If mech's were real...
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You are currently reading a thread in /m/ - Mecha
You are currently reading a thread in /m/ - Mecha
How would they be best used in our world?
>>11818237
Depends. Newly made mechs like the ones we have now? Or the ones potrayed in media? If its the first one then not much use other than a fancy thing. If its the 2nd then I'd say morale. Nothing to boost our morale then throwing a fucking enemy tank into a enemy helicopter.
They wouldn't because square cube law.
Construction and other manual labor probably.
Also I don't think your pic has enuff dakka.
>>11818247
>Construction and other manual labor probably.
This.
>>11818251
How could you be satisfied with just that amount of dakka when the left arm could be much shootier.
>>11818247
this is probably the only way, though I can't say
>>11818242 scenario does put shit eating grin on my face.
what are your guys thoughts on having em do like disaster operations like wild fires and floods?
>>11818243
Lets ignore the square cube law. Because fuck that shit.
>>11818261
That makes sense.
>>11818257
Can never have enuff dakka.
>>11818262
if i could have one wish, i'd probably make that law universally go away.
>>11818237
They are already real. A few of them are on Mars doing SCIENCE.
In fact the only inhabitants of Mars that we know about are all robots. Mars is therefore the most /m/ planet in our solar system.
>>11818326
Dat don't count.
Assuming typical humanoid mech:
I would agree with construction. A mech could lift many different objects with ease, and position them precisely. They would do good in disaster operations as well.
I want to say a mech could help with agriculture, because I'm sure agriculture would be one of the first industries to take advantage of mech technology. But I don't really know how a mech would do anything more efficient than current machines, except maybe clearing and tilling a big field fast.
>>11818261
Wild fires can be handled by trucks, a mech would be flat out overkill and expensive. But useful because if someone is in said fire it can just walk right through it to save that person as long as it doesn't knock a tree on said person. However I doubt it could let the man ride on its shoulder in a fire, it would need a second cockpit.
>>11818497
Unless you mean robots for picking vegetables I dont see mechs in Ag.
>>11818497
What about raising morale in the military and on the battlefield? Does this >>11818242 make sense with that morale idea?
>>11818509
Current machines are pretty efficient at picking vegetables, which is why I can't think of any good use for a mech, despite agriculture being such an important thing. Maybe someone else has an idea.
>>11818511
I was just thinking of non-military uses in my post.
But I guess they could be a morale boost. I'd fight for a country that has awesome mechs.
>>11818435
You sir are a racist. Not all mechs need two legs and a humanoid profile.
>>11818532
Another problem of that square cube law would be the mobile suits feet. If you transferred that much mass to the ground with 2 feet it would CRUSH any ground that it was standing on.
>>11818587
Another reason to use in military. But could a mech actually throw a tank into a helicopter?
>>11818587
How much mass?
You do realize the square cube law applies to an object of uniform density and material, right?
>>11818237
Fancy Nationalistic display pieces for demonstrations during holiday parades.
>>11818262
>>11818278
Even if you get rid of the square-cube law, mechs are still worthless on a battlefield.
>>11818637
With todays tech yes. But lets say we're in the future and we managed to get down mech's as good as we have gotten down modern day tanks. Not so useless now that it can actually use that oversized chaingun eh? Even if you can't afford it likely the tech in a few years would be enough to get smoothed out mech movement and strength.
>>11819777
What I'm saying is it won't stay useless forever. But what happens when it does become useful? When we've gotten the tech down in the same way it took us time to get computers and other shit down? I would say they would be useful. Now they would topple over if they used a chaingun and would have to go armed with nerf guns. However when we get this shit down then mech's will be a very real thing. However not limited to just warfare.
Considering that civilization has advanced along a way such that we've never thought to solve problems by making things taller, it's hard to say.
It's probably going to be alternative construction technologies. Maybe in another world we'd have vertical tanks to defeat the way tank armor is handled (namely that the top typically has the thinnest armor), though the thought of an arms race with increasingly taller tanks comes off as a bit comical.
The base technologies that come together to form the typical idea of a mech have their theoretical applications, but combined together, I'm at a loss.
That said, it's worth mentioning that in real life the concept of a "walking" vehicle does in fact exist: dragline excavators are too massive for traditional caterpillar tracks, and thus use pontoon-feet to walk around... at a pace so glacial that they rely more on their impressive reach to do work in their chunk of the mine once they've been put in position.
>>11818587
Everything crushes the ground it stands on. It's a good thing that ground is generally good at withstanding crushing (compressive) forces after a point. A giant robot foot may tear up roads when it walks or sink into the earth some several inches, but it's not going to fall in to its knees like people think. As the ground beneath the foot is compacted by the weight above, it is better able to bear that weight. If I stepped into one of my potted plants, I'd make a footprint, but my foot would not sink to the bottom of the pot simply because it gave an inch and so must continue to do so.
While a bipedal form does greatly increase the pressure it exerts on the ground when it walks since it alternates feet, this also eliminates one of the major perils of moving heavy vehicles over natural surfaces. When a car or tracked vehicle sinks unevenly, it can get stuck on its undercarriage or lose contact or gripping strength when one or more of its wheels/tracks. A limbed creature pulls its foot up. Dirt isn't quicksand.
So giant robots compress and "destroy" ground, but do not ruin their own mobility in the process. /m/'s idea that mechs are going to sink into the ground because "muh square cube law" and "too heavy for feet" are bullshit. We could hardly build large structures if dirt was so shitty, and subsidence isn't a factor over the timescale of a robot walking.
>>11819777
Improved weapon technology does not make mechs useful (at least for a long while), improved defensive technology does. The big downside to a mech is that it's, well, big, and if you want to armor it everywhere like a tank, your cost and weight is going to grow immensely since you have so much more area to cover.
But what happens when armor thickness is no longer what saves you from an enemy weapon? When you have a robust enough active defense system that nothing can reach you to hit, you don't need armor. If you can swat down every explosive or kinetic penetrated fired your way with an incredible degree of success, you're good. Then the arms race becomes who can make a projectile fast enough to breach that defense system, but there is an upper limit to how fast you can move through an atmosphere before you destroy your gun or projectile on firing. Until that point, however, maneuverability and distance become more important.And then we get high-energy lasers and passive detection, aircraft become explosive pinatas, and we go right back to tanks hiding as well as they can.
>>11819918
I think the bigger issue is that bipedal motion is rather... I don't think "difficult" technically applies as much these days, but the fact that what we refer to as walking is in fact a sort of controlled falling has made the process of developing machines that can perform humanlike bipedal motion a bit more difficult than one might have expected.
I figure, once you include the physics interactions involving the terrain itself, it only gets worse from then on.
>>11819950
What show is that?
>>11819955
boku no space vampires in space
>>11819944
Can makes be equiped with any effective melee weapons?
>>11819955
Fuck wasn't there a show where mech's existed but can only be used by females, and some boy found a way to pilot said mech...dammit what was it called...
>>11819950
Humanoid movement is not necessarily the most efficient or best form of bipedal motion, just the one the happy accidents of evolution laid out for us and the one we have the most familiarity with and what most of our bipedal robot research is following. It's possible we'll hit upon some superior skeletomuscular structure, alternative gait, or weight distribution scheme that will alter that significantly. The latter is especially important since it has such a massive impact on how we walk, and the internal distribution of parts and weight of a humanoid robot is certainly not going to match the organs and weighting of a human.
Walking is a learned skill for humans, but something we are hard-wired to develop. For robots, it's largely a software problem at this point, but not something insurmountable. And as that software improves, we'll see some serious gains. For all our grace in motion, humans still stumble and trip (some moreso than others) and are limited in our ability to respond to shifting terrain, uneven footing, or unexpected forces by our biology; a robot can have better sensors, process many more inputs, do so faster and more accurately, be equipped with better gyroscopes than our hair-and-fluid-filled vestibular system, and have improved weight redistribution systems.
That extends to ground interaction as well. Humans use their eyes to detect a lot of information about their own movement, but more than that, we can analyze the terrain ahead of us and make (sub)conscious decisions to improve our footing. Walking along the street during winter, you notice there is a patch of ice up ahead, and alter your speed and stepping accordingly. A computer could analyze air temperature, laze the ice for its own temperature, determine its thickness, look up all relevant physical properties of ice, and develop and run models of how each step will go before it even takes them.
>>11819955
Valvrave.
>>11819972
Just having hands and arms is a pretty effective melee weapon even if you don't want to punch (which would be destructive to your mechanics). If you can flip an enemy or force its weaponry aside / break them, welp. It's closing to that distance before you get shot to shit that would be the problem.
I think spears would be the best fit for giant robots in some reality where closing to melee is standard doctrine.
>>11818243
>square cube law
Dude, enough of that. You keep posting this shit in the other threads.
Haven't you heard of the cardboard support challenge? Engineering students have been able to create bicycles, bridges, and other stuff that can support heavy loads and increased resistant to wear and tear.
>>11819978
Dual Parallel. And likely a couple of shit OVAs I can't think of.
With time they would be useful heavy weapons platforms. Only thing they can't be used for is stealth.
>>11820056
If they're tall enough you just paint the top blue.
>>11820059
And that would do what exactly? I still don't see it sneaking metal gear solid style.
>>11818247
Sadly, this
>>11820056
I thought it too, but I'm still not sure how would they be better than normal tanks.
>>11819978
Tenchi muyo something right?
>>11820071
>I still don't see it sneaking metal gear solid style.
And now I have the mental image of Snake trying to sneak around some compound in REX. Complete with a Metal Gear-sized cardboard box.
>>11820292
More mobile (especially if they have the ability to jump), can strafe, would be less prone to getting stuck in certain terrain.
>>11820056
Smaller mechs might be used as shock troops to suppress the shit out of infantry by using weapons that would usually be loaded on vehicles.
The advantage being that they would be able to go inside buildings and inside small streets. It's an exoskeleton rather than a true mech though.
Bigger ones would replace tanks in more difficult areas like mountains or forests, basically allowing you to bring a tank to an infantry fight.
The gottagofast TSF/Armored Core:FA version would be kinda pointless. Tanks and helis getting the same improvements in mobility would make them just as you.
However in the "mechs for rough terrain" scenario, thrusters and jet packs would make them even more of a nuisance for the opposing side.
That was my armchair general take on.
As a tool for the elite to subjugate the masses.
>>11818237
To keep letally wounded soldiers alive.
>>11819978
infinite stratos.
