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Post by bigbombr on Jan 14, 2017 20:26:38 GMT
... 6 Standard vertical boost time of 0.5 to 1.5 flight ceiling for 6 seconds in air before semi powered decent( system uses leg structure and leg pneumatics for brazed quick decent) Through utilization of ground effect the german high-macs known as the JAGDPANTHER can remain air born for upwards of 30 seconds. 7 Torso flexibility means side strafing and option for movement, as well as a turreted upper body capable of movements 90* plus/minus the frontal median of 0. 8 Electricity provided by twin compact turbine rear mounted jet engines. Active thrust vectoring allows for near 360 powered movement. 9 Pressurized cockpit with atmospheric regulators ensure complete immunity to any chemical/biological attacks on pilot ... Speed 35mph walking, 145powered movement, 265 airborne With it's advantage over typical ground, air , and water based systems the HIGH-MACS is the optimal low budget asymmetrical humanoid war frame for the 21'st century battlefield. I agree with most except flight capability (limited as it may be). Making a mech flight-capable requires to many compromises and you'd end up making an already complex and expensive system even more so. Making it light enough for flight would make it pretty fragile too (there's a reason birds of prey usually either kill their prey quickly with their talons or by dragging them of a cliff: a bird with it's hollow bones, optimized for flight, is too fragile to brawl with a ground-bound animal of similar weight).
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Post by argonbalt on Jan 14, 2017 20:43:10 GMT
Well in the game the unit mainly achieves it's kills from a flight stage, and it does not continuously fly so much as "hop". When it does this it takes advantage of the usually thinner upper armour and wideness of tanks to penetrate them. SO don't think of it as a plane so much as the baby of a tank, a helicopter and a A-10 thunderbolt. Also if you enjoy patlabor the movie 2 there is a mission in here that is set entirely in a jungle/Viet-Nam environment with Tunguska AA platforms literally everywhere. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uodW4jC6pg
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Post by bigbombr on Jan 14, 2017 20:58:20 GMT
Well in the game the unit mainly achieves it's kills from a flight stage, and it does not continuously fly so much as "hop". When it does this it takes advantage of the usually thinner upper armour and wideness of tanks to penetrate them. SO don't think of it as a plane so much as the baby of a tank, a helicopter and a A-10 thunderbolt. Also if you enjoy patlabor the movie 2 there is a mission in here that is set entirely in a jungle/Viet-Nam environment with Tunguska AA platforms literally everywhere. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uodW4jC6pgThat would require an obscene thrust-to-weight ratio. While 4+ gen fighters al exceed a TWR of one, they're build to be light. Mechs would be either heavier or have less internal space for fuel. And you'd still need large rocket engines (jet engines take to long to throttle up to make hops). Rocket engines means that you have to carry oxidizer in addition to fuel. You either have a robust mech with armour comparable to a IFV, or you have a hopping mech. Unless you're crazy enough to use something like metallic hydrogen as fuel/propellant.
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Post by theholyinquisition on Jan 14, 2017 21:23:14 GMT
Or, instead of pulling an F-35 and doing everything with one vehicle, you could just buy four different ones for a significant discount.
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Post by David367th on Jan 14, 2017 21:30:42 GMT
It's generally cheaper to have a jack of all trades but more effective to have specialized vehicles.
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Post by argonbalt on Jan 14, 2017 21:43:37 GMT
Yeah it's like i said still a stretch, but hey even the X2 law being a bitch on Earth, won't dampen my spirits! Even on Mars the gravity is only 1/3, so one Earth while nothing larger than say a 4 metre powered armour is really useful, the outer worlds hold far more diverse and interesting possibilities.
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Post by thorneel on Jan 14, 2017 21:54:05 GMT
It's generally cheaper to have a jack of all trades but more effective to have specialized vehicles. Not always. To compare apples with apples, for the Rafale, it is. For the F35, it isn't. Apart from variations in business practices or acquisition processes, the main reason seems to be that the F35 tries to do too much at once. Without the STOL requirement, it would have been significantly better at everything else, for example. In the case of this mech, it is far worse than the F35: not only can it take off vertically, but it is also heavily armoured and with the armament of a small warship. There is no way separate system wouldn't be both significantly cheaper and more effective. And again, bipedal position is simply unworkable at this scale. The legs would be so fragile that nearly any enemy fire would break a critical component. Also, it suffers from the same problems as the German Wunderwaffe tanks Maus or Rattle : too expensive per unit compared to power effectiveness, too heavy for most terrain (in fact, biped is even worse there as weight is concentrated on smaller feet), too slow and fuel-hungry, too big a target (making it possible to engage it from further away and with heavier weapons), too great a concentration of power, making it harder to fill a battlefield, too expensive to develop... If you do want land warships, fine, but better go for cheap surface effect antigrav (and remember that this tech will have many other effects on and off the battlefield) Also, the Russians seem to be developing anti-swarm systems, in particularly EW systems like jammers. We may see in a few years how the spear and the shield fare...
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Post by David367th on Jan 14, 2017 22:42:09 GMT
Actually the most produced F35 is STOL, but it is lacking the engine to propel the amount of shit they want it to carry. The Top Brass were thinking they needed the smallest most nimble plane possible that could carry 2 Tsar bombas, a Transformer, the Space Shuttle, and still be able to VTOL. Thats why its getting shit on by F16, F18s, and F22s. Hell I bet Maverick in his F14 could shove it into the ground.
The problem with the Maus and Ratte is that Germany had this idea with HEAT, HESH, and APDS becoming the norm that you would have to armor vehicles better traditionally by just making them thicker. If they kept Rommel around, we might have seen the Leopard 1 get produced in 1944. A fast nimble vehicle with a big gun that can outsmart its opponent is better than a vehicle that can get hit 30 times and somewhat maybe survive.
If you apply what I said to CDE, you can have one ship carry all the weapons of the Gunship, Fleet Carrier, Siloship, and Laser Frigate. It has less armor mass, carries less fuel mass, has less crew, but it's big and massive and gets dunked on by the normal fleet of four ships.
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Post by theholyinquisition on Jan 14, 2017 22:47:30 GMT
And if you want mobility, knees, ankles, and hips are terribly designed, and difficult to armor.
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Post by bigbombr on Jan 15, 2017 9:06:34 GMT
And if you want mobility, knees, ankles, and hips are terribly designed, and difficult to armor. I always imagined that most of a mechs armour would be on the body, and that the limbs would only be armoured against small arms fire. Instead, limbs should rely on a tough endoskeleton and redundant actuators to maintain mobility while under fire.
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Post by theholyinquisition on Jan 15, 2017 22:11:03 GMT
How does a redundant actuator fix having a leg in two pieces?
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Post by Easy on Jan 15, 2017 23:26:27 GMT
How did this become a mecha thread?
Power armor is guaranteed, unless it manages to become obsolete by some fantastic technology.
Terminator ground drones is realistic, but AI is still limited and untrusted for high level decisions.
There can be reasons for mecha to exist and many reasons are that the economic situation is that a specialized traditional vehicle doesn't fit the requirements.
Most of the fragility or ground pressure arguments are simple engineering design considerations. Nobody expects a tank to be able to move when its track has been blown off. The tank fights in place until friendly forces secure the area and the crew can dismount and attempt self recovery or additional recovery persons and equipment arrive.
Maybe a broken mecha could hobble, maybe not, it is speculation.
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Post by argonbalt on Jan 16, 2017 0:07:55 GMT
Because mecha are the will of humans wishing to impose our form ONTO THE COSMOS! the machines we fight with are efficient, mathematically computer engineered to be perfect killing machines, but in the end it is still humans who do the fighting. This has led to the disconnect and trauma of modern war. A combined arms battlefield filled with it's own mini ecosystem of designs and weapons. Once again these things are usually the most effective forms to do so. We create, are killed, and kill both us and nature with mechanisms separated from the organic world we live in and are dependant on. but think back, to the gods heroes and monsters of old. They were always given the metaphor of human form. This is why humanoid mecha are so loved as a concept. Instead of technology being both the form and function, it is merely the flesh and blood of a shape that echoes it's operator, victim and species. Think back even to WWI and II when we would paint emblems and shark mouths on our fighting machines. That is to say, if we ever manage to find a situation and time when operating a mecha is logical and effective(be it 4 metres or 40 metres) in that moment the people at the helm will finally feel the full power of GODS! impracticality be damned!
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Post by Easy on Jan 16, 2017 0:21:03 GMT
Wiki says T Rex was 10 tonnes, 12 meters long and hips were 3.7 meters high. Also that there were bigger bipeds. Pretty good for flesh and bone.
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Post by theholyinquisition on Jan 16, 2017 4:21:38 GMT
Because mecha are the will of humans wishing to impose our form ONTO THE COSMOS! the machines we fight with are efficient, mathematically computer engineered to be perfect killing machines, but in the end it is still humans who do the fighting. This has led to the disconnect and trauma of modern war. A combined arms battlefield filled with it's own mini ecosystem of designs and weapons. Once again these things are usually the most effective forms to do so. We create, are killed, and kill both us and nature with mechanisms separated from the organic world we live in and are dependant on. but think back, to the gods heroes and monsters of old. They were always given the metaphor of human form. This is why humanoid mecha are so loved as a concept. Instead of technology being both the form and function, it is merely the flesh and blood of a shape that echoes it's operator, victim and species. Think back even to WWI and II when we would paint emblems and shark mouths on our fighting machines. That is to say, if we ever manage to find a situation and time when operating a mecha is logical and effective(be it 4 metres or 40 metres) in that moment the people at the helm will finally feel the full power of GODS! impracticality be damned! In WW1, the french thought that guts, grit, and attack would win them them the war. They were butchered by machine guns and artillery. Practicality is the ONLY concern of the military, and it should be. There's a reason there's an entire sub-page (warning:TVtropes link) for the military in Awesome yet Impractical.
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