Transformers: Dark of the Moon

[K9]

[Ironwood]

Swoop is always getting his ass kicked. Poor Swoop.

That's because Swoop is mentally deficient even by dinobot standards.

The brontosaurus was Sludge.

This turns out not to be the case.

[Merusk]

I was going to ask you to explain, then I went and read Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swoop_(Transformers)

I don't know if that was applied to all the comics or just the UK ones.  Over here, he was pretty much an idiot on the show and I always saw him as the comic relief.

[Ironwood]

Probably just the UK ones.  He had some really good stories as he was the intellectual of the dinobots and pretty much never 'fitted in'.  He also had an intriguing backstory with a rivalry with one of the Predacons that turned out to have a twist in the tail that proved Grimlock NEVER considered him an outsider and appreciated him being the cleverest of them.

[HaemishM]

Zod should not be spouting this sort of nerd minutiae. 

[Ratman_tf]

Probably just the UK ones.  He had some really good stories as he was the intellectual of the dinobots and pretty much never 'fitted in'.  He also had an intriguing backstory with a rivalry with one of the Predacons that turned out to have a twist in the tail that proved Grimlock NEVER considered him an outsider and appreciated him being the cleverest of them.

But no one gives a shit because the UK Transformer comics all sucked ass. Ask some middle aged dork about the transformers, and 9 out of 10 mention the cartoon. The 1 in 10 is the guy jerking off in the corner to "Matrix Quest" and pretending that toy robots are shakespear.

[Fordel]

How does a tank have superior armor and firepower than voltron? he's a giant lion mecha who I believe also has some ranged capabilities. You gotta be more specific than just "a tank"

A tank of similar tonnage, built with the same level of technology.

Yes but voltron can fly which would give it far superior mobility. Can this tank fly?

Why wouldn't it?

[WindupAtheist]

Given that Voltron has no apparent means of lift or propulsion but still manages to fly like a motherfucker, sure, why not flying tanks? If you have that sort of technology, fuck it, flying everything.

[01101010]

Given that Voltron has no apparent means of lift or propulsion but still manages to fly like a motherfucker, sure, why not flying tanks? If you have that sort of technology, fuck it, flying everything.

Except scorpions and spiders please.

[Ratman_tf]

Given that Voltron has no apparent means of lift or propulsion but still manages to fly like a motherfucker, sure, why not flying tanks? If you have that sort of technology, fuck it, flying everything.

Except scorpions and spiders please.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I'm just saying we need to be internally consistent here.  Voltron and what-ever techno-magic powers he has are already established.  You can't just make up some super-tank with an S on it's chest and call it superior, at least bring up a reference of where said tank exists in fiction or start with a base tank and expand on it. 

[Fordel]

Except that IS the entire argument? Same level of tech and a tank is a superior weapons platform to a giant robot.


You won't find many examples in Sci-Fi because practical and efficient military designs and weapons make for boring ass stories for the most part.



"Observe the action as we launch hundreds of cruise missiles from over the horizon at targets we'll never see with our own eyes."
"Read about the epic tale of the 6 hour long artillery bombardment on radar emplacements!" 

[Ratman_tf]

Except that IS the entire argument? Same level of tech and a tank is a superior weapons platform to a giant robot.

But tech isn't organized into clear "levels".

[Fordel]

Not sure if serious. 

[Ratman_tf]

Not sure if serious. 

That's the fun. 

And tanks can fly anyway.

[SurfD]

I'm just saying we need to be internally consistent here.  Voltron and what-ever techno-magic powers he has are already established.  You can't just make up some super-tank with an S on it's chest and call it superior, at least bring up a reference of where said tank exists in fiction or start with a base tank and expand on it. 

I probably shouldn't do this, but I give you The Bolo.   Very detailed, well thought out "Super Tank", with a small series of Sci-Fi books to back it up.

[WindupAtheist]

I'm just saying we need to be internally consistent here.  Voltron and what-ever techno-magic powers he has are already established.  You can't just make up some super-tank with an S on it's chest and call it superior, at least bring up a reference of where said tank exists in fiction or start with a base tank and expand on it.

I'm saying that if whoever built it had expended that level of technology and resources on an idea more sound than "a bunch of robot cats that fly and turn into arms and feet and shit and combine into a robot dude with a sword" then the result would have been orders of magnitude more capable.

I probably shouldn't do this, but I give you The Bolo.   Very detailed, well thought out "Super Tank", with a small series of Sci-Fi books to back it up.

That's almost as bad. An entire army's worth of resources sunk into a single super-vehicle that's expected to be able to defend a planet singlehandedly? Oh but it's got the tired old caveat of "No really in the future armor and defensive systems get really really really really good and weapons never ever ever really catch up, so my big stupid penis-substitute contraption isn't the huge flashing NUKE ME, WIN LOTTERY sign to the enemy it should be!"

[SurfD]

I probably shouldn't do this, but I give you The Bolo.   Very detailed, well thought out "Super Tank", with a small series of Sci-Fi books to back it up.

That's almost as bad. An entire army's worth of resources sunk into a single super-vehicle that's expected to be able to defend a planet singlehandedly? Oh but it's got the tired old caveat of "No really in the future armor and defensive systems get really really really really good and weapons never ever ever really catch up, so my big stupid penis-substitute contraption isn't the huge flashing NUKE ME, WIN LOTTERY sign to the enemy it should be!"

Eh, I have never actually read any of the Bolo Books.  My brother has, and he thought they were pretty good (which is the only reason I remembered the name, cause he used to tell me about them).  But a quick skim of the Wiki site seems to indicate that the Bolo tanks went through a signifigant number of iterations as weapons / armor technologies improved, starting with basic Projectile weapons and ablative armor, and evolving right up to super advanced self sustaining particle beam weapons / multi tier armor systems.   I believe they actaully stated that very late model Bolo's were actually capable of takeing a nuke hit and shrugging it off mostly unharmed.   No idea how, but the guy who wrote the books tended to stay away from "handwave magic technology that just works" kind of stuff, so it must have sounded at least as plausable as anything you would find in any decent sci fi book.

[WindupAtheist]

I believe they actaully stated that very late model Bolo's were actually capable of takeing a nuke hit and shrugging it off mostly unharmed.

The USSR tested a nuke 3000+ times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb in 1961. The only reason nobody ever went larger than that was because there wasn't really any point. A thousand years from now in some horrible war-torn future, with massive genocidal interstellar campaigns centered around enormous individual units? They ought to be able to blow one of those things literally to the moon.

[SurfD]

I believe they actaully stated that very late model Bolo's were actually capable of takeing a nuke hit and shrugging it off mostly unharmed.

The USSR tested a nuke 3000+ times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb in 1961. The only reason nobody ever went larger than that was because there wasn't really any point. A thousand years from now in some horrible war-torn future, with massive genocidal interstellar campaigns centered around enormous individual units? They ought to be able to blow one of those things literally to the moon.

Well, sure.  But once you are running down that kind of a tangent, weapons platforms of any kind just sort of become pointless dont they?  I mean, who cares if you have tanks (regardless of how big) if you can just throw enough firepower at the planet your enemy is on to crack the whole damn rock like an egg.

[Chimpy]

Ok, who needs to be taken out back and whipped for getting WUA started on his tank vs mech crusade in this thread?

[Lakov_Sanite]

I thought it'd be more interesting than transformers three.

[bhodi]

Well, sure.  But once you are running down that kind of a tangent, weapons platforms of any kind just sort of become pointless dont they?  I mean, who cares if you have tanks (regardless of how big) if you can just throw enough firepower at the planet your enemy is on to crack the whole damn rock like an egg.

No, not really. As Heinlein put it succinctly in starship troopers:

There are a dozen different ways of delivering destruction in impersonal wholesale, via ships and missiles of one sort or another, catastrophes so widespread, so unselective, that the war is over because that nation or planet has ceased to exist. What we do is entirely different. We make war as personal as a punch in the nose. We can be selective, applying precisely the required amount of pressure at the specified point at a designated time - we've never been told to go down and kill or capture all left-handed redheads in a particular area, but if they tell us to, we can. We will.

In the end, it's really fucking easy to just destroy something. Especially in a future tech world with KKVs. Generally, though, you have some sort of objective that requires a bit more finesse. Finding the appropriate tool to do the job is the key, and, in general, giant robots are just shitty tools for all the reasons we talked about in that thread over there that was linked. Tanks do everything giant robots can do, and better, for cheaper. Because of physics.

[Ratman_tf]

Ok, who needs to be taken out back and whipped for getting WUA started on his tank vs mech crusade in this thread?

[Soulflame]

Let's talk about real mechs!

 

[Pennilenko]

Let's talk about real mechs!

 

You mean gay robots?

[Ingmar]

Except that IS the entire argument? Same level of tech and a tank is a superior weapons platform to a giant robot.

But tech isn't organized into clear "levels".

GURPS disagrees!

[Ingmar]

I believe they actaully stated that very late model Bolo's were actually capable of takeing a nuke hit and shrugging it off mostly unharmed.

The USSR tested a nuke 3000+ times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb in 1961. The only reason nobody ever went larger than that was because there wasn't really any point. A thousand years from now in some horrible war-torn future, with massive genocidal interstellar campaigns centered around enormous individual units? They ought to be able to blow one of those things literally to the moon.

[Ratman_tf]

You mean gay robots?

Gundam used to be so butch. 

[Lakov_Sanite]

You mean gay robots?

Gundam used to be so butch. 

I know right?



 

[Fordel]

I believe they actaully stated that very late model Bolo's were actually capable of takeing a nuke hit and shrugging it off mostly unharmed.

The USSR tested a nuke 3000+ times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb in 1961. The only reason nobody ever went larger than that was because there wasn't really any point. A thousand years from now in some horrible war-torn future, with massive genocidal interstellar campaigns centered around enormous individual units? They ought to be able to blow one of those things literally to the moon.

They actually scaled that one down to half of it's original yield too, because someone finally went "we are basically irradiating our own country you know, right?" 

[WindupAtheist]

Well, sure.  But once you are running down that kind of a tangent, weapons platforms of any kind just sort of become pointless dont they?  I mean, who cares if you have tanks (regardless of how big) if you can just throw enough firepower at the planet your enemy is on to crack the whole damn rock like an egg.

Because you might want to keep the planet, and an enemy that disperses its forces instead of piling all its resources into one super-unit is a lot harder to nuke into oblivion without shitting up everything you were trying to conquer.

[Ratman_tf]

And what if the mechs are packing nukes?



What then?

[Sir T]

I think I'll add this discussion to the ones that thought it was realistic for a huge area of space being controlled by 1000 space marine ubermenchen.

[Soulflame]

IIRC, in the book, the MI were Mobile Infantry.  Their use was mostly in quick strikes, either a quick drop -> raid -> get the hell out of Dodge, or to grab ground that would then be fortified by heavier weapons.  I don't recall Heinlein detailing what those heavier weapons were though.

Also, the MI would carry weapons up to small (10k I think) nuclear weapons.