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?
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.
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 think something along the lines of an augmented powered exoskeleton, or passive ones…
https://www.fieldtexcases.com/blog/medical-military-applications-exoskeleton-suits/
… could plausibly upscale into basically Power Armor… and you could maybe also upscale them into basically forklift with legs that you wear, from the loading bay in Alien…
I think those kinds of things are certainly within the realm of plausibility… presuming the power source can be made actually usefully weight efficient.
You can be a kind of up armored and up armed soldier, you can lift heavy shit, carry it a really long way, across broken terrain (that can support the weight).
Pair these with an active defense system, and they might actually be reasonable useful in certain military scenarios.
Its kinda like how just saying ‘drones’ is reductive… different sizes, scales, carrying capacities / payloads, ranges, speeds, methods of communication, propulsion systems, power sources … create a huge spectrum of different types and niches.
We have humanoid robots that can do bipedal locomotion pretty fucking well, without a pilot.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=vW3QoaPnDGA
Pair a similar kind of software with something closer to a suit, strapped around a human, all it has to do is translate human motions to the scale of the suit, do intelligent stabilizing, kinda like how modern aircraft controls are fly by wire, not pure analog.
Now… would these kinds of things be practical, in terms of production costs vs actual utility?
No fucking clue lol.
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.
Counterpoint: Liberty Prime throwing nukes like footballs
Absolutely. Humanoid robots would be effective because we live in a world suited for humanoids.
First, he’s talking about humanoid robots that are enormously larger than the average human.
Second, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRn3-MN92H4%3Ft%3D16m56s
I know what mechs are. And I ain’t watching all that.
We live in a primarily water world and the most abundant phylum are the arthropods - most of which are insects. 6 legs are the ideal for the land, no legs in water.
Oh yeah I forgot that we built our complex global society both underwater and catered to six-legged arthropods.
Wait until you learn how much of the globe is undeveloped by humans or how easily human structures are destroyed
About the only advantage it has is intimidation factor. Kaiju are spectacularly intimidating, and a gigantic robot kaiju would definitely make some people evacuate their bowls on the spot. However there’s no edits you can make to the laws of physics that make it better at anything, from a tactical perspective, than a different form factor.
I could see it personally. Targeting systems, bigger heavier equipment capabilities, nimbleness over odd terrain. The only obvious oversight is that drones exist now and are a much more valid platform, just in larger numbers. The extra power required for all the bs could be better utilized for drone batteries, the weapons could be mounted on vehicles. Seems a bit unnecessary but for maybe a few niche scenarios
Targeting systems
Drones
bigger heavier equipment capabilities
Bigger Drones
nimbleness over odd terrain
Drones
Under no circumstances is walking better than flying, tactically. Once you introduce airborne combat, a mech loses all tactical benefit. Tanks/mobile artillery? Sure, that you can justify, mostly because it’s low profile and easier to hide if necessary. In almost every other circumstance, if you can have an airborne gunship you want an airborne gunship, and you don’t even have to alter the laws of physics to make them work.
The only way you could make the case for mechs is if whatever magic Clarke-Tech you were imagining for moving them was astronomically more efficient than flying for approximately the same tonnage, and you were desperate to conserve as much energy as possible, to the point where flight just isn’t an option, and even then, the most efficient machine would look something like a gigantic beetle.
I love mecha, but the larger you are, the easier it is for things to find you. this is why tanks try to stay low to the ground.
and walking is a really inefficient mode of transit compared to wheels or treads. and keeping 50+ tons of mecha balanced on two legs while going up hill or on rough terrain would be quite a feat.
so no, barring tremendous advances in point defense (to counter drones and atgms), I don’t see it happening any time soon, and even then it’d have to be in response to some other pressure.
If physics were no object why not have a better tank?
Walkers generally have lots of problems compared to conventional warfare. Mainly they aren’t resilient enough to stand up to much more than rifle or pistol caliber weapons without some hand waving. Joints are super vulnerable if you want them to still move and you can’t mount as big a gun as you could on a conventional vehicle on something that walks. We don’t currently have something that is portable and powerful enough for what would be needed for most sizes of mech. Also depending on how tall your mech is they are way bigger targets for equivalent firepower compared to a tank and by virtue of following a human body pattern are less armoured.
So yeah if physics is not a problem then have an anime mech powered by unobtanium with vibranium armour and a giga buster gun, they could fill every role in a conventional military. Mechs are all about the rule of cool. If you want realism then maybe something like an exoskeleton to help infantry carry more kit or bigger weapons. Up to a little bigger than a person they could potentially be useful in dense environments like urban or jungle where things like tanks are vulnerable to ambush by infantry.
Mechs as vehicles, absolutely not. It’s much too complicated and fragile, one mild hit and it won’t be able to move.
Small legged robots in large numbers is an other discussion though, and a scarier one.
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.
I would point to construction cranes as a case study in favor of mechs. At its core, a crane lifts loads heavier than humans or even teams of humans can manage. But as they are, they’re kinda slow and are finicky, requiring great care and slow operation.
If you had a mech, moving the raw materials up would be no big deal. Although one could argue that outfitting a crane operator with equivalent dexterous control of a crane would enable similar improvements, but in a smaller, stationary footprint.
