ground wouldnt support it, nor would the tracks/wheels themselves.  And the natural progression for an exosuit soldier is to a larger mech... till you find a happy medium.

Also, how many legs it has is besides the point.  Simple fact is, they're gonna have legs (if they dont fly... or both).  Wheels are for newbs.  :why_so_serious:

What the FUCK?

Physics fail.


Physics fail.

A good point has just been made in the leg vs no leg debate.  For all the talk about the inherently inferior design of leg, can't you see how this with guns :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpBG-nSRcrQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpBG-nSRcrQ)
(http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/7954/robotmulejpgxw7.gif) (http://imageshack.us)


has a some advantages over this :

(http://img383.imageshack.us/img383/6219/swordrobot2vb0.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)

Have they fixed the noise problem on that thing yet?  Good god, I can still hear that droning, "Hey we're over here, SHOOT US" quasi-locust noise.

No, not really.

Exactly what is this footage of a three-foot tall experimental test-bed of a logistics mule that isn't near being a finished product, isn't being considered for anything, and which isn't even intended to carry weapons by its designers supposed to have to do with anything?  Call me back after it's developed into a finished system, deployed, and racks up a positive service record. (It'll have to be a lot faster as well as able to cross ditches and such. So far all I see is something doing a slow and noisy job of navigating terrain a kid's go-kart could handle.) Then I'll conceed that legs can be useful on a small-scale logistical unit, which again is all this is.

Actually if you can get a walking machine to reliably climb stairs, you might want to use it as a drone to clear buildings and such. Assuming the whole drone thing ever really goes anywhere serious beyond aircraft, since the modern American "spend a billion dollars to avoid the bad PR of casualties" design ethic may be relatively humane, but it may also end up an anomaly, historicaly speaking. The Chinese will just throw a couple of guys in there, and if they get shot, well that's their job. The couple of guys will also do a better job than any robot.

Anyway, what the hell does any of this have to do with mechs? That thing is a DARPA science project that even in the designers wildest dreams isn't meant to trade fire with anything.

(http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/e05b3a1a05.jpg) (http://www.freeimagehosting.net/)

Legs are inferior in every aspects.  Don't you dare use a functional prototype in a argument about fictional mech.  Having a remote controlled  mobile legged turret that can go through mountains and jungles is completely useless.  China Zerg is unbeatable, their leg power is cheaper that any leg you could ever put on a robot.  We should all use wheel chair and 5 inch armor!!!


RRAAAAAGAGAGAGARAA!!!!


Also : move to politic?

CONDITIONER IS BETTER
IT MAKES THE HAIR SILKY AND SMOOTH

WUA is right. Walkers are stupid not because we can't make them work yet but because if we could make them work then the engineering advances would still be better employed in conventional vehicles. From a purely engineering viewpoint walkers are enormously inefficient because the walking motion requires power to move the lags in ways that don't directly correlate to vehicle motion. Raising and lowering the leg takes power and doesn't actually make the vehicle move forwards. Then there are all the other issues that have been pointed out - high CoG, small contact area to weight ratio, inherent weakspots that can't be easily protected and so forth.

As an example of how engineering advances don't make impractical vehicles any more practical, consider aircraft. With enough  thrust you can make anything fly. Anything at all. We can construct engines that are powerful enough to take pretty much anything we care to build into the air. We still make aircraft look like aircraft despite that. No flying mechs or aircraft carriers in the sky. Because it still doesn't make sense even though we *can*.

Until we can build walkers, we won't know that for certain. We won't know anything for certain until/if we've got a 50 foot metal man stomping around. I'm quite sure the wright brothers didn't have any idea that modern aircraft would be anything like what we have today. They just built the damn thing. Anyone see any practical applications in their flying machine?

I tend to agree wtih WUA on the feasability of mechs in the real world. But I'm not going to pretend that I can predict the future. Much less get in a "That's stupid!" shouting match over one of the oldest internet arguments.  :grin:

Especially when the "prototype" is in fact a three-foot-tall unarmed and unarmored experimental logistics mule that some ill-informed wanker is trying to apply to a discussion of multi-ton armored combat vehicles. I mean shit, get back to me when you even have an actual prototype to point at. Protip, a prototype and experiemental unit are two entirely different things. The YF-23 was a prototype, the X-29 was not.

I mean it's three feet tall, not intended for combat, and not even anywhere near the stage of being called a "prototype" by anyone who knows what the word means. What sort of reaction did you expect? Hint, DARPA will fund anything (http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/13/darpas-zombie-shark-trainer-looking-towards-non-military-applic/).

EDIT: I think we should have giant combat unicycles. Just huge 20-foot tall unicycles going around owning shit, because.. uh.. agility. Here is my prototype.

(http://media.ebaumsworld.com/mediaFiles/picture/253785/420298.jpg)

Concepts of scale, practicality, and even intended purpose are all irrelevant. Someone believed in it enough to build one, so it's a "prototype" and thus totally viable.

I never realised that this could generate so much heat. I mean, mechs are cool and all, but it seems fairly obvious that they'd have no practical use on a real battlefield - just from looking at basic physics.

You mean basic physics that aren't taught to most High School students, and aren't a requirement for most college students?  Those basic physics? :grin:

We're not having the same argument.  I agree that giant mech are badly designed tanks. However, an improved mule robot could be useful with the weaponry used on a SWORD robot.  Legs could be useful if you are not talking about an heavy armored vehicle - it makes no sense has a tank replacement.

I'm having a laid back discussion on theoretical application of robotic legs and other sci-fi technologies in future warfare.
You're having an heart attack over a point pretty much everybody agreed on 3 pages ago.

Maybe you should post official rules for discussing "your" subject in this derailed thread before you go berserk over anyone not being educated enough to discuss it...  I'm not asking money to start up a mech factory in front of a board of investors for fucksake.

Not with confidence.  It wasn't a show I've seen, and if I cared enough I know I could refresh my memory with a few minutes of research.  I want to say it's the same one the Revell line got the Condor and Griffen from.

Sadly, most of my favorite 'mechs were the ones from other shows and got pulled from the game.  I'm glad I was into the 3025/3050 era so I got to play with the cool 'mechs.

Edit:  Yes, Dave, I know the story of FASA and Battletech.  I used "ripped off" because they were originally part of another piece of media, not because of illegal usage.  Your word choice was confusing on the Marauder/Battlemaster, since you said one and showed the picture of the other.

Right but you haven't put forward any of these advantages that you think a walker gun platform could have over a conventional vehicle. There are massive and numerous disadvantages that have been pointed out, you need to explain what the potential advantages are - especially now you're throwing the 'well obviously it won't be armoured' into the mix. An unarmoured combat drone is what most forces would consider a liability.

It can go everywhere, it even jumps if you watch the video.  Imagine what it could do with 10 years of development.  Add hands once the technology is there and it could probably climb trees (with an other leg system of course).  It's a great way to move a turret.  I'm no expert but it also seems you could put more armor/ammo/fuel than on a flying drone (I know -  less than on wheeled one.). 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww&feature=related)

It also increases the NAF (Net Awesomesauce Factor) by over nine thousand! You can either have an effective military, or an AWESOME military. You can't have both. This thread proves it. Duh!!! The submarine is another invention that didn't have very clear military applications. You would be insane in the 1600's to think you could use it to fight wars.

My bad. Physics was compulsory when I went to school.

The submarine has always had a clear military application. Ships that are for all intents and purposes invisible? Which navy wouldn't want that? It didn't work in the 1600s because the technology wasn't capable of supporting the concept, not because no-one was interested. By contrast walkers are a terrible concept and not simply an idea we can't do properly yet.

Basically, if we can build walkers that work well, we can build tanks that work better.

(http://spiral-zone.com/bandai/proto3.jpg)

The future of warfare.

Yep. Fang of the Sun Dougram. The Battlemaster was called the Bigfoot. Revell got the rights and called them Robotech before the cartoon came out.

Better at what? Walking?

Walking doesn't win wars.

This conversation is too nerdy to get myself involved in.

Here's you people in your tanks: "Vroom vroom! We will come upon you rather slowly and shoot you when we get there!"

Here's me in my giant robot: "I have jumped over your tanks and kicked them over. Except these three here which I shall juggle."

Garriott would be happy that a discussion about him has turned into tanks versus mechs.

Did the tank crew forget to bring ammo for their giant gun or something?  :oh_i_see:

The mech cut the sabots mid air with it's giant jet-powered katana. Duh.

Tell that to the slog foots. The doughboys in the trenches. The duckfoots. #1. piece of advice to the solider in Vietnam was to take care of his feet.... and stuff.


Too late. The mech discussion devours all, like talking about Star Wars Galaxies.

This is a shit argument.

But then, the entire tank vs mech discussion is built on shit theorizing anyway. >_<

You know you want to just leap in, Schild. You know it.

Why were the tanks out there alone, unsupported?  Hell, these days you'd have had missiles hitting your big building-sized radar blip from 30 miles away before you even saw the tanks.

Why am i getting involved in this.   :uhrr:

Because my mechs took out your radar and missile sites before we sent in the tanks.

Just wait until we deploy the jedi dragonriders!



 :drill:

Not a chance. This is far too into nerdgasm neckbeard Jain Zar territory.

So (assuming you THINK wheeled is better than mecha), why not design a 10 meter mech that rides a 6 meter giant Segway!?  Do you know any TANKS that can ride a Segway?  I think not.   The mech can just jump off and hide behind a 3 story building if needed also.  And when the Segway runs out of battery he can still walk.

Regardless, in an urban environment the Mech would win over the tank anyways.

Yeah, the mech will have a much lower target profile after it falls through the streets and lands in the sewers.

Not if the tank can fly. And hover. And Boost. And Overboost. (http://www.armoredcore.net/accb/report/wall/ac_27.jpg)
Seriously, FromSoft settled this debate ages ago.

(http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Dome/6171/Marvel_Super_Heroes_vs_Street_Fighter/Selecao/Top_MechGouki.gif)

At least it can get out once it does.
Tanks = stuck

I must refrain from commenting further, as I can no longer see the line between sarcasm and ignorance :(.

This made me look up the history of submarines on wikipedia. I thought this was interesting:


Yeah, they pretty much figured out the potential of the submarine right away. It just took a couple centuries for technology to catch up.

Dare I ask, how?


(  :why_so_serious: )

sigh. well, assuming fictional fantasy technology which accomplishes stuff that no current technology does (essentially, in the mechwarrior world, they can make resilient and powerful 'muscle strands' out of densely packed electroactive polymers) it provides a more 'actionable' weapons delivery platform that can more swiftly and nimbly point its guns in your direction, and fire.

of course all this mech combat conceptualization is also based on a ready dominance of sensor technology that makes combat way more linear and asymmetrical techniques far less reliable. What works today (potshots from buildings, etc) has nearly no viability in the mech world, especially given the utility and reliability of fantasy sensor suites and fantasy ablative armors. Mechs just play a centralized role in bringing heavy firepower to the enemy.

They are also it should be noted rarely 'indie operators' in warfare, typically paired up with tracked and hover tanks, air vehicles, fantasy aerotech, and a surplus of infantry.

WSAD strafing duh

How is having a side-mounted turret that can't even really rotate 360 degrees more nimble?

Man, you'd think a nerd fight would at least compel people over to wikipedia.

An actual scenario would never be about one tank vs one mech. Some have mentioned it here already, so here are some details:


Now you need to wonder: all of that vs a mech.

Myomers are supposed to be faster than hydraulics or mechanical actuators like pistons or electric motors. But they're linear. They have to be anchored like human muscles. (They were originally invented to be used in cybernetic medicine for replacement limbs) So combined with the neuralhelmet, a mech can move as fast and precisely as an infantryman, while carrying as much weaponry and armor as a main battle tank.

Of course myomers are as real as flying cars and nanobots right now, but that's the Battletech justification.

One of the earlier point was that if you discover a faster way to move a gun around (like myomers) you could simply put it on top of a tank.

If your goal was to make a tank with a faster turret, you'd be better off designing a better turret and not an arm.

Having my arm mounted on my side doesn't prevent me from pointing finger of said arm at pretty much any point around me.

I'd guess being possible to simultaneously rotate multiple components by smaller degree can be faster than one component covering the same rotation entirely on its own. E.g. an arm turning by 90 degrees while torso is doing 90 degree turn on its own is overall faster than turret rotating 180 degrees. Stuff like that. Can the tank practice similar maneuver by using its threads to rotate the hull at the same time it rotates the turret, and would it be as fast as the mech moving around on its feet? No idea.

If a tank gets a critical hit from any side it hits the crew.  The 'mech has several non-fatal critical locations and only a 1/36 chance of hitting the head.  Plus a crew of one versus four, so I could field four 'mechs to your one tank given equal numbers of soldiers.

Duh.

This thread is the worst thing on the internet.

If a tank had the equivalent armor and weaponry a heavy mech had, the tank would be too big to maneuver in an urban environment.  And like I said before, oversized tracked vehicles dont do well on surfaces not designed for them.  Sure, a heavy mech may put potholes in the concrete, but a tank of that size would likely chew up the entire road and eventually dig itself into its spindles - rendering it immobile.  You'd have to have a ridiculously large track to make it work and then you're creating just way too much friction and weight to overcome... which means you need more power and more size just to crawl along the ground at a snails pace, also making you a sitting duck for anti-armor infantry and air.

So yah.  Physics fail?  I think not.  As "off base" the mech concept seems, there IS a logical reasoning to it.  Simple fact is, if you've got fusion technology and elastic myomers (which we have right now actually, just not perfected) - just build a mech.  Let the tanks serve as support.

I've bolded the flawed parts from which the rest of your faulty logic derives. A mech wityh a higher surface to volume ratio whould need more armour than a tank capable of fielding the same weaponry. As for the mobility thing, a tank will have a larger contact area and a lower weight than the mech, if anything is going to have mobility issues it's the mech.

Also 'tracked vehicles don't do well on surfaces not designed for them' are you serious? The whole point of tracks is to enable movement over difficult/soft terrain.

You just proved my point.  The overall amount of armor a mech carries transferred to a tank would render the tank a slug.  A tank needs one good hit to disable it.  A mech needs many.  To equalize the overall armor value, the tank would need way more than the mech.

You've missed the point.

A Mech would need more armor to equal the same equivalent armor protection of the tank. That isn't a good thing.



A Mech is not any less susceptible to 'one good hit' either, if anything it's more susceptible. Last I checked, a tank can't trip and fall flat on it's own face.  :oh_i_see:

No I didn't. You simply fail at comprehension. The total amount of armour isn't important, the amount of armour in a particular location is. Armour in one place doesn't help when you're being hit in a different place. Requiring more armour weight to have the same level of protection is not a benefit. It's kind of the opposite of a benefit.

Also tanks can survive multiple hits, depending on what hits it - that's the whole point of fielding a tank in the first place. If anything penetrates a tank's armour and is destructive enough to wipe out the tank, why would it not have the same effect on a mech? Multiple locations bollocks aside that is. Tanks have different locations too. So why would your heavier, less manoeuvrable, less efficient vehicle with a larger target profile be better than the tank again?

Tank's suck at awesome wallpapers  (http://ppc.warhawkenterprises.com/intshots/warhawkbrutapunchlg.jpg)  :grin:

That's the glory of this thread.  Take nothing seriously and use your new found power to sow havoc.

This is kind of the last place I'd expect to find a 'who would win in a fight between Optimus Prime and ...' thread to be honest. It is interesting seeing some people's inner crazy leak out though.

We used up our pop culture death matches on page 5 (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=15275.msg554230#msg554230).

Exactly. This is an .. discussion, we'll call it, between WizardDidItTech™ and things that exist in real life. The myomers provide superior mobility and targeting actualization to anything else, but they can only maneuver in a limb-like fashion. In addition to being a superior fantasy mobility platform, they are powered by a superior fantasy energy source. If this myomer technology existed, we would field mechs, and everything else that a wizard gave us. The only question is if we would ever actually get them as big as a hundred tons or if they would effectively cap before that point.

Higher armor class, duh! He just said as much.  You'll need a THAC0 of -3 to hit a mech!

The LAHAT missile was developed by Israel more than 15 years ago, can be fired as standard ammunition from any 105mm or 120mm gun, has a range of 6-8km when fired from the ground, and has a 0.7 meter margin of error for accuracy. (Boom, headshot!) Battletech-vs-modern is a joke.

yeah this is a joke all right

but a mech can get up close and melee the tank :)

Ach! I don't have the picture of Optimus Prime punching out a Gundam.  :sad:

P.S. This thread is made of Awesomonium. Which is used to power mechs.

And attack helicopters obviously made tanks obsolete. Just after nukes made all conventional warfare redundant.

Mechs don't work for the same reason that King Kong doesn't exist. Scale something up to double height and you octuple its volume and often its MASS. Like giant insects, their armored ectoskeletons rapidly become either so heavy that they cannot move or so fragile that they cannot support themselves, much less handle the stresses of rapid movement. Size gambles awy motion efficiency and there is a threshold of diminishing returns which, once an animal-shaped robot grows beyond it, no amount of power will provide the speed and agility its smaller forefathers posessed. I'm sure if somebody did the math, you'd find no mechs would be much more than five meters tall.

Wheels, and treads (their more surface-area-weight-distrubtion-friendly siblings), simply scale better than legs.  If you need more mobility, take to the air in either fighters and bombers. If you just want bigger artillary, mount them on the practically frictionless platforms we've used before: railcars and ships. If you want human bodies and reaction times, I recommend INFANTRY. It's effective, time-tested, and dirt cheap.

Mecha sure look awesome. That is their sole redeeming feature.

That depends on the GM though. Some put the storytelling over the dice rolls and override the latter as they please. :awesome_for_real:

(http://www.velcroblog.com/images/braves07/sandcrawler.jpg)

Not yet but it's getting close.  The MBT has a role in asymmetrical warfare but I wouldn't want to be near one in a war between two conventional powers, especially if air superiority hasn't been established.

As an aside, most modern main battle tanks weigh just upwards of 60 tons, which puts them in the same weight class as "heavy" battlemechs. Somehow they don't dig themselves into the road and bog down. Hell, at the end of WW2 the Germans had several working prototypes of a 180 ton tank (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_VIII_Maus#Operational_use) that was scheduled to enter production. They were expected to be too heavy to cross most bridges (so they gave them snorkels for driving along riverbeds, seriously) and they weren't very fast given the engines of the time, but they certainly didn't dig themselves into the ground. Large enough tracks can distribute a LOT of weight.

(http://www.angelfire.com/ak4/ratman/OptimusGundam.jpg)

Now I feel better.

I may have missed something relevent on previous pages. Sorry, I skipped to the end...

As I understand it, for mecha to "as useful as infantry" in an urban environment, they have to be much lighter weight than the titans of Battletech and most anime. The pounds per square inch pressure of tons of metal on the smaller surface area of a foot is the critical limitation. Comparing a mecha's feet vs. a tank's treads is like comparing guys with and without snowshoes in snow. With tank treads, weight is distributed over a much larger surface area. A 60-ton mech is not just "leaving potholes in the pavement" - it's probably going to sink into the road with every step. And probably into most other ground that isn't very rocky as well. Don't even attempt to wade a river; you're just asking to get stuck in the mud.

For mechs to enjoy the advantages of mobility that humans have over heavy armored vehicles, they have to accept the limitations of lighter weight and armor.

Arguably the most "realistic" mecha ever animated are found in Gasaraki, a series by Ryousuke Takahashi (Armored Trooper VOTOMS, Flag) and Goro Taniguchi (Planetes, Code Gaess). Here's an ambush of a tank formation at night (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4b-haPATmI) (note: the Americans have no idea mecha exist).

What about a mech torso mounted on a tank?  :grin:

I'm totally going to design a tank where the crew sits in a smaller lightly-armored cabin... er... head... on top of the turret. The Army will be all over this shit. The crew will feel so much safer knowing they present a much smaller and harder to hit target than if they were down in that huge heavily armored turret. I mean a guy could get critted from any direction down there.

 :awesome_for_real:


Given that a mech requires heavier armor in comparison to a conventional vehicle just to achieve the same level of protection, a mech that sacrifices armor in order to keep weight down is going to be very thin-skinned indeed. Anime videos of mechs pirouetting out of the way of cannon shells aside, being able to juke and twist like a human being doesn't stop... well... humans from getting shot all the time. Bullets travel fast.

EDIT: I'm generally of the opinion that you never have enough armor, at least not when fighting a well-equipped enemy. I've heard noise over the years about the Army wanting to phase out tanks almost entirely and just use vehicles like the Stryker. The first time we fight someone with access to state of the art RPGs, that idea will go out the window.

(http://www.mahq.net/MECHA/Gundam/msgundam/rx-75-4.jpg)

(http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l40/bmahfood/Blog%20Photos/T2_Hunter_Killer_Tank.jpg)

Nearly believable!

(http://xs434.xs.to/xs434/08520/past_vs_future133.jpg) (http://xs.to)
 :uhrr: vs  :drill:

Stormwaltz's video just proved Windup's point.  A single tank loaded with 30+ of those overpowered mech's missiles could have achieved the same results at a much better cost.

One of the cooler abilities of the Gasaraki mechs - to set them apart from tanks - was that they could climb buildings. (Thinking back on it, they didn't really do much that infantry couldn't have done just as well). Unfortunately, the series became fairly nonsensical by episode 4 and ended up with no real conclusion, aside from the existentialist bullshit. At least, I think it was existentialism... it was some sort of philosophic musing, in any case. Seems to happen to a lot of (mecha) anime.

Good god was Gurren Lagann refreshing.

Ehh to Battletech's credit it also did introduce Battle Armor and Protomechs. The only reason Protomechs are fanciful is due to their interface.

Uhh... I haven't read the rest of this thread yet having just discovered it, but there is an actual history of Dragon Quest manga out there and according to people who have read it (and sadly not scanlated it because I want to read that shit!) Dragon Quest is Ultima's tile graphics and top down game design plus Wizardry's command driven combat system.  Only accessible and easy.

Hopefully I will see this information later on in the thread.  God Schild, your views on what are good games are incredibly shitty.  Saying NES RPGs were better than computer ones of the same era?
ARE YOU FUCKING HIGH?  Or just completely  :oh_i_see: ?

And now I have (mostly) read this whole thread.  What a beautiful snowflake.  AND WHY DIDNT ANYONE FUCKING TELL ME IT WAS A THREAD ABOUT MECHA GODDAMNIT?
I'm like the biggest mechtard in this forum!

For the record: When I play Battletech my forces are usually tanks and hovercraft with light mecha for support.  Schrek PPC Carriers and Gabriel Hovertanks will fuck some shit up.  (The Gabriel is like the Savannah Master, only faster and its medium laser is turret mounted.  :grin: )  Im a big fan of the Goliath since quadraped mechs don't fall down very much.  They weeble and they wobble but they don't fall down.  Plus its another design lifted from Fang of the Sun Dougram and I like Dougram mecha.  They are cool.

Yes giant robots are unrealistic and silly.  But like boobs their flaws don't keep me from being very fond of them.   :heart: :heart: 

Power armor is the future though, especially once the Emperor makes Space Marines to wear the armor wielding rifles that are effectively non fragmenting grenade launchers.  (At least till you get to the Heavy Bolter and Hellfire ammo.  Good for Tyranid hunting!)

So to summarize: Giant Robots: silly but they are awesome anyhow.  Can tanks throw entire galaxies like they are throwing stars?

I THINK NOT BITCHES.

They've already developed fully automatic handheld rocket launchers for troops

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfZSYL2Q4sI (halfway through)

As for power armor;


 :awesome_for_real:

Random, but if I'm ever rich I want to own a Scorpion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FV101_Scorpion). They seem like a fun collector's vehicle. Small, light, fast, and they run on gasoline. At only 8 tons they weigh in at fewer pounds per square inch than a man on foot.

How about when we are all rich we circle jerk each other by pooling our money to buy each other mechs? PPCs aren't cheap and my Marauder requires two. :grin:

In order to be viable weapons, mechs need super magic technology.  They need to be lighter, faster, and tougher than the things we have today, and if you really want to go for the whole deal, they need to be able to fly.  In your average mecha jerk-off scene, you'll see a fifty-foot-tall robot come zooming in, pick up a tank, use it as a club to beat the shit out of another tank, blow up about thirty other tanks with eye lasers, and fly off again.

Now, we may well at some time in the future have awesome flying eye laser robot technology.  But by that point, odds are that other technologies will have made all human-piloted vehicles obsolete in war.  We'll just open the window and toss out a few self-guided mini-nukes that'll zip on over to the flying robot and destroy it while we eat our dinner in pill form.

Don't forget the flying cars made of nanobots.

I like how flying tanks are a well-known joke around here, but someone (not you, Kitsune) earlier in this thread put forward flying mechs with a totally straight face. Also, that BattleTech wiki someone linked earlier is bad for me. As in, I could end up spending half a day just reading shit on there. Anti-mech fanatic that I am in nerd debates, I love me them games/books.

EDIT: Who do I need to kill to get a MechWarrior: Mercenaries game that's totally open ended? I loved MW4: Mercs right up until I got a really good unit going and it was over. I want endless random missions to pursue where I can have an effect on a simulated war, damnit.

Gods, I know.  I would kill for that game.

You pretty much described Chromehounds' online mode.

Fuck, I'd kill for a new mech game in the same vein as MW4, period.  (No, i'm not buying a 360 just to have Chromehounds.)

Not particularly worth it anyhow.

So what we need is Falcon 4.0 in Campaign mode with Mechs.  (mods anyone?)
Or WW2O with Mechs.
Or even Massive Assault Network or Civ4 converted to Battletech.

Agreed.  Its an ok mech game, but its no Mechwarrior 4 by any means.  And online play is stupid and pointless. 
(Made worse now by the fact there probably aren't many people actually playing it online anymore.)

£25k (http://www.milweb.net/classifieds/large_image.php?ad=45290&cat=1) for a Scorpion or you can get one of these (http://www.milweb.net/webverts/45462/) for about the same price. The Sabre is a Scorpion chassis with a 30mm cannon instead of the 76mm main gun. If you're feeling adventurous, you can get a non-runner (http://www.milweb.net/classifieds/large_image.php?ad=45309&cat=1) for about £15k

Whaaa?!

Oh yeah, when I'm rich nobody had better cut me off in traffic ever again.  :drill:

Most armoured vehicles up to a certain size are road legal, because they're going to spend 98% of their operational life being driven on public roads.

Random question : would using continuous tracks on van solve or at least help the damage they do to our roads?  I'm guessing it's more expensive than wheels and tires?

Generally yes, as the weight of the vehicle would be spread over a larger contact area, thus minimising the pressure on any given area of road. However metal treads tear chunks out of tarmac and rubber treads wear very fast.

Mechs need to be able to fly.  See, comparing them to tanks is looking at them the wrong way.  Rather than being gangly, tall tanks, think of them as aircraft that can come to a full stop on the ground without a landing strip and deploy all of their weapons at will in the air or on land.  In that light, mechs are a much more viable military vehicle, more useful than helicopters.

Of course, there's still the magic technology to contend with, and the fact that by the time we could make flying robots we could just as easily have flying tanks. (http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/518QS87XN8L._SL500_AA240_.jpg)

There's so much wrong with this that I don't know where to start. Suffice it to say that what you're describing is essentially equivalent to bolting monster truck wheels onto the bottom of a Harrier jet, only even more awkward and cumbersome.

Now I know what I want for my birthday!

Aren't flying tanks just A-10's and Helicopters?

Interestingly enough:
(http://www.geocities.com/eqdoktor1/tanks/ChristieRolfeAction.jpg)
(http://www.geocities.com/eqdoktor1/tanks/ChristieRolfeDetails.jpg)

The Soviets bought up the various patents and came up with the Antonov A-40 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_A-40).
(http://www.geocities.com/eqdoktor1/tanks/AntonovA40.jpg)

Its not a joke as it may seem as a lot of Walter Christie's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Christie) ideas formed the basis of arguably the best tank in WW2, the T-34 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-34).
(http://www.geocities.com/eqdoktor1/tanks/T-34.jpg)

NO WAI THE PANTHER WAS THE BESTEST TANK OF WWII :awesome_for_real:

Even though it never saw production, I still like my Maus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_VIII_Maus). Along with the Me163 rocket fighter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_163) it's the ultimate expression of the "Dude quit bitching about what's practical, this will be AWESOME!" design philosophy that plagued the Germans.

If they coulda built the ubermech, they woulda. Practicality be damned in the face of the master race!

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v425/ww2042/concepts%20axis/ww2042german_mech.jpg)

When the hell did my brown name and "User Error" title go away? It could have been weeks, I just now noticed. But now that I have noticed, I miss them.  :cry:

Just stopping by to say hello. :grin:

Nice thread.

It's recent. Only just noticed it now, too.

They'll be sorry when they see what I do to get it back.

"HOW I MAEK POAST WERK?!"

Careful, they might do something screwy and make your name a dark grey.  Or be really mean and make it almost the same white, so it's different, but no one notices.

Responding to a bunch of pages as numbered points:

1) Neither Kazutaka Miyatake nor Shoji Kawamori, or anyone involved with Macross sold or allowed FASA to use art assets. FASA stole every mech and dropship design in the original rules from Macross, Dougram, and Crusher Joe. Half the stuff in Aerotech was stolen as well. FASA got the art under license from Twentieth Century Imports, a toy importer, who claimed they had the right to license them. However, a bit later when Carl Macek and Harmony Gold got Macross for Robotech from Tatsunoko they also got the rights for everything but the Japanese import model kits. As far as I know, the rights to Dougram or Crusher joe stuff was never really dealt with, but from all appearances TCI's only support for being able to license the stuff is that they never thought it would be licensed by the companies that actually owned them.

2) Power Armor is the future of absolutely nothing except maybe for police and science fiction/games. There's no way to put enough armor on a suit to protect against missles, large calibers, or high velocity weapons. Even if they didn't penetrate the armor or make a big chunk spall off the inside and bounce around, they don't have any way of protecting the wearer by absorbing and dissipating the energy of a 1kg projectile going from 2000m/s to 0m/s against the suit. You'd open the suit up to just find goo.

3) Mechs are fucking stupid for real world use and Battletech rules are horrible, horrible shit - especially regarding vehicles. If for whatever reason you want to pretend that x inches of armor in 6 pieces with mostly exposed vulnerable and [relatively] delicate joints operated by motors and hydraulics requiring a myriad of gyroscopes to operate is somehow more robust than the same amount of armor in a one piece slab, you're a fucking retard.

4) The coolest German tank of WW2 isn't the Maus, or even the E-100. It's the P-1000 Ratte Landkreuzer. At 1000 tons, it's main turret was a modified Gneisenau class battlecruiser turret with 2 SchiffsKanone C/28 naval guns. "Secondary defenses" were multiple Maus turrets and antiaircraft batteries, probably Ostwind turrets. It's armor was to range from 200mm to 180mm thick to make immune to anything but another naval gun, and instead of a single track on each side like a normal tank, it's weight rested on three 1.2 meter wide treads on each side. It had a ground clearance of 2 meters and was tall enough to ford rivers rather than use bridges. Krupps proposed it in 1942 and Hitler loved it so much he ordered it into production immediately. Unfortunately, noted non-retard Albert Speer went "WTF?" and scrapped the thing in 1943 after only the turret had been built (supposedly). There was a P-1500 Monster Landkreuzer as well, but I don't think it even got started on and it was really nothing more than a railway gun on a giant Wespe looking tank.

Speer scrapped it?

Wtf?  He was an Architect. Why the fuck did he get a say on anything military, much less the ability to scrap a project?  :uhrr:

Holy fuck. I'd never heard of this, and I was a bit of a WWII buff for a while. This thing is fucking insane!

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/P1000.png)

ps. Epic thread for geek factor. I wasted most of a workday on it today, particularly on the SW vs. ST sections. Well Done all!!!

EDIT: Oh and that tank is insane in the "OMG Hitler has syphilis "  not "OMG so cool".

Coolest tank of WWII IMO was the Panther. Just your every day tank, not a Tiger or King Tiger but more advanced than previous Panzers. The Russkis had some good tanks too but the Panther is just the epitome of tankiness.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/PantherTankColor.jpg)

Pictures! it needs pictures!

Pictures taken from here (http://strangevehicles.greyfalcon.us/Landkreuzer%20P1000%20Ratte.htm).
the P-1000 Ratte Landkreuzer (without sub-turrets)
(http://www.geocities.com/eqdoktor1/tanks/ratte3.jpg)

Model with sub-turrets:
(http://www.geocities.com/eqdoktor1/tanks/rat2.jpg)

The planned P-1500 Monster Landkreuzer was a Schwerer Gustav (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav) 800mm Rifled artillery cannpn - the largest rail gun ever deployed, mounted on a tracked chasis.

(http://www.geocities.com/eqdoktor1/tanks/monster1.gif)

Albert Speer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Speer) was Hitler's architect but he was also the Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich, by all accounts - a pretty competent one at that. The obvious problem with all of the above is that basically these multi-million Reichsmark machines can be destroyed by any old P-47 Thunderbolt or Hawker Typhoon wandering by...

Such a killjoy though to cancel the projects... :uhrr:

Obligatory Nazi mecha picture:
(http://www.geocities.com/eqdoktor1/tanks/laufer.jpg)

PS:
T-34-76 manufactured 1940-44: 34,780
T-34-85 manufactured 1944-45: 22,559
Various self-propelled guns built on the T-34's chassis: 13,170

Total Panther production 1942-45: 6,000 give or take a few hundred (+392 JagdPanthers)

"Quantity has a quality all of its own" ~ Joseph Stalin

I'd argue that if you're forcing the opposition to use heavy weapons to kill your infantry, you're already ahead of the game. The armor doesn't need to be invincible. If it makes you immune to small arms while letting you carry around an extra hundred pounds of gear, that's good enough.

That's assuming it doesn't need recharging every 2 hours, doesn't weigh so much you fall through floors, isn't so bulky you can't fit through doorways, doesn't break down every 3 days and leave you standing there like a statue, doesn't cost three trillion dollars, etcetera.

But those are matters of technology, not horrible conceptual flaws. It's a perfectly viable concept in that you can look at the idea of powered armor and go "Gee that would be useful if you had it and it worked as advertised." As opposed to looking at a mech and going "Wait, what was even the point of this?"

I think the line can be blurred sufficiently with power armor, depending on how light. If it's no more than small arms plating with a self-contained environment to protect from chem/bio, plus enough 'power' to move itself and maybe a little gear to extend it's range versus normal infantry, as WUA said, it's at least conceptually possible to be used in small strike force or mobile units.

(http://www.dragonboltstudios.com/Images/Rifts/Rifter7_SAMAS.jpg)

(http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Lair/4553/ultimax2.gif) <--- one of my all time favs.

^^^ Except the game system they are from sucks utter ass.

Here is a tale from a former writer for the company showing how it was and by all evidence, still is:
http://spleen.mearcair.net/rifts/coffin.htm

Yep I guess the question is how much the defense dept is willing to spend to safeguard each soldier and what sort of function they would perform to justify such heavy outfits. And no, putting on these suits will never make them more mobile. It'll slow them down. So Heavy Assault is the only probably role for this. Making a 'light' suit ala Crysis is just a dream. I won't get into their Speed/Strength/Cloaking tech, but their tech alone with shielding is already quite iffy and to picture guys clad in those nanosuits walking 'as fast as' normal infantry would be quite hard.

Well they're slowly trying out new exoskeletons, which I guess is what comes before power armour. I saw a video of an experimental full body exoskeleton. It looked clumsy, but it successfully let this skinny guy lift heavy weights and move around pretty freely. Put some military funding and such behind and I'm sure they'd come up with a decent concept.

But hey, when they don't even want to spend money on the best body armour out there, I dount they'd waste money on developing this kind of gear for the everyday soldier either. If it's not economically viable, it's not happening, which is probably why we'll not see power armour any time soon, even if it would work flawlessly in some theoretical instance.

(http://xs434.xs.to/xs434/08013/marine272.jpg) (http://xs.to)

 :drill:

Jesus, fucking Warhammer. Here's a concept drawing from DARPA.

(http://www.nationmaster.com/wikimir/images/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f5/Exoskeleton.gif)

Of course when motors/batteries get good enough to allow this sort of shit, fifty or seventy years from now, the suits our Chinese overlords use to conquer us probably won't look anything like this.  :awesome_for_real:

Unless the Koreans take over the world when we swtich to video games to settle global disputes.

(http://www.angelfire.com/ak4/ratman/futureofwarfare.jpg)

(So in a way, there will be mechs on the modern battlefield!  :drill:)

The Darpa suit kinda looks like the Halo armor. Which I suppose isn't terribly surprising.

Just to backtrack a page, man was MW4: Mercs ever disappointing. A straight and almost entirely linear campaign with cockstabbingly horrible FMV cutscenes that filled you with admiration for the last couple Wing Commander games at least bothering to line up some recognizable B-movie talent. Wait, did it even have cutscenes or am I remembering regular MW4? Anyway, the point is, taking away my awesome merc unit just because the stupid storyline ended was bullshit.

Even on the fucking SNES Mechwarrior I could just refrain from picking the final story mission and do random ones while buying shit and tinkering with my mechs.

I want a merc game that takes some cues from Sid Meier's Pirates. I want a big sandbox universe where empires compete with each other whether I'm doing anything or not, where I can choose where I fit in, with a few story-related goals I can either pursue or not. I want to go from a band of scrubs in rusty light mechs shooting at periphery bandits to a behemoth personal army that's practically its own nation-state. Or maybe I want to be the bandits. I want the unit to grow until individual employers can no longer house the whole thing and I have to acquire a base, either by earning my own planet by serving a house, or by taking it from someone. I want a whole strategy game in itself (albeit a relatively lightweight one) attached to my mech combat game.

I want at least 11 other friendly mechs under my command besides the one I'm riding in. I want to push three keys to tell the heavy lance to take that hill, or whatever. I want the missions to be epic, where I'm shooting the shit out of shit while simultaneously practically playing an RTS as I order my unit around. I want the timeline to advance. I want the Clans to invade. I want someone to pay someone off or buy the rights to something so we can have Phoenix Hawks and Wasps and all that stuff again.

It would be the greatest vehicle combat sim/shooter/business management sim/RTS/strategy game ever made! I would murder all of you to have it!

Braarrghhjdzh56lkvhehz09

[/rant]

I disagree. That article also read like a bitter x-employee. Its seemed to have little to do with the game system, and everything to do with someone upset that the creator was so involved in the creation, imagine that.

No, Siembeida IS like that.  They just released a zombie RPG.  About a year ago their house magazine Rifter had a preview of this game by the freelancers who pitched the idea. 
Not a standard zombie world, has some magical bits to it, kind of unique,  Time goes by they submit the final manuscript.  Siembeida decides he doesn't like it, and rewrites 70% of it, making himself the lead writer and the other 2 get minor credit.  He writes this book IN A MONTH with no playtesting, and as he admits to NOT EVEN BEING A ZOMBIE FAN watches a few zombie flicks and maybe reads Max Brooks' books. 

And Palladium's game system is pure unplayable, unbalanced SHIT. 

Quite playable, quite fun, great game worlds.... Unblanced, sure...but whats a SDC guy doing to do VS a giant mech. Nothing.

Dude. Fairies have MDC. A little fairy girl can punch an engine block and disintegrate it. And you can hit her with a rocket launcher and she'll take no damage because she has MDC instead of SDC/hit points. That, and you have to tweak the existing MD/MDC damage values if you want any fight to take less than 18 hours of rolling dice and yawning. It's a retarted system. And I'm retarted for getting dragged into a RIFTS discussion. Fuck you all.

I like the idea of invincible fairies.  :drillf:

You finally did it, you magnificent bastards. You went so nerd that even I don't know WTF you're talking about anymore. I salute you.

Ninjas and Superspies and TMNT were the only iterations of the Palladium system that really worked. Rifts and the original Palladium are horribly, horribly broken. Anyone pretending otherwise is delusional.

The higher level of ambient magic gives magical creatures like fairies and dragons mega damage status. It makes them comparable to the high tech lasers and rail guns and power armors that have mega damage values as well.

Everyone's super-awesome in RIFTS, especially whatever's in the latest supplement book.

I know.  The one time I got to play Rifts I was a baby dragon.  I was actually pretty weak compared to the others, but since I found a gauss rifle during the session and the only attack I made with it popped a cyborg's head off with a really lucky roll, I had fun.  I could see all kinds of abuse possible with a system that combined SDC and MDC though.

For those playing catch-up...
The Palladium Robotech RPG had both SDC and MDC. The description of SDC (Structural Damage Capacity) was a baseball bat, MDC  (Mega Damace Capacity) a tank. Your SDC weapon will never hurt the MDC armor.

SDC = level one gnome rogue
MDC = level 80 tauren warrior

It wasn't that the entire Rifts system was horrifically flawed or anything. It gives us a very nice example of why game systems need to be playtested before printing them. Also, proofreaders for the love of ~insert deity of choice~!!!!!

Helps to make the pictures match the description too. And not include so many glaring contradictions and discrepancies as to make a 10 years olds head explode from righteous indignation that this "Rifts" nonsense should be printed when his "Pretty Pink Pony Patrol" was rudely rejected by gaming megacorp number 12.

This is funny :

Where is my Tank Slicing Graphene sword? (http://sites.google.com/site/grapheneswords/)

Erm, 200 times, according to the bloggo-nonsense. Stronger being the magic word to mean indestructable via epic hardness, rigidity, and an inability to shatter. Diamonds shatter all the time, but this stuff is magic.

If it exhibited the properties described, how would you even put a handle on it? Fail.

(http://dl-client.getdropbox.com/u/99701/ds9%20facepalm.gif)

Everyone knows spaceships > tanks&mechs.

Impervious, even to lasers  :awesome_for_real:.

Put it this way, Palladium's system is so ass but I love Robotech so much, I am making my own RPG with a VERY loose manner of compatibility just so I can quickly import stuff over.
(Though given Palladium's history, if I DARE post actual conversion formulas they will send me a Cease and Desist.  Here.  Have some fun.  Read the top of the forum stickies about their IP and web policies.  Its some of the most moronic shit I have ever seen!  http://forums.palladium-megaverse.com/viewforum.php?f=1&sid=1da44b1788628561f6df216acf16cade  )

And I am sorry, physics says even Mega Damage stuff can be hurt by things like hitting the ground or getting rocks in a jet fighter's intake.

Then again, according to RIFTS a guy in a 10 foot tall set of power armor can have 770 MDC while Macross/Robotech's MAC 2 Monster weighing in at around 300 tons only has like 425.  In the old 80s version of the Robotech rules it was like 325, so they boosted it a little!   That makes perfect sense.  Giant fuck off walking goddamned Metal Gear is my bukkake bitch artillery robot with 4 howitzers and 6 heavy missile launchers should have less armor and structure than some asshole in a shiny Glitter Boy suit.

Only in Kevvy's world.

... Do i even want to ask how does a baby dragon pull the trigger of gauss rifle?  :ye_gods:

Good lord, so much rifts hate here. The game was never intended to be balanced except by book. If your GM mixed books, and was simply a by the rules guy (As in , if it dosn't have a chart, you cant do that), yeah i could understand why you would say it was imbalanced. However, if he was worth his salt the mixing would have been considered, and managed...including role playing other alternatives to simply shooting your way out of every situation.

This who "its not balanced" is 100% on the shoulders of your campaign maker, or DM/GM. Typicality you also do not mix SDC and MDC campaigns... But if you do, its a smattering of one or the other, unless your GM thought it was his goal to simply "win" or "defeat" his players, and NOT to tell or create a compelling story.

I have loved rifts for quite a while, yes, its unbalanced, but WHO CARES, like i said its up to your GM to pick and choose whats he will included in any given campaign. The combat is also NOT as tedious as some make it out to be here, in fact DnD has more tedium than Rifts.

Anyway, you guys are welcome to your opinions, i for one have had many great times with the system, and i consider it one of the best. Mainly i ran Robotech, and Basic rifts with the occasional mini-arch using one of the supplement books.



There is falling damage. The last part depends on your GM.


Different dimensions, different technology, different metals, Different GAMES ETC...  Take a peak at the conversion book, or run a campaign to upgrade the Robotech stuff to coalition tech... (in fact there is mention of it in the conversion book).

As for the zombies (thats for letting me know there is one now!)

Here is the write up:

Take note, SDC campaign, kevin is last on the writers list. Its your choice if you want to mix it with things for any other book, and/or pull it into rifts itself. Also, a bunch of the Robotech stuff has been getting updates, i think because they have the license again.

I don't hate RIFTS. I played the fuck out of it when I was P&P gaming. But it took some house ruling to get the rules to not suck suffiently to have fun. It's a great beer & pretzels game because it's so simple and straightforward. In a way, it's like the WoW of paper RPGs. If everybody wanted me to GM, and I didn't have anything ready, I could just whip out the RIFTS books and let them blast away at shit.

If your GM doesn't suck, then your GM doesn't suck, and it don't matter what system you're using. And it's no excuse for the Palladium system - out of the box - sucking donkey balls.

Good, i guess we do understand each other then. heh. But i still disagree that the system its self sucks out of the box as you said. But i guess this is where we will just have to differ.

They had the ability to shapeshift into human form for a limited period per day, if I recall correctly.

In Robotech: Shadow Chronicles there is a man carried rifle that does the same damage as the main rifle on a 30 foot tall Alpha Fighter, and in burst mode the rifle does MORE.
That is Palladium in a nutshell.

I miss this thread, so...

They're looking for investors! Quick, get in on this winner before it's too late! (http://www.mechaps.com/about/)


They only manage to mention anime in the very first sentence, and the big fat weeaboo factor only goes up when they reference "Japanese animated works" a few sentences later.

I... words fail me.

 :awesome_for_real:  +  :ye_gods:

Once Broughden signs off on this, I'm in. 

Man this site is a fucking GOLD MINE. All their PR appears to consist of going to anime conventions and holding up little toy models of mechs they would like to build if they weren't a bunch of weird deluded supernerds.

(http://www.mechaps.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=90&g2_serialNumber=3)

Here's an example of what they've got so far. Behold some of what they call "actual mech parts" because apparently they will totally someday be used in a mech.

(http://www.mechaps.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=41&g2_serialNumber=2)

Their "booth girl" I'm going to link because the picture is kind of huge. I don't want to sound like "that guy" and this chick does have two very large.. uh.. attributes going for her, but c'mon. That's not a booth babe, that's somebody's sister.

This bipedal design is excessively top-heavy! (http://www.mechaps.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=163&g2_serialNumber=3)

Oh and then there's their internship program (http://www.mechaps.com/team/interns.html).


Sign up now, and be a mech pilot!

I can imagine some of my old friends from high school being really fucking excited about that. And me wanting to slap them. Ugh.

I don't know what amused me more; the Lego 'concept shots' or the big pile of I-beams labeled 'mecha legs'.

Garriot shoulda put his money into this! Why be the first civilian astronaught, when you can be the first mecha pilot.  :awesome_for_real:

It appears well suited for symmetrical docking.

 :ye_gods:

That is a classic BOBFOC

I'd give a pack of dorky college kids like this a pass if they were collecting junk in vain hopes of building a solar-powered car or something else vaguely plausible or useful. But jeez... "as seen in Japanese animated works". Fuck you wapanese scum.

How did I miss ten pages of awesome?  Great retitlement, whoever it was.

I've seen those guys at Anime Expo.  Sort of.  Never arsed myself to go to their panel or showing or whatever, cause I couldn't be bothered to miss something that might really be interesting.  Each time they seem to claim to have something to show, I talk to someone who went later and there's practically nothing.

Like I said, if they were being super serious about trying to build something relevant or useful, I could give them a pass even though they're clearly out of their league. By the same token, if they were like "We're gonna build a mech out of junkyard parts because it'll be awesome, woo!" then I could let that slide as well. But these guys have a combination of super-serious attiude and silly objective that makes me hate them.

I laughed and laughed and laughed as I looked through the mech parts. I-beams! So that's what mech development to this point has been missing!

I will completely believe someone if they tell me this is just a drinking club for nerds that needed a project to get a Uni grant. That's a lot more likely than "we will build a working mech".

I want one: Biomech Tank (http://www.cgnetworks.com/galleryimages/14341/biomech.jpg)

To be fair, they've also found an easy way to get Speaker's passes to anime conventions.  Which are pretty much Golden Tickets to the better parties (what that would be at an anime convention, I don't want to think about too much).

--Dave

My understanding is they involve a lot of the hot cosplayers and top shelf booze instead of what you can get a bum to buy you.

So it's come to this. After everything that's already come before, we're discussing the "in-crowd" of the anime convention circuit. Fuck yes. This is a great thread. I'm excited to be a part of it. Everytime I think we've hit the limits of geekery, we break right through to a whole new level. Let's keep going. I want to look back on the part of the thread where we talked about dorks pretending to build a real-life mech so that they could get into the anime parties with the hot cosplayers, and think "Yeah but that was back before the thread got REALLY nerdy!"

You know, it's not as effective a derail if you point it out you twit.

How the fuck do you "derail" a thread like this? This thread hasn't had rails since the second page. It just keeps getting worse and worse (better) no matter what anyone does.

(http://xs435.xs.to/xs435/09025/star_wars_40k883.jpg) (http://xs.to)
For the Emperor!  :drill:

That is so incredibly awesome.

For a mecha to be useful it most move at mach 3, fly, and be controlled by thought only. Oh yeah it most have twice the armor of a tank with 3 times the fire power and use 1/3 of the power while being just as easy to repair. When someone manages to build that we'll be so neck deep in nukes, wars will be fought on top of giant radioactive lizards which have wings and breath fire.

Yeah, I threw out my toaster when I found out that it couldn't cure leprosy and disprove philosophical solipsism.

Ironically, mechs WILL dominate the world... but they'll be small, not big.  e.g. nanites
And in the biomech sense similar, but throw in superbugs too.

There is ONE other inevitability for mechs being used and that's the Singularity.  Once "the machine" gets smart enough, it'll want to walk around... so something like Terminator-tech MAY actually come to pass.  Wtf is a robot really??  It's a damned autonomous MECH.  So it's only natural they'd evolve into something more complex.  If they'd be evolved enough on a wanton level (perhaps emotions), they'll naturally want to mimic humanoid action (even if it's not as efficient)... so you'll get a mech.  Kind of like data trying so hard to do everything "humanlike."  If those autonomous mechs are big enough, they'll inevitably carry PASSENGERS and you'll really have a traditional mech in that sense as well.  And when they go to war?  It's Battletech time bytches!

Furthermore (another piece of the Singularity), once we fully integrate the human mind into the machine we'll routinely transplant either our brains/nervous systems or even simply our entire "beings" into a humanoid construct.  A Golum of sorts.  For all intents and purposes, they'll be mechs... not tanks, or cars, or giant Pleos.  But, full-on walking mechanical humanoids of all shapes and sizes... including the military ones, which will be large and have guns.

Even if it's tough for some of you to fully grasp tech. that far advanced, in the SHORT term we'll have to develop the traditional mech. (the typical anime or Battletech mech) in order to reach that level of "mechtitude" anyways.  But even that by no means will be the end of mech development, as I've already posited.

So IMO, Mechs are inevitable.  And the dorks will have their day in the sun.   :grin:

edit:
A tank's biggest boon is infantry... so if mechs fashion themselves after 'noid infantry, then I think it's pretty easy to figure out which is better.   :grin:

You aren't even remotely trying anymore.

Buh?  The more likely scenario for your autonomous program is that replacement limbs/ body parts are developed to a point you can call people cyborgs.  Then you just go full out and make a body from scratch and insert a brain or consciousness.  My way at least has a practical reason for its initial development.

Not to mention, how would you create the blade?

Also.

Mechs are here, and they're taken on scary form!

(http://cache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/2008_pt2/29_17251943.jpg)

I'm going to go off on a limb and call that "not battlefield ready."

It's art (http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/sep/06/europeancapitalofculture2008.design).

Redneck Spidermech (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz9kZh8PNVM)

A real Chromehound (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtovadY4lYk&feature=related) and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2OksmJthZc&feature=related

Neogentronyx (http://neogentronyx.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1)

Bipedal machines are the future because they are more agile. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dKPkL2oto0&feature=related)

Bipedal machine does backflip! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PMw023nS48&feature=related)

I want one of those robots, they're adorable  :heart:

Silly; that's why they plug an angsty teenager into these things.

About that - what is up with the angsty teenager thing? Are people just trying to cash-in on the success of Evangelion?

No friggin' idea. Presumed it's simply because that's the target demographics. Sort of like you have Pokemon focus on the 10 year olds.

ob :hello_thar:

Ah, forgot about that. That's one of the reasons so many anime heroes are teenage kids. One of this season's anime shows has had the protagonist changed from a college guy to a high-school guy to suit Japanese tastes. Personally, I'm terribly jaded by the generic anime teenage hero; most of the anime I actually like (eg, Ghost in the Shell TV series) features a cast of competent characters.

I would argue that bit about competence, but I honestly don't recall enough for specifics.


I failed the thread  :ye_gods:

This is pretty much why I don't watch much anime anymore.  It seems as if in the Mangas and the Animes that anyone over the age of say, 25 is useless and incompetent unless they have a beard and look like they are getting ready to join a ZZ Top tribute band.

Women who are married or unmarried in their 20s constantly get called old maids, and the really elderly are either sexual deviants or are endless founts of wisdom.  Nothing else.  I guess the Japanese equivalent of AARP has half its magazine devoted to zen wisdom, the other half involves how to steal young women's underwear.

The fact that much of this youth worship is done for two equally lame reasons (one being creepy the other just sad and generic) makes it even more annoying.  Its to give the creeps the underaged fap fodder they so desperately crave, and the other is the general YOUTH RULEZ FUCK THOSE ADULT BASTARDS THEY JUST DONT KNOW HOW MUCH YOU KIDS ROCK! thing that so many cartoons worldwide seem to do.

Which is bullshit because even as a kid as long as the show was cool I didn't care if the main characters were kids, teens, adults, or shit, old fogies. 

A generation wasn't traumatized over Optimus Prime dying for being a radical kid.  It was apparently like losing a surrogate DAD for quite a few folks!

The anime youth thing is blatant pandering.  I do not like pandering. 

He got better. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq1_6D9QS9Y)

HE can guard the base, Guard, The, Base.

I think your hatred is a bit misplaced. Why you might ask? While your grips with anime is very right, your reasons are quite off once put through the lenses of perspective. The problem is a bunch of 30 somethings trying to make material for an audience half their age. You know the middle school - high school segment of society, the marketing sweet spot. In the states if you ask some guy to make a show for that age group your probably going to end up with dawson creek or one tree hill 9/10 times. Over there (jap) they get...well I don't actually watch any BAD anime lol. If you want to know any examples of good ones (that you can watch legally) look up Cowboy Bebop, HunterXHunter, Berserk, Fullmetal Alchemist, Ghost in the Shell, Death Note (if your in the mood for homicidal teenager), YuYu Hakashou. I'll recommend Naruto up until the time skip.

Cowboy Bebop yes, Ghost in the Shell, okay.

Fullmetal Alchemist? Wat?


Maybe we didn't see the same show, or the version I saw was extremely edited or something with terrible dubbing (always a possibility) but... what?

Anime is shit. Now over to Jane for the weather.

Fullmetal Alchemist too me anyway was a classic. I watched the SUBed version 99% of the time so... Ghost in the Shell, its not a anime I like in particular but some people may think its genius so I recommend it anyway.

God that never gets old.

"Then that's who you'll be from now on! Shitpiece!"

I still think THIS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww) is much more impressive than pretty much anything I've seen come out of Japan.

Skynet is coming.

We already mocked the robogoat like 5 pages back! WUA called someone a fucktard and stuff, keep up people!



FullMetal alchemist to me was a whiny kid who put his whinier brother into a suit of armor. I couldn't stand more then a few episodes.

See though, that's the difference between a Japanese robot and an American one. The Japanese robot is cute but dies horribly in a slip-and-fall accident. The American robot is ugly and makes horrible noises, but you can walk up and fucking kick it without knocking it over, and even when it does stumble it gets up.

Take that, Japan!

That's because the Japanese robot wasn't piloted by a Angst ridden teenager. DUH!

Angst ridden teenagers + robots =   :hello_kitty:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qVM63nq5g0

Just wanted to post my favorite Megas clip in the mecha thread!  :awesome_for_real:

Awesome thread, I read the 15 pages took me approximatively half a day Did not want to work anyway  :grin:

Megas was a glorious show. It's pretty much what this thread's collective nerd energy would produce in cartoon form.

Are dreadnoughts powerarmor or mechs?

According to 4th edition, they're vehicles.  :awesome_for_real: And motorbikes are not vehicles.  :why_so_serious:

Mechs.

But only little ones.  About 10-15 feet tall.  Same basic height as a light/medium tank in 40K, but much slimmer profile.

OK the Dreadnoughts broke something inside.

I submit my design!

(http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/74932a62d8.jpg) (http://www.freeimagehosting.net/)

Design A : Simple tank looking mech.  The unarmored legs are inside the armored skirt.  It's a well protected mech and you don't have to waste precious armor on the legs.  It can go everywhere.

Design B :  Same as design A but with added wheels on the legs for fuel efficiency and added mobility on flat ground.  Also help preserve paved road.

Design C :  If you want a real mech - add some arms (in red) - they are great for caring giant S.W.A.T. shield.

Design D : Same as C but with a lightsaber.  It's a great to counter to the S.W.A.T. shield.

Design E : Not showcased but you could add some suction cups on the legs and the mech could climb enemy building.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwnjGSCDrQk

Was that Optimus Prime's voice?

Yes, yes it was.

Typecast as a giant robot.  Wow, that's a very specific niche.

A niche of awesome!

Actually, regarding voice work, between Peter Cullen and Frank Welker (Op Prime and Megatron from the original cartoon series) they've been in damn near every movie evar.

Check out their IMDB profiles.  :drill:

Just watched some, so I'm resurrecting this thread to talk about it: One of the things I always liked about Big O was the fact that it successfully avoided (or outright mocked (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIbYfPbGc0Y)) a lot of dumb anime stereotypes. Roger Smith is a grown ass man who wears a sharp suit, drives a big black sedan, and doesn't angst about shit. When Dorothy gets kidnapped, he's just "Norman watch the house, I have to go get Dorothy." Then he goes and gets her. When he finds out that he's actually a fucking clone, something that might give anyone an existential crisis, he's got one good "It doesn't matter how I was born, only how I live!" speech in him and then it's on with business.

(I love that one little shot of him obliviously getting a new tie from Dorothy while the giant transformation sequence goes on behind him.)

Big O is good stuff. I love when Norman gets out the assault cannon like it's part of his duties as a butler to kick ass.  :drill:

 

I loved the hell out of Big O.  I wish they'd gone through with making the third season. 

Did they really call their giant robots Mega Douches?

Mega Deuce.. as in two.

I like your version better, though. It makes the show even more awesome.

I could never get past the art style.  And the little boy with a giant robot.

Megadeus, actually.

I think you're thinking of Giant Robo. Big O didn't have a little boy with a giant robot... I don't remember one anyway.

Oh, maybe.  I don't think I liked its style either.  So they kind of blend together.

Big O was "What if everyone in Gotham City lost their memory and Bruce Wayne was given a mech?"

And it was TOTALLY FUCKING RAD.  Even if the time I tried to watch it Adult Swim ended it after the 25th episode, leaving quite the cliffhanger and pile of confusion.

But it is basically "Less angsty Batman gets a giant robot".

Come on, look at Big Duo here. How can you not love an Art Deco land-air mech with fucking propellers on it?

(http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e121/GrimDysart/bigduo.jpg)

It's like they heard someone like me ranting about how a flying mech is horribly impractical, and just said "Fuck you, bam, here's some propellers. Now what, bitch? Sit the fuck down before we have a guy shoveling coal into it!" They blatantly don't give a damn as long as it's cool.

Not to mention the theme song is a rip on Queen's Flash Gordon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdA6iRk94Hc

 :rock_hard: