Mecha Design Quest

Having the mech capable of handling a turn at 30kph is pretty good already, and building instrumentation that can show a pilot more is essential for future designs anyways. The lack of it is -to my mind- the biggest design oversight involved here. Everything else is mostly a matter of tuning or upgrading existing systems.

[X] Cockpit: Montrove was a damn good mecha pilot. If he had known this was happening, he could have corrected at best, or at very worse made sure that the crash didn't involve a rollover. You need to redesign the instruments in the cockpit and design a way to make sure you don't get more rollover-induced fatalities.

kelllogo said:

I disagree.

Going back to your own words, a veteran test pilots instinctive response to a loss of balance actually made the problem worse, to the point it arguably got him killed. This has to do with both the unusual layout of the mecha and a number of creeping changes to the armor layout. Making this safer is, in my eyes, going to be the option that takes the most authority to do efficiently.

Cockpit instruments aren't much of a problem for our team to work on.
Extra Gryo controls for self-stabilizing aren't something that the team will scream at one another over.

It's the armor and layout that are where the compromises of this mecha live. And it's there that our efforts can make the biggest difference.

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I disagree with your disagreeal. The problem here isn't that our mech is a seething ergonomic mess, or rather, it isn't just that it's a seething ergonomic mess. What we're running into here is a generational transition issue. The French mech corps is transitioning to bipedal mechs from multipedal mechs, and as a result, is running into issues that they previously didn't even know existed. Look up the early jet era to see just how nasty that can get.
You say cockpit instruments won't be a problem, despite our test pilot having no idea anything was wrong until the mech started to pitch over, while outside observers noting what are in hindsight worrying handling characteristics while cornering. The viewpoint character explicitly noted that the pilot had no instruments to give him any form of feedback on pitch, yaw, or roll. The artificial horizon-analogue does not currently exist in any way shape or form. If we want one, we're going to have to build one starting from zero.
The armor issue, meanwhile is brain dead simple to fix. Go back to the original blueprints, and tell St. Chamond to go gargle napalm when they complain.
Getting the lack of instrumentation fixed is absolutely crucial, in my opinion, unless we want to lose another test pilot on our next mech.

Even if we can redesign in such a way as to idiot proof it against this, the problem will just come up again with the next design. And the one after. Until we fix it.

IndustrialVice2 said:

I disagree with your disagreeal. The problem here isn't that our mech is a seething ergonomic mess, or rather, it isn't just that it's a seething ergonomic mess. What we're running into here is a generational transition issue. The French mech corps is transitioning to bipedal mechs from multipedal mechs, and as a result, is running into issues that they previously didn't even know existed. Look up the early jet era to see just how nasty that can get.
You say cockpit instruments won't be a problem, despite our test pilot having no idea anything was wrong until the mech started to pitch over, while outside observers noting what are in hindsight worrying handling characteristics while cornering. The viewpoint character explicitly noted that the pilot had no instruments to give him any form of feedback on pitch, yaw, or roll. The artificial horizon-analogue does not currently exist in any way shape or form. If we want one, we're going to have to build one starting from zero.
The armor issue, meanwhile is brain dead simple to fix. Go back to the original blueprints, and tell St. Chamond to go gargle napalm when they complain.
Getting the lack of instrumentation fixed is absolutely crucial, in my opinion, unless we want to lose another test pilot on our next mech.

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There's an entire team working here, our character doesn't always have to focus on every detail. In fact, any detail not focused on is worked on by the current team. This changes the question from "which is most pressing" to "which option is the best use of our attention".

With that in mind, our character is very good at telling suppliers to gargle napalm and fairly good at Gyro and Controls systems. I expect any solutions
to be painful compromises that could wildly swing focus around depending on which subject the negotiator knows best. A lot like how the design morphed when designing the current armor.

Another bone I'd pick is that more controls can help work things out, but if the kneejerk response makes it crash then you still have a problem. What you've done is point the finger and say if you had followed all the directions it would have worked out.

[X] Gyroscope: That fatal destabilization was the root cause of this mess. You need to develop an automatic momentum control adjustment system so a sudden power surge or dropoff can be safely handled without requiring manual attention.

Let's perfect the gyro till the mech can stand on one leg and deliver roundhouse kicks

kelllogo said:

Another bone I'd pick is that more controls can help work things out, but if the kneejerk response makes it crash then you still have a problem. What you've done is point the finger and say if you had followed all the directions it would have worked out.

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A kneejerk response made on no information. The pilot literally didn't realize he was tilting when the mech was already halfway over.

Suggesting that we're saying 'just follow the instructions' implies that there were instructions to follow when there weren't. So the first and most obvious step should be fixing the lack of information.

While I respect your opinion on how to resolve this, your arguments are disingenuous as all hell.

[X] Cockpit: Montrove was a damn good mecha pilot. If he had known this was happening, he could have corrected at best, or at very worse made sure that the crash didn't involve a rollover. You need to redesign the instruments in the cockpit and design a way to make sure you don't get more rollover-induced fatalities.

Put some kind of seat belts in there.

Pyro Hawk said:

Okay, so this is what we personally are fixing, rather than having our team fix right? What are our skills again? Because I think that getting the cockpit to have proper instruments is the most critical task, but our skills might change what we do ourselves.

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Yes. Your skills, as per Character Creation, are Detect Bullshit (EX) and Transmissions (A).

TimEd said:

(and maybe even take advantage of somehow)

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Only if they want to intentionally faceplant their mecha. This is a design fault that happened because you crammed too much new hotness into one frame, and when that happens, sometimes people die. Shit happens.

kelllogo said:

It has to be made more stable. More sensors and an awkward control system might allow better handling, but needing to baby the dials while making a sharp corner is a substantial drawback in my eyes. We need to re-balance the armor.

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It's more "baby the levers" but yes. Your current cockpit setup is a foot saunter system, with the left hand running the machine gun mount and the right hand running the clutch, shifter, throttle, gyro power, and comms system. Things not mentioned this update that will be when they're actually important: you have a three-channel radio in this mecha as a bonus from getting the good cockpit design, as well as in-mecha comms system, and the synthetic reflector gunsights for the weapons systems!

And yes, that's a real thing, and it's even period.

The idea of a reflector sight originated in 1900 with Irish optical designer and telescope maker Howard Grubb in patent No.12108.[8]​[9]​ Grubb conceived of his "Gun Sight for large and small Ordnance" as a better alternative to the difficult to use iron sight while avoiding the telescopic sight's limited field of view, greater apparent target speed, parallax errors, and the danger of keeping the eye against an eye stop. In the 1901 the Scientific Transactions of the Royal Dublin Society he described his invention as:[10]​

It would be possible to conceive an arrangement by which a fine beam of light like that from a search light would be projected from a gun in the direction of its axis and so adjusted as to correspond with the line of fire so that wherever the beam of light impinged upon an object the shot would hit. This arrangement would be of course equally impracticable for obvious reasons but it is instanced to show that a beam of light has the necessary qualifications for our purposes.

Now the sight which forms the subject of this Paper attains a similar result not by projecting an actual spot of light or an image on the object but by projecting what is called in optical language a virtual image upon it.

It was noted soon after its invention that the sight could be a good alternative to iron sights and also had uses in surveying and measuring equipment.[11]​ The reflector sight was first used on German fighter aircraft in 1918[12]​[13]​ and widely adopted on all kinds of fighter and bomber aircraft in the 1930s. By World War II the reflector sight was being used on many types of weapons besides aircraft, including anti-aircraft guns, naval guns, anti-tank weapons, and many other weapons where the user needed the simplicity and quick target acquisition nature of the sight. Through its development in the 1930s and into World War II the sight was also being referred to in some applications by the abbreviation "reflex sight".[14]​[15]​

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KhazintheDark said:

Hang on, we don't have a harness tying the pilot to their seat for this exact reason?

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kelllogo said:

Not after the last mecha we worked on kept catching fire.

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As a rule of thumb, you don't actually have a safety belt when you've got a saunter system, which is the Mecha Control Scheme of the Future, since there's so much shit for the hands to handle. If it was fixed weapons only, you could go with a foot-pedal to fire the gun, but that would necessitate deleting the machine guns. The Soviets, acording to rumor, actually do have foot-control-only weapons, but that's because their rocket pods don't traverse, only elevate and de-elevate.

IndustrialVice2 said:

We currently have so little pilot feedback that a veteran test pilots instinctive response to a loss of balance actually made the problem worse, to the point it arguably got him killed.

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Oh, no debate about it: that recovery move is what got him killed. The initial fall broke the shoulder, but the rollover and the bad landing is what broke his back. This is why mecha are roll-yaw stabilized: it prevents rollovers exactly like this one, because rollovers are what gets people killed. This is true for any vehicle: bikes, cars, trains, airplanes, mecha. When up is down, someone goes home in a box.

Spectral Waltz said:

A kneejerk response made on no information. The pilot literally didn't realize he was tilting when the mech was already halfway over.

Suggesting that we're saying 'just follow the instructions' implies that there were instructions to follow when there weren't. So the first and most obvious step should be fixing the lack of information.

While I respect your opinion on how to resolve this, your arguments are disingenuous as all hell.

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That statement about knejerks was last for a reason -_-

I'll reiterate why I think we need to work on the armor: Adding cockpit instruments, while important, is both less critical and a less productive use of our character's time than working on the stability of the Mecha. I trust our team can add dials and level indicators without needing to breath down their necks. But any adjustments to the armor layout are going to be bad for some parts of performance, and thus harder for a subordinate to do (I expect this is the main difficulty of any adjustments, figuring out how to minimize the cost to the rest of the Mecha's systems).

Even if it appears simple, in my judgement Armor layout suffers the most from delegating it elsewhere.

EDIT: I don't appreciate being called a liar over this. How does that even make sense? I'm saying that I think is something is a good idea while also not believing that what I say is a good option is actually a good option? Why would anyone do that?

7734 said:

As a rule of thumb, you don't actually have a safety belt when you've got a saunter system, which is the Mecha Control Scheme of the Future, since there's so much shit for the hands to handle. If it was fixed weapons only, you could go with a foot-pedal to fire the gun, but that would necessitate deleting the machine guns. The Soviets, acording to rumor, actually do have foot-control-only weapons, but that's because their rocket pods don't traverse, only elevate and de-elevate.

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So we can't reach all the controls with our hands if we are strapped in? Sounds like something that should be fixable at least in theory.

Axslashel said:

So we can't reach all the controls with our hands if we are strapped in? Sounds like something that should be fixable at least in theory.

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More like you can't reach the full range of motion with your feet, but yes.

kelllogo said:

EDIT: I don't appreciate being called a liar over this. How does that even make sense? I'm saying that I think is something is a good idea while also not believing that what I say is a good option is actually a good option? Why would anyone do that?

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I didn't call you a liar, I called you disingenuous, that is to say, knowingly misrepresenting the facts of the matter to advance your argument.

That clarified, I also want to apologize, it seems like you genuinely believe what you're saying and did not knowingly misrepresent anything.

However, I still disagree. If the cockpit instrumentation is so bad that the pilot cannot tell they are off balance at what is -if I am reading the update correctly- something rapidly approaching a 45-degree angle?

That is a critical problem and will continue to be a critical problem in every single mecha we build. While the other issues are definitely worth addressing, I do not believe that you can truthfully say they are more important. Details of armor design and drive trains are worth energy and time to improve, but good instrumentation is a matter of basic core functionality.

Spectral Waltz said:

However, I still disagree. If the cockpit instrumentation is so bad that the pilot cannot tell they are off balance at what is -if I am reading the update correctly- something rapidly approaching a 45-degree angle?

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The problem is that the cockpit is designed to pitch a fair bit in standard operation. A thirty degree arc of travel isn't weird; Montrove didn't panic at thirty five or forty because he was in a high speed turn. What he didn't feel that got him killed was roll angle, not pitch angle- and there, it was about a nine degree roll that killed him: four degrees over standard. Not many people can find that difference by feel, especially mid-crash.

Now calm the fuck down please so I don't need to get mods in here.

[X] Cockpit: Montrove was a damn good mecha pilot. If he had known this was happening, he could have corrected at best, or at very worse made sure that the crash didn't involve a rollover. You need to redesign the instruments in the cockpit and design a way to make sure you don't get more rollover-induced fatalities.

Yeah this one's looking like we need better instrumentation chief

7734 said:

Oh, no debate about it: that recovery move is what got him killed. The initial fall broke the shoulder, but the rollover and the bad landing is what broke his back. This is why mecha are roll-yaw stabilized: it prevents rollovers exactly like this one, because rollovers are what gets people killed. This is true for any vehicle: bikes, cars, trains, airplanes, mecha. When up is down, someone goes home in a box.

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Thanks for that little tidbit, because it basically confirms what I already suspected was one of the real world parallels inspiring this little mess: the Graveyard Spiral. Fpr those of you who aren't interested in aviation, the graveyard spiral is a phenomenon that occurs when a plane is jostled into a bank by turbulence while in heavy cloud. This causes the plane to begin descending while also gaining speed. The pilot is incapable of feeling the turn due to centripetal force, and so assumes that he's in a dive and pulls back on his stick. This tightens his rate of turn and increases the acceleration in speed and loss of altitude. This vicious cycle can rapidly result in what pilots formally refer to as Controlled Flight into Terrain and informally as buying the farm. Importantly, the solution to this was not building planes so stable that turbulence could not knock them askew. Instead, it was the invention of the artificial horizon, so pilots could receive effective feedback and make informed decisions.
@kelllogo isn't necessarily wrong when he states that focusing on the armor layout is likely the best way to solve the stability problem for our current mech. He's very likely right. However, it's also the only option that guarantees we won't have fixed the stability issue for the next mech.

[X] Gyroscope: That fatal destabilization was the root cause of this mess. You need to develop an automatic momentum control adjustment system so a sudden power surge or dropoff can be safely handled without requiring manual attention.

IndustrialVice2 said:

Thanks for that little tidbit, because it basically confirms what I already suspected was one of the real world parallels inspiring this little mess: the Graveyard Spiral

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When I wrote the crash, I was more looking at a bad case of Mach tuck for what the fatal error sequence was, but I'm familiar with a lot of reasons for CFT incidents.

For those wondering, Mach tuck is what happens when a wing goes transonic, and as a result suffers partial flow separation. At this point, you're not generating lift off the full wing, and you don't have full control of the wing through standard flips. The solution is to dump altitude and loose speed; which do not go together. A lot of early jets and late prop planes had issues with it in dives, forcing the creation of dive slats to break up the transonic wave to re-establish proper wing flow.

[X] Cockpit: Montrove was a damn good mecha pilot. If he had known this was happening, he could have corrected at best, or at very worse made sure that the crash didn't involve a rollover. You need to redesign the instruments in the cockpit and design a way to make sure you don't get more rollover-induced fatalities.

When you can't tell that you are tilted weird at speed, then you need an instrument to tell you. Virtual horizon plus a gyro speed reader should deal with it entirely, and make future mechs safer. Granted, this is supposed to be effectively a mech IFV so shaving off three or so inches of armor just sounds like a bad idea.

I do want to play devils advocate for a bit and point out that our Detect Bullshit skill means from mechanical standpoint were best suited to dealing with outside contractors, so the armor option would be best for us personally to get involved in.

[x] Cockpit: Montrove was a damn good mecha pilot. If he had known this was happening, he could have corrected at best, or at very worse made sure that the crash didn't involve a rollover. You need to redesign the instruments in the cockpit and design a way to make sure you don't get more rollover-induced fatalities.

[x] Cockpit: Montrove was a damn good mecha pilot. If he had known this was happening, he could have corrected at best, or at very worse made sure that the crash didn't involve a rollover. You need to redesign the instruments in the cockpit and design a way to make sure you don't get more rollover-induced fatalities.

[x] Cockpit: Montrove was a damn good mecha pilot. If he had known this was happening, he could have corrected at best, or at very worse made sure that the crash didn't involve a rollover. You need to redesign the instruments in the cockpit and design a way to make sure you don't get more rollover-induced fatalities.

[X] Armor: This armor scheme does not work. You'll need to work with Saint-Chamond and get something else figured out, because your previous prototype maximum length has gone from a soft guideline to a stone solid limit.

An I reading this wrong? Was it not the armor that started this chain of events because it was so forward heavy and unwieldy?

[X] Gyroscope: That fatal destabilization was the root cause of this mess. You need to develop an automatic momentum control adjustment system so a sudden power surge or dropoff can be safely handled without requiring manual attention.

The gyro issue may come up on later mechs as well. Furthermore, cockpit improvements won't help unless the pilot is good enough to use them to recover.

Parzival95 said:

An I reading this wrong? Was it not the armor that started this chain of events because it was so forward heavy and unwieldy?

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While the armor started the chain of events, the lack of cockpit instrumentation is a bigger issue since while we can fix this problem for future pilots *now*, a lack of cockpit instrumentation will fuck up the day of mech pilots for every bipedal model after ours.