I tend to prefer realism in my games, or at least a healthy dose of logical consistency. Giant Mechs are "cool", but not very practical for land battles. Why?

1. They are huge targets
2. They are very complex machinery that will break down more often than more simple tanks
3. They can not be as well armored as a tank due to their anthropomorphic shape.
4. They will be harder to "stealthify" due to the many hard angles and protrusions caused by their anthropomorphic shape.
5. A mech due to its complexity will cost more than a tank.
6. Contrary to popular opinion, Mech''s will not be able to run faster than a tank (i.e. ridiculous speeds of 120kmh+)

What advantages do they have?
1. Superior mobility in rough terrain.
2. Crew of only one required (albeit a more highly trained crew member)
3. Utility purposes (i.e. engineering work and construction work)

There is a reason why tank designers are making tank profiles smaller and smaller...so that they present less of a target (this is why tankers use the tactic of going "hull down"). Also, don''t count out the complexity of a system in terms of battleworthiness. Because of the complexity of Mecha systems (their balancing system, the different limb controls, etc), they will break down more often and require more maintenance and quantitatively, there will be more tanks than mechs due to mechs cost of production. Due to the shape of the mech, there are more "sides" to armor than a tank, and the limbs will not be able to support as much weight as a tank can. This also affects the ability to make "stealthy" mechs, due not just to their height, but because of the many protruding angles of the mech. Camouflaging by traditional means or more advanced ones will also be more diffucly as compared to a tank.

So that leaves the advantage of having superior mobility in terms of battleworthiness. Mechs will be better at traversing some kinds of terrain, but they will NOT be faster (imagine for second the sheer stress placed on the knee joints of Giant mechs...there is a reason why elephants "run" for very short distances, and why the brontosaurus sized dinosaurs didn''t run [and no, not just because of heart pressure differences]). Even if you speculate super hard knee joint material, the ground pressure itself would negate such fast movement except on ideal surfaces (not too hard or soft).

In my own game, I call mech''s ExoShells and Walkers. Their primary difference is that they are only about 12-15'' tall, and are more akin to huge powered armor than anything else (and powered armor in my game is more closely related to the ALICE unit in ALIENS or the book version of Starship Troopers than something like say BattleTech power armor). At 12-15'' tall, they are very lightly armored, only able to withstand about 20-40mm shell rounds. With reactive armor, they can resist one or two hits from man-portable AT recoilless rounds up to about 90mm. The advantages they bring to the table though are extremely good maneuverability, a good sensor suite, and a good enough combination of speed and agility to avoid a lot of enemy firepower. But they are niche creations. If you''ve played Heavy Gear, I pretty much place my ExoShells in the same category and usefulness as Gears are in the HeavyGear world.

I DO have big mecha for my space forces however. In my opinion, Mechs in space will be the new "fighters" of the future. Once a mech grapples on to an enemy ships hull, once it breaches the hull, it''s almost game over for the ship. So for usage in space...giant 30''+ mechs are a great idea. By size comparison, they are still tiny compared to capital ships, about the same size as fighters, but with far greater versatility. They won''t be as maneuverable or as fast as fighters, so fighters will still have their place.

I just read something that I had forgotten. Once a projectile reaches about 4,500m/s in velocity, the bullet will start to vaporize due to friction with the air. While it won''t immediately vaporize of course, it does give a a maximum distance as well as diminishing effectiveness. Also, it could give you a visual special effect. At those speeds, the round will ionize the air around it, greating a glowing effect. It will be very short though.

Air is sorta of like water in that the more force you apply to it, the greater the resistance offered. move your hand gently through water, and you feel very little resistance...now try to swing your arm as fast as you can. Ditto with sandbags. If you shoot a gun at a sandbag, the bullet stops. Fire a bow and arrow at a sandbag, and it''ll go all the way through (since the arrow has less velocity and more mass, it actually goes through the sandbag where the bullet couldn''t).

I always thought this was Frank Herbert''s genius when he came up with how melee weapons became important again. In the Dune universe shields existed, but only offered resistance against high energy (whether that energy be energy or kinetic) attacks. So melee weapons came back due to the necessity of needing a way to get past shields. Perhaps something like this could be done with the shield technology in your game.

Just a thought....

I was reading up on Railgun research a while ago. It appears they encountered a problem with the EMF discharge, where it reached a point where adding more energy gave very little effect.

Aparently, the EMF discharge forms an effect similar to ball lighting as it passes down the rail (traveling just behind the mass). Because this energy radiates out in all directions, it was causing huge damage to the gun at high energy levels.

As the energy was increased, the effect of the discharge was to cause some form of friction force. This meant that each gun, depending on its physical make (mainly to do with barrel width), has a point where simply adding more power won't do anything except cause damage to the gun. (As the energy starts to 'scrape' the sides of the barrel)

This is the reason that the buzz about Railgun weapons has died off.. they can't be amped up as much as everyone thought!

Just something to think about!

[edited by - FrozenGecko on March 24, 2003 5:40:11 AM]

quote:Original post by Extrarius

I like the buy system from the half-life FireArms mod. At the beginning of each life, you can either choose to custom config your character or pick a predefined one (or you can pick to use the previous config you used if you''ve already played one round). The predefined ones are just text files you create with the list of stuff you want to pick.

Unfortunately, FA has toileted since 2.5...

quote:Original post by Dauntless
I tend to prefer realism in my games, or at least a healthy dose of logical consistency. Giant Mechs are "cool", but not very practical for land battles. Why?
6. Contrary to popular opinion, Mech''s will not be able to run faster than a tank (i.e. ridiculous speeds of 120kmh+)

...

Mechs will be better at traversing some kinds of terrain, but they will NOT be faster (imagine for second the sheer stress placed on the knee joints of Giant mechs...there is a reason why elephants "run" for very short distances, and why the brontosaurus sized dinosaurs didn''t run [and no, not just because of heart pressure differences]). Even if you speculate super hard knee joint material, the ground pressure itself would negate such fast movement except on ideal surfaces (not too hard or soft).

Apologize for the tangent, but:

Perhaps you could use kangaroo-style movement? In this configuration the energy efficiency and speed of the vehicle is MUCH higher for a straight-up bipedal mech, and also so that the difficulty of transferring to an even more efficient, stable, and potentially faster four-footer configuration is vastly reduced. In addition, there''s now the added bonus of an extremely difficult-to-track movement mode. The primary negative is that you need a substantial tail for balance, but then you could theoretically give it prehensile and/or weapon-mount capabilities to moderate the liability brought by such a creature.

I have a bs theory that this configuration was used by the bipedal dinos as well, even though afaik there''s good evidence against that idea. Nonetheless, it''s a great way to have energy-efficient movement at high speed with extremely flexible movement characteristics.

Of course, none of this solves the problem for truly *giant* mecha, but you could probably get 8 or 9 meters, which is about T-rex class, with some assumptions about high-quality diamondoid building materials (up to 100x compressive strength of steel) and fluid bearings.

ld

Kangaroo-style? Like hopping motions? Or more like AT-ST style backwards-knee motion?

For hopping motions, I''d imagine the stress on the joints would be even greater due to the jumping movements. The AT-ST style movement I don''t really know about, but since every land mammal on earth except the elephant has a "backwards" knee for their hindquarters, it must provide some kind of speed bonus or ease of movement.

It''s also interesting to note that most animals walk, "digitigrade"...on their toes. Man is one of the few animals that walks "plantigrade"...on the soles of their feet. Basically other animals can achieve higher speeds because they aren''t using just the ankle and knee as cushions...but the ball of the foot (I think it''s called the meta-tarsus) as well. So as for four legged designs, I''ve given this some thought too. Four legged designs would be even better at crossing rough terrain, and could move laterally as well making it harder to track like you said. Plus, in a spider like form, you can make the main chassis hug the ground much more closely. Again, with my designs, they are only about 10-12'' off the ground, though since they are a little longer are more massive than the ExoShells.

Just on a side note...in my game universe, pilots have to interface with the machine through bio-feedback mechanisms. This requires them to be put in a VERY strange and unusual cockpit. The cockpit is actually a sensory deprivation chamber that is flooded with a gel. The pilot dons a special lifesupport helmet (so he doesn''t drown obviously) which provides a HUD. The sensory deprivation is required to allow feedback from the machine for balancing information as well as precision limb movement. In essence, the pilot "feels" like he''s the ExoShell. A side benefit is that the gel bath acts as a concussion dampener, so that fairly extreme drops, jumps and kinetic weapon damage don''t stun the pilot inside. It is also very effective if flame weapons are used so that the pilot doesn''t get cooked inside (and the oxygen gets recycled in an internal compartment if the temp goes to high). The disadvantage and side-effect to this control scheme is that the pilot can develop psychological problems after long exposure...typically resulting in megalomania (he starts thinking he''s as powerful as the machine) or in agoraphobia (he becomes afraid when he leaves the protection of the machine).

After thinking about railguns some more, I thought that about 4500m/s is a good velocity for them, since more than that will ablate the projectile as well as give away the position. They are not however the most common weapon on the battlefield, since other weapon types have other advantages as well.