950 replies to this topic

[Just wanna play]

Let's just keep the old saying in mind "Jack of all trades, master of none, better then master of one."

[Melcyna]

Which would be true in most cases... except for WAR

since ultimately in a war, the goal and purpose of each combatant is very specific... and failure to achieve it, usually means someone die.

case in point with the stuart armed with 57mm guns for example, they were done with a very specific reason in mind... not to be a jack of all trade, not to perform cavalry duty like the old stuart, and not exactly to recon like most stuart were delegated to either... because they in fact can't really do ANY of it well.

They did however offer a chassis mounting a weapon better than stuart and yet able to keep up the pace with stuart for the most part... but at a high cost, being open topped was a serious flaw to the crew safety overal. Thus they allowed a recon element composed of stuarts an extra firepower, which the other TD like wolverine can't really do that well since they are much bigger and not quite as swift, and for a recon element, being less than mobile means pretty much death sentence.

This doesn't mean that the 57mm armed stuart is a TD replacement however, nor is it a light tank... the best description for it essentially is a light TD... a TD still, but one specialized to fill in the shoe where neither the light tank and standard TD can fill in.

Similarly with halftracks, they were compromise indeed.... but a compromise with a very specific goal in mind:
it gives better offroad capability than standard truck, but unlike a fully tracked vehicle... it's much easier to control and in fact anyone who can drive a truck can pretty much be trained to drive one easily.

The intention there is not to be a jack of all trade at all... but rather to expedite the obvious thing....

we know tracked vehicle are superior for offroad performance, but on the other hand a fully tracked vehicle at the time does have a more difficult steering mechanism comparatively both to construct and to control, so halftracks were a compromise that allowed them to be manufactured quickly and operated with minimal training.

Edited by Melcyna, 27 April 2013 - 11:53 AM.

[Just wanna play]

i didnt say half tracks where jack of all trades, i said that specific truck was

[Melcyna]

Oh, ok... but then that begs the question, why is that a point in favor of jack of all trade?

what they did essentially is adapting a truck into the M3 configuration, and the end result is not one that intends to do various things at all... but rather it was made as an improvement of the previous design (which wasn't very good hence why M3 came along), adapting a chassis for something... is not what jack of all trade is...

a jack of all trade intends to do all the roles in question in some capacity...

whereas adapting a chassis for something shift it's capacity in something, for something else instead or in some cases replacing it completely or otherwise improving it.


incidentally i just realized that rather than shopping something up, i can just use existing images
and i thought to myself, let's just use the easiest one that most mecha fans already know of:

Spoiler

the human is the measurement stick and the jenner's canopy window an estimation of how much the pilot's half height is.

naturally... not to scale, but it gives an idea why standing on 2 legs makes you stick out like sore thumb

not that 4 or more multi legged machines for combat makes sense, because they don't... and won't be but they do have the advantage of lower profile than the bipedal idea at least.

Edited by Melcyna, 27 April 2013 - 11:59 AM.

[Halfbreed]

Grendel408, on 06 August 2012 - 05:55 PM, said:

Maybe not ridiculous... but odd fact of BattleTech:
Story authors are obsessed with hot redheaded women Which goes to say they all have great taste in women, problem is most redheads are frakkin crazy...

Totally true, and I still totally love them crazy red heads

[Just wanna play]

Melcyna, on 27 April 2013 - 11:56 AM, said:

Oh, ok... but then that begs the question, why is that a point in favor of jack of all trade?

what they did essentially is adapting a truck into the M3 configuration, and the end result is not one that intends to do various things at all... but rather it was made as an improvement of the previous design (which wasn't very good hence why M3 came along), adapting a chassis for something... is not what jack of all trade is...

a jack of all trade intends to do all the roles in question in some capacity...

whereas adapting a chassis for something shift it's capacity in something, for something else instead or in some cases replacing it completely or otherwise improving it.


incidentally i just realized that rather than shopping something up, i can just use existing images
and i thought to myself, let's just use the easiest one that most mecha fans already know of:
[spoiler]

wars has ever changing conditions, being a jack of all trades is VERY important in war, sure they have 1 mission to complete, but what they may face on that mission is unknown, and what Josh Kaufman once said, "[indent]
Specialization only works if things don’t change – and things always change. The more you focus on developing any single skill, the less time you have to develop other skills that can help you in the event things in your environment change unfavorably.
A person who only knows how to do one thing exceptionally well is on solid ground for as long as that skill is in high demand, but if the environment changes to make that skill unnecessary or undesirable, they’ll have more trouble adjusting to the new situation. The very best high-rise architect in the world is screwed if no one wants to build skyscrapers anymore." little bit different subject, but same idea[/indent]
where are you getting truck into m3?completely different discussion. the truck had the OPTION to attach tracks, it always had a front axle with a wheel, it was either it or another truck that could simply drive off of its tracks and use the wheels themselves as tires, having both the pros of tracks and wheels


XD lets just stop ruining this thread already


wtf is that thing on the left?

*********, on 27 April 2013 - 04:46 PM, said:

Totally true, and I still totally love them crazy red heads

There is a story that goes "if you zoom in a whole lot while looking at the cockpit of a heavy metal you shall see red flowing hair behind the glass." thankfully, you don't have to zoom in to hear the maniacal laugh

[Melcyna]

Ruining it? but this kind of thing is the most fun part of debate, dissecting things to it's constituent...

and true, things always change... and that is why military are built with capacity over their opponent in either numerical or capability or in depth, so that when something do change, they have the buffer to absorb the unexpected and gives them time to adapt, this have been the case with every warfare known to man and how they adapt...

being a jack of all trade never worked and no one really ever do so in full scale war (but there are wars where it's useful especially in asymmetric warfare), since if something do change for example with enemies developing something new... the new development is almost certainly made in account of the existing asset's capability...

ie: it would not be something that a jack of all trade can handle to begin with since only a stupid enemy would introduce a new change that did not take into account a capability already existing on the enemy. And if they did, then their research or intelligence or both obviously failed.

And the mecha on the left? That's the spider tank from Ghost In The Shell, pretty much every mecha fans knows it since it appeared in the first GITS movie decades ago. GITS in general love spider tanks design of various shape and sizes, or rather the author really love spider designs and used the base form for many of his works.

Spoiler

this one is the remastered version of the movie, wait.. i should find the original one,


This one is the original version from the movie almost 2 decades ago, the one that eventually partly inspired Matrix.

note: incidentally i am curious which truck this is now...
since at first i thought this is M2 or M3 based halftracks both of which were based partially from M3 scout car designs... but i know both are not designed with such capability in mind... now i am curious which one is this since of the common military halftracks, none that i know of in usage extensively during WW2 have the capability.

Edited by Melcyna, 28 April 2013 - 12:18 AM.

[Just wanna play]

lol this isn't exactly a thread for debates... and that isn't the mech from gits i recognized, definitely older then the ones i have seen

[Melcyna]

debate is part of any thread on internet that deals with these things, pretty much to be expected since that's how internet is... some ppl find it troublesome, some can't be bothered... others... absolutely enjoys it... i happen to be one of the later.

GITS have been around for decades, the one above is from the original movie in 1995 or so and it's recent remastered version of it, which is the first theater movie made based on GITS setting, and the one that first gave exposure of GITS to mainstream anime fans in general because the movie was extremely popular in the western surprisingly.

the one you've seen is probably one of the GITS series made much later ie: GITS:Stand Alone Complex... that were made about a decade back around 2002 or so, while the manga itself been running even much older than the original movie.

Edited by Melcyna, 28 April 2013 - 05:49 AM.

[Just wanna play]

Melcyna, on 28 April 2013 - 05:44 AM, said:

debate is part of any thread on internet that deals with these things, pretty much to be expected since that's how internet is... some ppl find it troublesome, some can't be bothered... others... absolutely enjoys it... i happen to be one of the later.

GITS have been around for decades, the one above is from the original movie in 1995 or so and it's recent remastered version of it, which is the first theater movie made based on GITS setting, and the one that first gave exposure of GITS to mainstream anime fans in general because the movie was extremely popular in the western surprisingly.

the one you've seen is probably one of the GITS series made much later ie: GITS:Stand Alone Complex... that were made about a decade back around 2002 or so, while the manga itself been running even much older than the original movie.

are you saying we weren't getting just a LITTLE off of the topic of the thread??
looks like its time to pay a visit to netflix.... yeah i probably do only watch the newer ones

[Melcyna]

the second part yes, the first part though technically is still related with the 'mecha are ridiculous' old debate which is not too far off from 'battletech is ridiculous' and we've made fun of battlemechs in this very thread to long extent including a mere few posts ago.

the only thing is that the one we had was just a subset of it, ie: the bipedal part... previously we've debated through the entire spectrum, from bipedal, to quads, and more

a summary of it in short?: they all don't work, but the bipedal just happens to be extra silly by virtue of being bipedal at the size involved, bipedal at human size would be a different story.

[Skunk Wolf]

-Useful computers were stripped from most Battlemechs (for orbital spacecraft and whatnot ) or jury rigged by people who barely understand them. Game's in a dark age still.

-Battlemechs are not slow and ponderous compared to modern armour. Very little terrain stops them, almost nothing. They don't need to refuel or fix worn out tracks either. Seriously, even in TT an Atlas going cross country is INCREDIBLY faster than a modern main battle tank that doesn't want to lose a shoe, get hung up, or wind up in an abandoned farmhouse's basement (that happens a LOT). Plus they smash right through forests, non-hardened buildings and go almost straight up mountains, they can climb too.

-War is Maneuver, and these things can outflank what they can't outfight.

-The weapons are short ranged because of said maneuverability. These things are FAST.

-The armour and structure is incredibly sophisticated and durable. At least in the basic, 2nd edition rulebook. Not battledroids.

-Recoil gear included with every weapon!

-I don't understand why they are so big! The Atlas should almost be lighter than air! An M1A1 is 8ft tall and almost 65 tons!

-Maybe multiply the weights and ranges by 10!

-I've had too much coffee!

[Just wanna play]

Skunk Wolf, on 01 May 2013 - 03:21 PM, said:

-Useful computers were stripped from most Battlemechs (for orbital spacecraft and whatnot ) or jury rigged by people who barely understand them. Game's in a dark age still.

-Battlemechs are not slow and ponderous compared to modern armour. Very little terrain stops them, almost nothing. They don't need to refuel or fix worn out tracks either. Seriously, even in TT an Atlas going cross country is INCREDIBLY faster than a modern main battle tank that doesn't want to lose a shoe, get hung up, or wind up in an abandoned farmhouse's basement (that happens a LOT). Plus they smash right through forests, non-hardened buildings and go almost straight up mountains, they can climb too.

-War is Maneuver, and these things can outflank what they can't outfight.

-The weapons are short ranged because of said maneuverability. These things are FAST.

-The armour and structure is incredibly sophisticated and durable. At least in the basic, 2nd edition rulebook. Not battledroids.

-Recoil gear included with every weapon!

-I don't understand why they are so big! The Atlas should almost be lighter than air! An M1A1 is 8ft tall and almost 65 tons!

-Maybe multiply the weights and ranges by 10!

-I've had too much coffee!

lol of course, weighing as much as they SHOULD, they probably wouldn't have the best mobility on softer ground, hence tanks using tracks

lol a realistic atlas in the mud is like a dinosaur in a tar pit

[Just wanna play]

the structure of an atlas weighs 10 tons at least, of course, "machine guns" for killing infantry weighs 1000 pounds so this game has kind of a funny sense of scale

[Melcyna]

By that you mean FASA back then, like most civilians and non engineers really that never touched the trades, had NO sense of scale at all.

Well, to be fair for them, most soft sci fi are the same... ie: absolutely crapola sense of scale since usually they craft the thing they want to show (read: sell in the future as merchandise) first, then they attach the information background to it later, by which point they kinda realized that things don't make sense.

Skunk Wolf, on 01 May 2013 - 03:21 PM, said:

-Useful computers were stripped from most Battlemechs (for orbital spacecraft and whatnot ) or jury rigged by people who barely understand them. Game's in a dark age still.

-Battlemechs are not slow and ponderous compared to modern armour. Very little terrain stops them, almost nothing. They don't need to refuel or fix worn out tracks either. Seriously, even in TT an Atlas going cross country is INCREDIBLY faster than a modern main battle tank that doesn't want to lose a shoe, get hung up, or wind up in an abandoned farmhouse's basement (that happens a LOT). Plus they smash right through forests, non-hardened buildings and go almost straight up mountains, they can climb too.

-War is Maneuver, and these things can outflank what they can't outfight.

-The weapons are short ranged because of said maneuverability. These things are FAST.

-The armour and structure is incredibly sophisticated and durable. At least in the basic, 2nd edition rulebook. Not battledroids.

-Recoil gear included with every weapon!

Unfortunately in reality, climbing mountains and other steep incline terrains, do not favor bipedal AT ALL without specialized tools. (i wish they do)

Spoiler

to put this into perspective, mountain rocks looks solid right?
well... given their position, they will break off when sufficient pressure is applied, hence why mountain climbers have safety rope and gears, because when they break off... well, pray it's not the one you are currently standing on. So a human is sufficient to break off a fair amount of these rocks just from their weight and ground pressure.

now introduce a machine sizing an office block supposedly weighing just a few dozen tons perhaps but still a few dozen tons and sometimes with no arms with ground pressure like a tip toeing elephant and one has to wonder... if most mountains and such rough terrain can BARELY allows a human to climb it with their gears, then how is the machine intend to climb it without destroying the mountain rocks with each step it takes and tumbling straight down the cliff into it's death? Well they don't...

"-War is Maneuver, and these things can outflank what they can't outfight."

Spoiler

Yep, except one problem...

at their size and stature... EVERYONE can SEE what they are doing from 10 miles off with just eyeball MK1

there's a reason why armies maneuver are done in absolute secrecy and why camouflage is such a strong factor in modern military, especially after air force started entering the picture. Outflanking is great if your enemies don't know about it, and can't respond, recipe for disaster if they do KNOW, and CAN respond.

But unfortunately anyone with regular machines is guaranteed of 2 things essentially:
A. that they will see these giant mechs who think they can maneuver in the field unseen at their profile (unless if you suggest these mechs crawl, which doesn't help... we have plenty of methods of detecting a metallic giant at that size, regardless of what it does)

B. that with more efficient machines ie: anything not with legs, they will outnumber the mechs meaning they have the reserve to redeploy and meet the flanking force if necessary.

There's also the question of how exactly they are going to outflank anything with their enormous ground pressure, it pretty much rule out them traversing through anything not made of solid bedrock or earth without stabbing the ground with their feet.

"-The weapons are short ranged because of said maneuverability. These things are FAST."

Spoiler

in another word you are saying, they have never heard of stabilization

it's a standard feature essentially to all modern armor and vehicles, started in earnest in WW1 or so when they first introduced attempts to put gun stabilizer to ships, the US then had the first tank with 1 axis gun stabilizer in shermans in WW2.

with it modern tanks fire their main gun with dead on accuracy even as it sprints at it's top speed to the maximum effective range of it's gun and shell, pretty much any tank with no effective gun stabilization is considered outdated since the cold war.

To give them credit though, a bipedal chassis IS horrible as a gun platform especially when you are moving at high speed.... (hence why anyone with brains can see that no one in the right mind would design a weapon platform on a bipedal chassis), that still begs the question why they made one in the first place and why the non mechs ground weapon have the same range as the mech variant.

"-The armour and structure is incredibly sophisticated and durable. At least in the basic, 2nd edition rulebook. Not battledroids."

Spoiler

Sophisticated only until you actually read it and recognize quickly that it doesn't explain how it's meant to be thin at all... or how it's meant to actually work at stopping threat in the first place.

essentially, based on the structure they gave, there's no logical sense on how the armor is meant to ablate and stop projectiles effectively with such thickness (ie: almost none)

what they did basically is most likely looked on the basic construction of the composite armor at the time BT lore was written (the layer is roughly analogous to ceramic composite armor design that everyone in the military used at that time in the western) and tried to spin a BT version of it

problem is: they didn't actually understand how it's supposed to work, either that or they just wanna cram in their BT version which doesn't actually fit with the design

"-Recoil gear included with every weapon!"

Spoiler

Most vehicle weapons do that... doesn't change anything on the fact that bipedal is still the WORST chassis to fire them from since like with anything recoil dampener has limit and conditions to work.

ie: anything with more stable platform, can fire BIGGER GUN still with the same recoil dampener as the one on the legged platform. Or alternatively a more stable, non legged platform can fire the same gun as the legged (ie: mechs) platform with the same recoil dampener with FAR less recoil effect.

There's a reason why soldiers are trained to fire their weapons rested on something solid (preferably a supported bipod, or better still tripod), and failing that to lower their profile and center of gravity by either crouching or prone as that gives them the best stabilized position their body can do to fire their weapons especially with automatic weapons.

And don't ask where the ammo feed on the mechs weapon are and how they work...

because that goes into the magic territory.

incidentally, if they can cram a battlemech filled with weapons, ammo for them, with a micro reactor...

what exactly stops them from putting the same micro reactor on the more space efficient ground vehicles?

well... nothing really, as long as it's scaled properly... (the scary part is that back in the cold war, there was in fact a plan for atomic tank, though thankfully it never left the drawing board as the design was deemed too costly and hazardous)

ie: since ground vehicles don't quite need as much power to move itself, it technically doesn't need as much output for a given mass to move them somewhere at a given speed as the mech do, so if they intend to cram a micro reactor inside one, then it doesn't need as much output/size.

Edited by Melcyna, 01 May 2013 - 11:55 PM.

[Just wanna play]

hes saying them having short range weapons is because they can close the distance easily, why the fk are you talking about stabilization??

there you go again killing the thread......

and considering the size of their feet and the fact they are so light, if what they step on is roughly the size of their feet they have excellent ground pressure

of course its a different story if their weight was realistic

[Melcyna]

Oh, that makes more sense, to which we have a different set of problems but of course... that still begs a different question of course of why the weapon range are so short in the first place, as with any of the BT game goes... there's no such thing as sufficient speed removing the need for range, in fact most games in BT is very much about trying to get into the weapon range and then staying there.

So unfortunately he's completely mistaken about not needing long weapon range with their speed, most BT games are pretty much the exact opposite, the only difference being that the weapons have scale in sub 1km distance, but in both the game and the lore... they are pretty much dancing around these weapon range when attempting to clobber the other mechs, it's what all BT battlemech engagement stuff are all about in lore or games...

As for the ground pressure,

Spoiler

Nope, we already calculated it before in this very thread on the estimated ground pressure of a commando iirc, i forgot which battlemech now that i think about it...

but in summary it does not bode well for the battlemech, essentially with the given dimension we know of either directly or from estimation... even at the incredible light weight they have, the ground pressure is enormous...

it's not so bad when it's standing still... if my memory serves it was about 1.5 that of a comparable tank with the same mass.

the problem of course like with any bipedal system, starts when it walks and then runs... since as we all know, bipedal when walking, exert double the ground pressure... and when it runs, that ground pressure tripple or quadruple depending on the pace.

when that happens... well, we essentially pray that their feet never steps on anything softer than a solid bedrock or compressed earth, because if they do and they try and move at anything beyond crawl speed... then they can expect every step to stab the ground

If their weight was realistic?
Then forget standing still even using the leg dimension they have.

Edited by Melcyna, 02 May 2013 - 03:11 PM.

[Just wanna play]

ya know, why don't the assaults use a walking motion like an elephant?? instead of bending at the knee, they keep their leg straight and only pivot at the hip, or shoulder, or what ever you wanna call it, when they stampede

still, on an atlas the contact surface of the feet is FAR greater then that of a tanks tracks, one foot is nearly
the size of the tanks itself, and there is 2 of them,, and they don't weigh much more, i dont see how it has higher ground pressure

what mech and tank did you use in the comparison?

and again, there we go killing the thread again....

[Just wanna play]

interesting little article on how elephants run
http://www.wired.com...t-biomechanics/

them fatlases could learn from them....

[Melcyna]

Lighten up, there's nothing we're doing here that is killing the thread because this thread is all about dissecting the bits in the first place, the only time we'd be killing it will be if we're not putting any information whatsoever into it, it's called ridiculous battletech facts after all.

Careful there with the elephants... just as a note, the gait ie: the sequence of the legs movement between bipedals and quadrupeds are not cross compatible to begin with (there's a reason why the gait of every single living being on earth even between the quadrupeds species or among bipedals species are unique), and for that matter... anything a leg does that mitigate something, comes at a cost of something else... hence why our runners have specific gait and a different one depending on the distance and speed required.

Let's take an Atlas ground pressure and estimate it with just rough work...

Spoiler

an Atlas is about 16m high according to a quick search, and we don't have it's exact foot dimension here but from the image we have we'll estimate... let's use MWO image, from there the foot sole length is about 1/6th it's height on a very rough estimation. so about 2.6-2.7m, the width about 1.3-1.5m if the length estimation is any close. Let's use the largest value to give it the best leeway for the mech.

so that's 4.05 square metre per foot, and 100 ton of weight giving nominal force of 981kN assuming earth gravity, so with 2 feet standing still it exerts about 121kPa

please correct any mistake here as i am doing this as fast as i can in my head and a calculator.

that's about roughly the ground pressure of a modern tank, (M1 abrams have about 100kPa ground pressure)

The trouble of course starts when it MOVES as when a bipedal walks, the weight is shifted to one foot momentarily... so the moment it starts walking (at the slowest speed), one foot momentarily becomes 242 kPA at minimum as the entire weight of the mech is focused on it, and there's nothing we can do about this since bipedal can't exactly walk without shifting the weight from one foot to another except by inching the feet soles (we have techniques like that in some sports like kendo, the method move REALLY slowly but have some uses such as when ppl need to advance while maintaining leg stance)

Then comes the HARD part... when it starts moving it's gait into a faster movement, like a running gait it has about 3-4 times the ground pressure assuming a human gait, this gives almost 500kPa of ground pressure each time the leg crash onto the earth, and these are just low estimates.

note: this is just a very quick rough work and estimation, but it gives an idea of the problem...
there are of course methods to technically mitigate part of this problem, but each of that has it's set of problem of it's own that it brings into the mix, most of which we've discussed before... but we can do so again as a recap.

Edited by Melcyna, 02 May 2013 - 04:39 PM.