votes closed but we can keep a belly launched drone for the future, say UGVs?
Blast it! I was too late!
Gasp How dare you suggest such a repulsive concept. Mechs should be bizarre and interesting. Let the rest do their bland and boring humanoid designs that will fall over with a stiff breeze. Here, we do art! And make it affordable.
Or a Tachikoma.
I mean sure you can squish and stretch and twist, but bipedal designs are too expected, too familiar. To craft and meld art one must forgo the assumption of the humanoid design.
I mean...
I must admit such a proposal would be....intriguing. Unfortunately most mech designs are already such facsimiles of man. The material composition would be tricky to figure out....
Yes, but they're also immediately recognizable as machinery. Or perhaps a particularly well armoured man. This would be completing the illusion for the purpose of psychological warfare.
backpack cockpit. its a weakness if it gets flanked but it makes for an easier ejection system and lets you keep the bulk of the machine between the pilot and the enemy when a platoon is properly supporting one another.
Ah but metal men they are regardless. Any illusion breaks if you stare at it too closely, or do you think that mythological giants and dolls would be more believable? If you want this to work then a feminine form could suffice. Gives you more room to work with and perhaps you could weaponize perversion while you are at it. There aught to be a market for that at least.
It really doesn't. It was directly mentioned that humanoid mechs are easier for people to connect and control via the nuero-link. By having our mechs not be humanoid it adds an extra layer of access by requiring some training in non-humanoid designs to operate. This ensures that some random person or plucky anime protagonist can't just hop in one of our mechs and run off with them like what happens in Gundam a few times while simultaneously lowering the list of subjects whenever it does happen. The attempt will more often than not result in the same result as when a theif that could only drive automatic tried stealing a car that was manual and found that they didn't know how to operate it. While simple it is a layer of security.
And it pays dividends when folks fail to steal our fancy new mech. No need to make it easier for them. Old protocols will have old workarounds. This is a near effortless layer that complicates such attempts, makes it easier to figure out who did it, provides a niche we can very easily swipe, pushes our neuro-link tech to be more advanced than our competitors, and makes our designs easily recognizable and distinguishable which is vital in marketability.
Security along with mechanical benefits and being distinctive. Our mechs won't be so easily toppled over or stolen which are major selling points. That same over familiarity is also a flaw that can easily be exploited by having them face a non-humanoid design, and since we are the ones who make such designs they will be coming to us. They will come to us as long as we make good mechs but being harder to steal and distinctive with mechanical benefits that many find appealing are major selling points. Non biped designs have a niche that bipedal designs can't easily take and knowing that some upstart can't take it for a joyride would bring some peace of mind to a lot of buyers.
It isn't a gimmick, it's straight up a free layer of protection due to engineering. Saboters, thieves, and plucky anime protagonists are all stuff that will happen to even the best militaries. Thinking otherwise is just arrogance. There is no reason to make it easier for them.
