With Technology Today Are Battlemechs possiability,

The UAV's would be the best option for this timeframe, battlemechs are a little "cold" and would probably be rejected by the public.

You know, the predator drones carry hellfire missiles, i'm very surprised nobody picked up on that.

That the Idea of battlemechs is good, but in practice, it will fail. Unfortunately, they're too big to be of any use to anyone. An abrams, or any other tank for that matter, would just aim, fire, and lay the thing out all over the ground. I think that the closest that we'll get to using that sort of tech on the field, is a high-powered armor suit for soldiers. Something like a very large piece of power-armor. It'd probably end up making the soldier stand about 3 meters tall, and be covered with thick armor, virtually immune to bullet fire. One large gun on the armor's arm, probably something like a 6-9mm gun, and a sophisticated video recon unit. now that I think about it, That'd probably be something like the Marines on starcraft...heh. Yes, i think that big mechs are ridiculous, yet smaller, more efficient power armor is a much better possibility. That's all. Peace.

And big thomping battlemechs would be stopped (no tech for this) by a nice big trench. Crater up that landscape with some bombs and they'd be prime target while trying not to fall down.

Originally posted by Byrd
And big thomping battlemechs would be stopped (no tech for this) by a nice big trench. Crater up that landscape with some bombs and they'd be prime target while trying not to fall down.

Jump jets baby, jump jets.

We just need the Clans to invade and everything will be handled for us.

I believe the exoskeleton argument might be the best way to go. If you can make the suit easy enough to control, maybe a way for the wearer to "jump" over objects and such. I believe it is more feasable than making a battlemech work.

Originally posted by crayon

Originally posted by Byrd
And big thomping battlemechs would be stopped (no tech for this) by a nice big trench. Crater up that landscape with some bombs and they'd be prime target while trying not to fall down.

Jump jets baby, jump jets.

We just need the Clans to invade and everything will be handled for us.

I believe the exoskeleton argument might be the best way to go. If you can make the suit easy enough to control, maybe a way for the wearer to "jump" over objects and such. I believe it is more feasable than making a battlemech work.

Ummm.. Yeah.

Have you by any chance done any calculations on the amount of power (or amount of fuel burned to provide said power) to "jump" something weighing around 20 tons? How fast is it going to be in the air? How maneuverable? How stable?

And you thought that mechs would make good targets on the ground... I imagine that an AH-64 Apache would have a hell of a time picking those things off with a 30m chain gun as they tried to stay upright in midair...

Similiar to my exo-skeleton posting... but has anyone watched the Mainframe series "Heavy Gear"? Not quite the size of full-blown Mech's, and somewhat larger than exo-skeletons... good show, if anyone can catch it.

Anyway, build an elctronic "nervous system" based on dinosaurs... they had the main brain, with a secondary brain further down. Couldn't the same be done for mechanical response time? Or how about, like on the cartoon Exo-Squad, have the computer interface plug directly into the brain stem (also like ShadowRun, Cyberpunk).

Granted, those are odd statements, but this is an odd discussion. I would still think that as a psychological impact, I'd rather face an Abrams instead of a couple exo-suits.

It think mechs are impractical. Sure, they seem to be a vicious killing device in Mechwarrior, but that's only a game. You have to considers the factors in reality.

First of all it's much too big of a target. A well aimed missle can knock it off balance. Even with all it's heavy armor, there's a certain limit to how much it can take. With everyone desperately shooting at it, it won't be long until it's on the ground, making for a very easy target.

The only good practical use I can find for it is that you can use it to stomp and blow apart small towns to debris. Even with guns shooting at it, it can probably take a few hits with all the tons of armor. People will be running frantically away as it decimates every building in it's sight. But then, what happens if it touches a telephone wire? The electricity travelling through the heavily metal armored machine will probably short circuit everything, and it loses it's balance and falls to the ground and dies.

It mech is probably going to carry ALOT of ammo and explosives, so a hit in the wrong place can probably blow the thing up. The heat produced just by firing the machine gun will over heat the systems and cause it to shut down or shot out. If heat sinks are going to be used, there's gonna have to be a whole heck of them.

Firing a missile will also be a problem. It creates recoil, pushing the mach back and possibly tipping it over. For it to properly aim and launch it, the mech would have to stand still, and go into a fighting stance to keep balance and launch. When you have all these people shooting at you, staying still is not an option.

How the hell are you gonna power the thing? Moving something like 20-40 tons, it's gonna take alot of horsepower to get the whole thing going. Even if you some sort of power source, what's gonna fuel it? You need something that can take away heat, be dense so that it can last longer, and you need ALOT of it to have the mech running for the entire battle. It doesn't have to momentum that tanks have, so you can't coast down hills. Rolling down is an option, just be sure to hit the enemies on the way.

Given the idea of a walking machine, I don't think it's possible to have one that can walk and do battle at the same time. Even now, we've barely managed to make a walking robot, and it moves really slowly and had a really complex system to keep it balance.

Mechwarrior type mechs, you could just shoot the ground out from underneath them, or just blow them to hell with jet fighters imo.

If one was to use Mechs... I'd say the Japanese styles mechs would do better, IE Macross, Gundam....

about the fuel, I think in mw they have nuclear reactors or some sort of fusion going on....

They'd be big targets and easy to attack...

Gundam style would be better, more life like mechs, more "alien" like

[Edited on 31-10-2003 by Lysergic]

reply to post by DJDOHBOY

Has anyone thought of Quadruped Mechs? They would solve trenches, maneuvering around them, and mounting a multi-weapon turret would allow it to waste any enemies that came close. In short, perfect killing machines.

I always figured that the best option might be a compromise between a tank and a mech. Something that has tracks and a low profile, but can take steps over obstacles. That would mean that the tracks would have to be in arms of some sort.
One way to visualize it is if you imagine that you're on your knees so that your hands and elbows touch the ground and knees and feet also. Then imagine if you had tank tracks on your arms and legs for speed and low profile moving.
I know I'm crazy but who cares?