Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution
- Thread starter Hoyr
- Start date
Basically, a human volunteers to get his arms and legs cut off, then instead of normal sized prosthetics you get giant ones, to run super fast and manipulate very large guns.
In that sense we already kinda can - full body prosthetics. Though where that meshes with transhumanism... Not sure. Deus Ex: Human Revolution anyone?
In that sense we already kinda can - full body prosthetics. Though where that meshes with transhumanism... Not sure. Deus Ex: Human Revolution anyone?
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- Location
- America
MEC stands for Mechanical Exoskeletal Cybersuit.
Essentially, a soldier sacrifices their limbs in order to install the interfaces required to wield the cybersuit. MECs are incredibly strong, very fast, and heavily armored. They are tanks on a human sized package.
Also it has this thing called a Kinetic Strike Module. You see a wall?
There is no more wall.
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Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
eh it's not too bad, it looks like the feet when in a neutral position are right under the center of mass
- Location
- United States
herpa derp. i love xcom and i derped super hard. @Ramble we could do them once we had the advanced prosthetic research, but they don't offer anything that our powered armor doesn't provide
i believe that their reason is faster sprinting.
the limbs are the primary reason mechs are a bad idea. they need joints which add points of failure
because we haven't designed one at this time. we may do so later
we have the universal hard points so we can design one construction vehicle and a number of tools for it to use
artificial muscle doesn't change the fact that the mentioned parts are more points of failure that other military vehicles do not have.
this is unnecessary with a tank though. they fact that the mech needs to do this at all is bad
yes, lets put our sensors in a very obvious and easy to hit location
or we could just use treads and wheels
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
...
it does massively decrease the way in which things could go wrong though and makes it more comparable to turret vs non turreted weapons.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_b0-EnoFPews/TLD0L0k5FZI/AAAAAAAACGo/xm6ULu9hQ6Y/s1600/tank_in_a_ditch.jpg
and before someone brings up flight again they have their own problem regarding recoil and hit compensation, which the ability to shift the centre of mass like a mech does lets them deal with better, than a flying vehicle.
the more covered and out of the way sensors are the less effective they are generally.
i don't think our VI/neural interface is good enough for our mechs to have rollerskates and not crash into everything.
- Location
- America
I was thinking more along the lines of getting any crippled soldiers back on the battlefield whenever the reapers come around, or in case something happens to them. It would be an option.
You're a systems alliance soldier and you take a bad shot. You can either keep your bum leg and go to a desk job while your buddies are out there fighting, you can take the amputation and get a prosthetic and get back into the fight, or you can go all in and turn into a walking tank. Your buddies don't need cover, you are mobile cover. that shoots things.
But wouldn't a tiger be better at that? Well a tiger can't tell stupid jokes over a beer after the mission is over.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
That is exactly what I was assuming. Humanoid and bipedal mechs are the worst of the lot.
Sorry, that particular bit of absurdity was someone else.
... We actually have all of those in real life, 2 centuries prior to the time in the quest.
The fact that you apparently haven't ever seen a construction site isn't a good argument.
Which will probably still be less expensive to use as a whole than the over-engineered mech that would be able to fill all their roles.
Flagella are "slender, thread-like structures" ("flagellate" is a derived word) that are used like tentacles.
If legs didn't create such a high center of gravity we wouldn't need to shift it anywhere near as much.
You know the great thing about all of our flying stuff?
It can fucking land.
(Also, fuckin' lasers and shit. Look at all that recoil from the lasers.)
(If only we had more power so we could dedicate more to recoil compensation - OH WAIT THAT'S HALF OUR TECH'S ADVANTAGE.)
Dark Ness
Rises Where Silence Dies
- Location
- The Primordial Soup
So? We have repulsers to combinsate for that, it isn't really an issue. And even if we don't, so what it slides back a bit? It doesn't stop it from hitting the enemy. A tank is STILL better than a mech.
Also, why do you keep posting pics/links that aren't relevant?
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
i've seen backhoes but they still can't function as cranes.
Rotating locomotion in living systems - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Flagella rotate completely freely and their speed and even direction is controll by the organiosm they are attached to. at a macroscopic scale there's apparently certain gastropods that have an internal wheel like mechanism. the only difference between them and vehicle wheels (besides the origin of the force they use to spin) is that it's long and thin rather than having a stubby round tip, so it's less that they can't and more that the aglity of bipedal locomotion is more useful to them.
there's also some quite useful trick that use it though like crouching+shrugging at the same time you lift a heavy load and letting inertia carry it onto your shoulders with only a little force to guide it, then there's tricks of balance and countering external forces being exerted.
assuming the terrain is favorable which is a dangerous thing to assume when talking about intragalactic areas.
assuming that something will use solely laser or that it will be sturck solely by lasers is wishul thinking at best.
the other half is creating forms of mechanized bipedal locomotion.
oh and we still don't have unlimited power, spending it on compensation when in battlefield conditions against roughly similar foes gives them an advantage.
because they're images of tanks being defeated by their lack of ability to shift their center of mass.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
... And?
A bipedal form creates more balance problems than it solves.
Just walking on anything but a flat plane is an incredibly complex task for a biped.
(And if it's not using its legs, there's no point to having them, so we should just remove them - like people have been saying.)
"Recoil is a problem!"
"We have weapons that lack recoil for times we can't compensate."
"Relying on those is wishful thinking!"
We're not going to be constrained to a single weapon on a dedicated platform. Yeah, we're not always going to have something built perfectly to deal with a situation, but that's completely unavoidable (also, the "assuming favorable terrain" bit is even more applicable to mechs).
Nope! The other half is that we found ways to use that overwhelming advantage in power availability, and we've avoided relying on bullshit rule-of-cool tech - like mechs.the other half is creating forms of mechanized bipedal locomotion.
Good thing those still don't exist.
- Location
- America
What a lovely idea. Maybe we should remove the legs from our legionaires too.
- Location
- United States
if a mec pilot wants to do that then go for it, but we are not making legionaries take their legs off.
- Location
- America
But a bipedal design is so inefficient. Much better to just have repulsors do all the work.
- Location
- his hidden lair
@Carrnage, I pray to ROB and the DiceGods that whatever parity foe we face wastes its advantages going the Mech path. We might waste some power on recoil compensation, but we have so many more advantages it would be hilarious. Also, and Mechs are shit at recoil compensation too, I'd say worse than hover tanks, a hover tank gets knocked back, a mech gets hit hard enough/overloads its compensators; it's going down. it may not have the same energy draw, but it trades that for volume, which is worse for us, as Arc Reactors have insane power density. We could likely fit more power plants in that volume and wind up with a vehicle that still has more energy than that parity mech.
Advantages:
Advantages:
- A much smaller silhouette, which is a huge deal in armored warfare
- A more maneuverable platform capable of dealing with more terrain
- lower volume leads to stronger K-bars for the same given power dedicated to shields, the inverse square law is a bitch and all that
- likely cheaper and quicker to produce
- easier to maintain
- Can more readily change directions, aiding turret traverse and ensuring the frontal glacis plate is facing enemy units.
- Did someone say Combat Drops?
- Faster
- lower surface area means more armor for the same amount of tonnage between vehicles
- Lack of vibrations/swaying of the gun mounts means shooting on the move is incredibly viable
- Can go where mech's flat out can't
- can easily cross bodies of water
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Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
...*sigh* let's use nested quotes to show why i bought that up.
it's complex by design, if it was simple it wouldn't be able to walk on anything but a flat plain like some early cars could only travel on flat roads, the complexity however allows it to have a much wider range of terrain's it can move other than most other forms of locomotion, notable exception being flight.
not really, the only limitation is whether it can support the mech's weight and whether the internal computer can varry out the balance calculations fast enough, otherwise it can climb near vertical surfaces those problems aren't huge at 5m.
i also meant compensation from being struck by enemy weapons as well.
... were you not referring to tech advantage of being tony stark?
purely speculation at this point but we don't know all the things going on in the background, the big three have already got roughly equivalent power armor it's safe to assume they're also working on heavier vehicles.
False equivalence. The legs are already there, and bipedal organics already have systems optimized and integrated with them. Swapping them out is an investment that needs to be justified. On the other hand if designing systems from scratch, designing them with legs would be inefficient in most cases, yes. Basically? It's a case of legacy hardware where it's too troublesome to replace it.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Those actually serve a purpose, since Legionaries are, y'know, armor. For humans. Who have legs.
Again: and?
Over-engineering to fit multiple roles is a very real problem.
Given that flight is our preferred mode of movement, I don't see why this should be considered important.
Or we can cut those out of its movement programs entirely and just have it fly and give it retractable landing gears.
Simplicity is good. Complexity is bad.
... You think an unavoidably-higher center of gravity will help with that?
If anything, you're underselling Tony by calling "bipedal power armor" his advantage.... were you not referring to tech advantage of being tony stark?
So you're saying as far as we know equipment equivalent to ours still doesn't exist.
ltmauve
"Excuse me?"
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Honestly, flipping our tanks over wouldn't disable it for long - either power-armor infantry flips it, or enemy fire is too hot for the infantry to rush in and the shields eventually fail and it gets destroyed.
And also, modern-day tanks can fire while moving. At top speed. It's not going to get knocked over from having to fire without time to get into a proper firing stance. Put a book flat on the ground, and now imagine trying to flip it by applying a force at the center. That's a tank. Now put the book upright, and imagine trying to knock it over by pushing above the halfway mark. That's a mech.
Even a hovertank isn't going to get flipped over while floating and firing - the turret is right on top of the center of mass. A mech, meanwhile, has it's firing axis greatly offset from the center of mass.
In other words, not being able to shift the center of mass means precisely NOTHING to our tanks.
This doesn't mean that I don't want mechs. Mechs are cool. Honestly I would love to build them, but honestly without some justification it does not provide a benefit.
Regarding the MEC concept - I think this would be practical. Armor probably 2-3 times as thick as standard infantry, way more space for power and barriers. You keep the solider's experience and walking skills, can provide support for interior operations, can carry and use heavier weapons then even power-armor infantry.
Joints will still be a problem, but guess what? Any form of armor for a person will have that problem, and a MEC won't bleed out when hit in the joint. It's not a small mech, it's large power armor.
Also some of these points are repeats. I was ninja'd.
Also wtf do you mean, "can climb near vertical surfaces those problems aren't huge at 5m"
You want to know how to get a walker to travel on rougher terrain? You need to increase the code complexity by orders of magnitude. What type of leg movement, how much dampening to apply, what the joint angles should be, etc, etc.
And this code has to work perfectly, probably about 60 recalculations a second.
Meanwhile, the car doesn't care, no complex calculations needed to keep it from tipping over, it's a nice stable shape.
And also, modern-day tanks can fire while moving. At top speed. It's not going to get knocked over from having to fire without time to get into a proper firing stance. Put a book flat on the ground, and now imagine trying to flip it by applying a force at the center. That's a tank. Now put the book upright, and imagine trying to knock it over by pushing above the halfway mark. That's a mech.
Even a hovertank isn't going to get flipped over while floating and firing - the turret is right on top of the center of mass. A mech, meanwhile, has it's firing axis greatly offset from the center of mass.
In other words, not being able to shift the center of mass means precisely NOTHING to our tanks.
This doesn't mean that I don't want mechs. Mechs are cool. Honestly I would love to build them, but honestly without some justification it does not provide a benefit.
Regarding the MEC concept - I think this would be practical. Armor probably 2-3 times as thick as standard infantry, way more space for power and barriers. You keep the solider's experience and walking skills, can provide support for interior operations, can carry and use heavier weapons then even power-armor infantry.
Joints will still be a problem, but guess what? Any form of armor for a person will have that problem, and a MEC won't bleed out when hit in the joint. It's not a small mech, it's large power armor.
Also some of these points are repeats. I was ninja'd.
We are going up against the Reapers eventually, you know...
Less of a problem for a nice flat ground vehicle than an upright mech. The pressure the ground can take is fixed, increasing our ground contact increases the types of terrain we can use without needing our repulsors.
Also wtf do you mean, "can climb near vertical surfaces those problems aren't huge at 5m"
You want to know how to get a car to travel on rougher terrain? increasing clearance and beefing up the suspension. Changes of mechanical parameters.
You want to know how to get a walker to travel on rougher terrain? You need to increase the code complexity by orders of magnitude. What type of leg movement, how much dampening to apply, what the joint angles should be, etc, etc.
And this code has to work perfectly, probably about 60 recalculations a second.
Meanwhile, the car doesn't care, no complex calculations needed to keep it from tipping over, it's a nice stable shape.
Dark Ness
Rises Where Silence Dies
- Location
- The Primordial Soup
The tank is both cheaper and more effective or equal to in almost everyway then a mach. Are you honestly trying to say that the slightly increased power draw on our bullshit superpower energy source giving the enemy more an advantage then all the numerous weakness of mechs?
Except none of those tanks can fly. When your tank can fly with repulsers, you don't need to worry about center of mass. Why? Because they can autoright themselves.
Also, mechs fall over a LOT easier than a tank does. They are not the most stable shape.
Chargone
Invisable operator
- Location
- New Zealand
Didn't say it wasn't. That was very much an anti-"flight/hover solves everything" thought, not a pro-mech thought.
Basically, i'm of the opinion that the Primary locomotive system for tanks, even for high tech paragon industry equipment, should be tracks, with repulsors used to allow it to be it's own drop ship and pop over things like tanktraps or AT mines and the like. If tanks are made at all.
Gunships are a different thing.
_____________________________
The whole mech argument is silly. The bipedal humanoid design Does offer a lot of advantages. But they come inextricably bundled with a bunch of Disadvantages which render them, on balance, worse than anything else in any role with the exception of very small ones (which qualify as mechs only by way of their "suitness" being debateable) being useable as heavy infantry.
At the same time, a lot of the counter arguments being used are just... silly. To the point where i stopped even reading them. Specialised entities are always going to be better at their specialities than generalist entities. Mechs work well as generalist entities. Mechs are bad for reasons unrelated to this. Claiming that more specialised vehicals are better at being Generalists than mechs is Silly.
None of which canges the entirely Valid list of problems with mechs which make them a bad idea and waste of time, money, and effort.
Carrnage
Human
- Location
- New Zealand
depends on the anglefrom the side the silhouettes would be roughly equal and from the top (since you like flight so much) the mech would actually have the smaller silhouette.
i wouldn't say the difference is big enough to mean the power draw doesn't balance it out.
could i see the stat's you're using to calculate total volume?
i don't see how, if the synthetic muscles are too damaged to use slot out the cord bundle and slot in another, if the joint or support is damaged detach enouh bundles to expose the damaged part. though if it uses hydraulics and servos i could see them being annoying to maintain depending on lifespan per part.
depends on the hips if it's got humanoid hips it can turn on a single step.
mechs can also orient themselves in air and it wouldn't be too difficult to make one able to fold it's protrusions together.
also excuse to post this:
eh the mech can probably change it's direction easier at it's top speeds.
valid.
Not so much a lack of as less, after all turbulance is a thing, as are sudden external forces.
air?
depends on the density of the mech, though i will admit a mech swimming would be remarkably sluggish.
"over engineered" is highly relative, there's nothing simplaer that can do bulldozing/crane/digging.
flight is quite useless at earthmoving.
nope the complexity would porbably be roughly equal to the same system that our flying products use to compensate for their variable number of repulsors.
i think contact with the ground to disperse force into will.
it is the majority of things he's invented.
nope i'm saying it likely does and if it doesn't it will soon.
the bullshit superpower energy source we know our enemies possess?
if by not a stable shape then you mean they are inherently able to change their overall shape by simply shifting their limbs then i agree.
anyway too many people to argue with i'm just gonna give up trying at this point.
Dark Ness
Rises Where Silence Dies
- Location
- The Primordial Soup
Not entirely sure what you mean here. What specialised vehicles? Do you mean tanks?
How about a bulldozer/crane/digger? How is a mech the simplest construction vehicle possibe?
I wish @Hoyr would weigh in here, just to help resolve this.