I think the consensus is that anime style mechs are physically impossible given how fast and nimble they usually are, but if physics were no object would they be a viable solution to any real world problems?
I cannot answer this question objectively. Mechs are too fucking cool and I want to see them too much.
Definitely rule of cool.
The problem is that they’re unnecessarily complex, and bulky, and don’t really offer any thing more than what you can get with more traditional platforms.
You’re wasting tech and effort on just making them functional, where a traditional platform could be made extremely capable with that same tech.
Take Star Wars walkers. Chop the legs off, install repulsorlift. Suddenly a slow vulnerable platform becomes fast and nimble and even harder to kill.
after “don’t be there”, next layer of survivability onion is “don’t be seen”, there is no advantage to walking robot over something with lower profile, like a normal tank
I love the idea of a survivability onion.
Edit: Lmao it’s real.
Don’t be killed
“Just win you fucking noob”
I get it’s a joke, but there’s a point.
Modern (western) tanks have tons of safety systems in them, from fire suppression to safe inert storage for ammo and fuel. In theory there’s areas where the newer M1 tanks can be hit and penetrated and it can continue operating. And even if it’s hit in a spot where the tank is disabled, the crew have a really high survival rate.
And if you’re wondering why I specified western tanks, it’s because of Russia. All the tanks they have in operation right now have issues with the entire ammo magazine blowing up when hit, which tosses the entire turret into the air and kills the crew
It’s your standard superweapon problem. Why put all the money and resources into a single massive weapon that can be destroyed when you could instead make a lot of smaller, more practical stuff for the same price? We don’t make battleship sized tanks, and not just because of the physics problems they’d have trying to move on land. Hell, we don’t make giant battleships for the sea any more either, and that’s the one place where there isn’t a physics problem.
What advantage is there to using a giant robot? What does it do that’s more effective than existing vehicles, drones, weapon platforms etc? Sure, it can walk over terrain that might be hard for some ground vehicles, but we already have shit that can fly. It could have multiple weapons to choose between if it uses them by hand, but we are still paying for those and could instead mount them on cheaper platforms and use them all at once. Other than style points, the only thing I can think of is the utility that comes from having giant hands to pick stuff up. Being a heavily armed combat crane is probably not worth the investment.
and that’s the one place where there isn’t a physics problem.
Actually there is a physics problem, but it came about after battleships were largely phased out.
The issue is the addition of missiles to naval munitions. They tend to use “plunging fire”, where they try to have a fairly vertical trajectory on impact. That means they’re more likely to hit the deck, not the hull.
Battleships have the bulk of their armor on the hull, not the deck. Trying to armor both the hull and the deck would result in a large amount of displacement (the allowable amount of weight when fully loaded) being used just for armor, limiting storage for ammunition, fuel, crew, and supplies and would severely limit its ability to operate for extended lengths of time.
Sure, a modern battleship could potentially only armor the deck with minimal hull armor, but then that would open them up to guns and torpedos, and missiles could be modified to have more level trajectories on impact.
And to further expand on your comment:
In modern navies, big ships are turning into a liability (The superweapon problem you pointed out). If you have the bulk of your power on a single hull, then losing that one ship cripples your combat effectiveness. Aircraft carriers gain a ton of advantages from being larger to affset those risks, but a battleship is just a big gunship, and that job is better served using multiple smaller cruisers.
And there’s even debates in the US Navy about whether to develop smaller carriers and have 2-3 of them in a task group instead of a single supercarrier. With VTOL and STOL (Short Take Off and Landing) being commonplace with the F-35, Harrier, and V-22, smaller carriers are significantly more feasible than they were 20 years ago.
Bipedal locomotion has some pretty big drawbacks. Like falling over. You’d be surprised how many people die that way.
Best not build trillion dollar robots that can trip and fall. You become vulnerable to obstacles, Mines, tripwires, and Ewoks.
Boston Dynamics got started making weird leggy robots specifically for terrain that’s too rough for wheels and tank tracks, so if there was somehow a need for a bipedal robot it might end up looking somewhat like a mech.
My guess is that legged ground based war machines are usually going to have 4+ legs for stability, though. Airborne drones are probably going to be way more common.
Personally, I hope we achieve a utopian future where war is obsolete, scarcity is history, and we build giant mecha robots and battle with them as a power sport
There’s a problem with legged machines in that they tend to be heavier, require more maintenance, and have a higher ground pressure for the same task/payload as an equivalent wheeled or tracked vehicle.
While there’s some terrain where they’re more effective (mountains), that’s fairly limited. Plus, if the terrain is too extreme then even legged machines can’t get through, so you’re looking for a goldilocks zone for deployment.
