Do you prefer bipedal tanks?

Cardboard tanks. They're the perfect synthesis of stealth and attack power.

Kojima is God.

I think you figured out the plot for the Phantom Pain. That's the new threat.

@e30bmw: Snake was really stoked about the idea in Peace Walker.

Yes, I prefer Mechs.

When it comes to TANKS I still love the look of WW2 tanks, I watched The Last Crusade all the time as a kid and love that whole tank scene near the end.

BUT I can't compare that type of tank to lets say a Metal Gear, that seems very apples and oranges to me.

@video_game_king said:

Not even these?

Option A: MechWarrior.

I can't be the only person who has never heard the term 'mecha' used like that before, right?

I dunno. When riding home, I prefer the segmented buses with the snaky bits in the middle.

When I think "bipedal tank", I think Mechwarrior or Metal Gear, not Gundam or Transformers. For those, I prefer the term "giant robot."

Oh god, I remember that. He was losing his shit about it. "It's BRILLIANT!"

I've never been a fan of Gundam, so I'm gonna vote no.

Can it be considered a tank if it has legs? I mean, the track is what defines a tank (besides the armor of course).

However, I do love mechs. Not a fan of Gundam style mechs, but I am all for MechWarrior and Metal Gear style mechs.

If we're talking MechWarrior, then definitely. The only brand of Japanese "mecha" that I go in for is Armored Core, though.

Also I'm pretty sure Transformers don't count -- they're robots, not pilotable vehicles.

I don't really see the point, the legs are such an obvious weakness and adding enough armor to protect them would completely ruin the advantage of mobility. They're cool yeah, intimidating sure, but as soon as people realize that simply toppling them over would turn a walking death machine into an overpriced turret. Shit you could even do it with really strong cables, Star Wars style. Wouldn't even need to blow the legs up.

EDIT: This post is misleading, it asks about bipedal tanks and then switches topics to be about Mechas. Well... even in fantasy I don't really see the tactical advantage of having a giant robot unless you were just fighting the other guy's giant robot, but then why bother with a war, why not just make a giant robot fighting tournament for entertainment? THAT would be a more fun and realistic premise for mechas in a fictional setting.

So much debate over classification.

Mechas. Robots. Is a gundam a tank? Mechwarrior. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Whatever.

The post clearly isn't about Metal Mario, or even Metroid.It's pretty damn clear: It's about big robots that look like people. Enough semantics.

So we're talking about Cyborgs the size of Andre the Giant?

Perhaps this?

Well, on a more practical level, it's the mobility outside of combat that matters.

That's true, but we already have trains, aircraft carriers and cargo planes capable of carrying all kinds of hell to the bad guy's doorstep. I guess my point is that it doesn't really add anything. Even something seemingly badass like Metal Gear, a walking tank that can fire a nuke from anywhere to anywhere... is pretty pointless in a world of nuclear-capable submarines which basically do the same thing.

But I guess that's not the point of this whole thread... I guess I just wish that writers of mecha fiction at least came up with a better use for the damn things.

@turambar:

My anime mech knowledge only goes up to Shining Finger Sword.

The John Bull Gundam uses plenty of bipedal drones as well then.

@mikkaq: Getting immobilized by weapon fire or getting stuck on obstacles is something that real-world armored vehicles have to worry about. The real problem with a walking tank is too much weight over too little surface area. A main battle tank can weigh 70 tons and still drive off-road because that weight is spread over a wide area. A walking tank would just get stuck any time it tried to walk off-road.

World Robot Fighting Tournament is totally already a fictional setting though.

But Gundam isn't the only, or even the first anime to have mechs.

Only if it's a Robot T-Rex.

If there was a parade or a ceremonial event like the Olympics then i would like to see a humanoid mecha. If there was a war or a job that requires heavy lifting and surviving a harsh environment, then i would like a mech like an SCV from starcraft

Battlemechs are the coolest. Gundams and other humanoid mechs like Titanfall are just outside my suspension of disbelief. And with Gundams it's even more ridiculous because they fight mostly in space right? Why do you need a robot with legs in space?

S P I D E R | T A N K

I have driven and worked around tanks for almost ten years now, and I'm not even kidding when I think there is real merit to the idea.

There are areas like wadis, ditches, ravines etc where treads or wheels don't work. I've seen several flipped or rolled vehicles as a result.

Anything which could step over or around obstacles would be valuable. Especially in less developed countries.

Something with arms or similar could maybe recover itself very quickly. This is a process that right now requires a heavy wrecker/recovery vehicle and at a minimum half an hour.

The potential to hit a mine or pressure plate for an IED is also way lower if you aren't rolling everywhere (at least in theory).

Nothing fifty feet tall, on the scale of Mechwarrior or anime or whatever. But it's not a totally crazy idea since we already operate 20-ton 8 wheeled vehicles with high ground pressures already.

Current technology definitely isn't there yet though. So my preference is of course still with the real deal. EDIT: Yup I realized the fictional setting bit, my bias still stands

I hate Gundams. It isn't functional. It would be easier to just outfit a human with a more responsive mechanical suit. A battle between one Gundam that cost some country their entire GDP vs 300 super soldiers is game over.

@reisz: Yuuup.

I really liked the gundum cartoons as a kid so I'll go with that.

I have always felt that simplicity of design was best with mecha. I think Shirow Masamune's concept with their organize designs look best because they seem to have an underlying functionality and design philosophy. His "Appleseed" manga I think demonstrated that very well. He had huge robotic creatures, power-suits, cyborgs, and everything in between.

The Landmate to the right, is the ubiquitous mecha of Appleseed. Notice how it can kneel and you get the notion of how it would work by seeing it. Its not too fiddly with little extra bits of cosmetics, just attractively functionality with hint of Greek armor.

In my minds eye that is how I always imagined Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers powered MI armor would look. Heinlein always insisted on saying the MI suits were very large and more gorilla shaped, and when described in battle each suit was covering 3 sq miles of territory by running & jumping around with pee-wee nukes. The suits were used like 'helicopters' on a modern battlefield in that way, when he says Mobile Infantry he was describing the role and deployment of what would be most like a AH-64 Apache attack helicopter. The author even says the suits have 'racks' of bombs and missiles, and that sounds like a modern helicopter mostly. That is how most western interpretations in film or animation get Starship Troopers wrong; they show them like WWI infantry instead of like Vietnam era Air Calvary in Cobra's.

I'd take this over a traditional tank any day.

@mikkaq: I just want to point out that while it is not a combat vehicle and it is not bipedal, , the military's attempts to create an all-terrain gear transport is on legs and not wheels or tracks. The only practical advantage I can see to two-legged robots over four is in confined areas like cities, possibly forests. But there would be a lot of difficulty in preserving balance (in Mechwarrior this is done using neurological connections to the pilot and gyroscopes)

As long as I have a battle robot, I don't care whether it's human-shaped or not. Just as long as it's appropriately anthropomorphized so I can treat it like a pet.

I swear those got made illegal like a week after they came out because people kept dying.

@reisz: Spider tanks are dope.

@lackingsaint: I saw lots of bendy buses in Chicago last week, so they are definitely still around.

I think for a tank you would want a quad leg system, more support when they gun fires. I think the first thing you would see would look like an 'up sized' version of the BostonDynamics LS3 - Legged Squad Support Systems or their BigDog.

One of the biggest advances we need to make in any sort of vehicles weaponry (boats, planes, tanks, trucks, etc) is to make them quieter. We are no longer doing large pitch battles with hundred of vehicles, so now being quiet as possible as we roll-up is important. Instead of a screeching/whining turbine engine running all the time, you might want a very quite electric motor to bring you the last mile or creeping/dashing on the battle field. That the issue with the current BigDog you have a squad of solider walking quietly through the woods and then this thing that sounds like a lawn mower following them...a mule would do the same thing and make far less noise.

TANGENT:
Eventually we might reach the fuel efficiency of a biological animal with a mechanical device that is faster, smarter, and senses more; but until we do I think there will be trade offs. And, my guess is what we make will make people uneasy because it will probably be 90% grown, with a computer augmented brain - a mule with a CPU in its head.

Yet, we can all see the ethics will be touchy. If its grown in a vat, if it is engineered in every system, is it still a mule? The ethics of things we MAKE that have brains, senses and feedback mechanisms of pain is huge even if we are making them from teh ground up using biological instead of mechanical processes. Is a grown machine a machine?

Are we willing to admit we are machines too? Do we dare admit we are merely biological machines when the final conclusion of such a thought is we are mere cogs in a society? Or, do we play the game of pretending humanity is special knowing it is a lie just so we don't enslave ourselves or view ourselves as cheaply as it would be logical to do? Seven billion people on earth and there have been 107,602,707,791 who have ever lived...are we REALLY special? Or, are we only as special as ants, single celled Paramecium, or rats? Why is a 'draft mule' ethical use, but a 'draft person' not? Wouldn't the logical argument be a draft person is repugnant, thus a draft mule is repugnant.

And, in that case is it 'more' ethical to make 'biological warriors' and 'biological mules' for war. Or, is it ALL unethical because humans are biological machines, AND the biological warriors & mules are biological machines so using anything in a way that puts it into harm or gives it no freedom is unethical? And, if a biological machine is not ethical...is a mechanical machine ethical?

The less human it looks the better. I want something sturdy as a tank, bipeds are just stupid.

I'll go with bipedal because those look cool although Tachikoma is close to my heart. Never forget ;_;7