But articulation
is everything. Tanks easily have enough power to reach 160kph (over 1,500hp for most modern turbines and turbodiesels), they're not geared for it, but they could be. It's not even that they're aerodynamically unstable or anything ether, it's that
any traditional vehicle runs into limitations with suspension and articulation over rough terrain. It's not just 6 foot sheers that affect this, its heavy foliage, rocks, trenches and steep grades at odd angles. You hit a rock at 30mph in a tank and you might seriously break something. Leg's are giant shock absorbers, they wouldn't even flinch. Look at animals, tigers and their ilk barely slow down over dense jungle terrain, including very muddy terrain, and they weigh over 600lb's. They can
RUN through mud that would stop a jeep dead.
RUN. They don't get stuck. Mechs would have such obscene power (amusing they're fusion powered and all that) they would have zero problems dealing with mud or snow. It would take mud up to their knees to even slow them down! Remember, legs work like a pogo stick, they don't operate under nearly the same constraints. As long as you can push and pull you won't get stuck, and with sufficient power you probably won't even slow down. You're even less affected by gradient changes, so not only can you handle more terrain you can do it over grades faster. Not to mention nearly instant acceleration (you're only moving the limb, not having to deal with drag and friction from the ground). No, as a form of locomotion animal movement beats the pants off any wheel equivalent. You could put a 5,000hp engine in a tank, and I don't mean that as a hypothetical. You could probably tune a high end turbodiesel in a tank to pull those kinds of numbers. All it'd do would spin the treads on the dirt and kick up a mighty dust storm. You run into traction limitations. Tread tension limitations. Tank suspension is very primitive stuff designed for high load applications, look up torsion bars. The treads themselves sheer off at high speed. The reason the M1 has a governor is related to this, it could easily do 60mph (95ish kph) and has the gearing to do so, except for the fact that it tends to break really fast when it does! Unless you really half *** making your big scary robot, there is no way it'd have less mobility per ton than a comparable traditional tank. It would be probably easier to go faster, over more terrain, all of the time. 4 legs or 2, 20 tons or 70.
As for the rest, there is something to that, but perspective counts. Tanks are only "stable firing platforms" under 40kph, which is painfully slow in perspective. Any more than that and the computer has a very hard time adjusting for the motion of the vehicle unless you're on some really flat surfaces. Both vehicles would have trouble at high speeds, and its a bigger hurdle than a lot of people might realize. Now the "stable gun platform" in relation to recoil is a real problem, one I think some creativity could work with, but its true that tanks are pretty stable. It has a lot to do with their wide, low stance and big thick turret rings. For example, the Striker 105mm MGS can only shoot a few degrees to the left and right of itself, any more and without stabilization it will tip over! Of course the french and italians manged to do it just fine with their armored cars so clearly we just suck, but it is an issue.
Tanks really aren't very special. They're armored cars with treads, that's it. Modern tanks have extremely heavy front armor (almost 3 feet thick in most cases) and are effectively invincible to eachother from the front, but at the cost of a pittance for armor anywhere else. Long barreled 30mm Autocannons can side pen the M1 Abrams at 1000 meters. even the slightest off angle attack could go right through a modern tank like butter. There is a lot of talk about how the modern tank, while cool, really isn't designed very well for modern conflicts. Better proactive countermeasures and significantly better protection against infantry based guided missiles is a huge priority. So maybe if you make a tank didn't spend so much effort being invincible from the front, but stands a fighting chance to live through hits to the rest of it, that would make more sense in a modern combat environment. Tanks are really cool and I will always love them, but It's not the only way to make a combat vehicle, and it's not the only way they're ever going to be made, ether.
(Oh, and not to ignore your little story, it's smart but I think I obviously disagree on whats possible. While they would excel in the role I don't think mechs would have to be limited to being a light raider.)
Edited by golambo, 03 June 2012 - 12:32 PM.