mecha in SG/DS

A thought: (in reply to stuff Mr. Brian Bell said)

Your comments about a mech in city.... can't 
agree with em. (Not like that was a requirement 
anyway...). 

Here's some thoughts:
You can fit down a narrower alley than a tank. 
Does that make this a good idea? Sandwiched 
between two buildings... sounds like a wonderful 
spot for infantry to engage you with IAVRs, 
limpet mines, and perhaps even deadfall traps 
and cable trips and using demo to knock 
buildings onto you. Also a great little spot for a 
tank to pull up to the alley mouth and you in 
your poor mech with nowhere to go.....

Now, you say that tanks are vulnerable from the 
top. True today, not so likely to be true (see 
how armour is distributed in the SG 
construction rules and DS) in a world where 
top, bottom, side etc. attack missiles are 
common and where any weakpoint will be hit by 
AI driven weapons. So uniform armour is the 
order of the day. 

There are two real reasons a tank is better in 
most situations, even urban (though the margin 
is far less). It can take some liberties with 
thinning the bottom armour a wee bit and its 
ration of exterior space to interior space is 
probably greater than the walker which means 
the walker has to defend more square inches 
and has really no place it can afford not to 
defend. 

Additionally, it has been demonstrated that 
getting a bot to walk is a swine (there is one 
now, but it goes very slowly) and that this kind 
of suspension system sucks power and is 
inefficient mass-wise. So the tank (at least as of 
now....) gets the nod and if we assume 
common rates of progress, then it probably still 
will in the future. 

Also, tank design nowadays is headed for small 
crews, casement remote turrets (very small) 
and very low fat profiles. This makes for a very 
hard target and a good ability to attack from 
hull-down. Now, a mech is about the opposite - 
stands tall, and even if it runs 60 mph, it is till 
easy meat for a laser guided fire control system 
driven by and AI and very high velocity (HKP, 
HEL, DFFG, MDC) weaponry. 

I'm not saying walkers can't serve a purpose. 
One place would be in broken terrain (rubble, 
boulder fields, badlands, perhaps in some 
mountainous terrain) where tanks just can't go. 
And in urban situations, small walkers (size 1) 
might serve as good backup to infantry. But big 
walkers a la Star Wars AT AT require the magic 
of unobtainium armour or shields to give them 
any chance to survive the mass swarm of 
GMS/H and MDC/5 rounds they'll be sucking. 

Do what's fun. But if you're playing BT, admit 
that you're doing it because you like anime and 
big mecha, not because mecha are equally 
viable as tanks. Whereas I may not know the 
future, if we extrapolate common rates of 
technology growth (but postulate that we don't 
move to small robotic warriors which are 
expendable, small targets, and more than 
capable of delivering the weapons), then I 
suggest the tank still will be the king of the 
battlefield (until, at high TL, it becomes 
indistinguishable from a VTOL or small 
spaceship). 

Although, I must admit one thing BT had that 
DS2 misses: Ripping a limb off one of these 
mecha and bludgeoning the remainder of the 
mech into pulp with it. Now _THAT_ was 
entertainment....! 

Tomb. 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Thomas Barclay
Instructor, CST 6304 (TCP/IP programming for the Internet)
kaladorn@fox.nstn.ca 
http://fox.nstn.ca/~kaladorn/CST6304
http://stargrunt.ca/tb/CST6304