Walker/Mech/ Heavy Tank Ideas, anyone?

If you take a look at one of my earlier posts here on page 3, you can see the picture of the Hawken mech with jumpjet engines. This design doesn't look silly, if you ask me.

This. Mechs have hydraulics tanks certainly lack due to lack of legs. A jumping mech sounds more like an eastern gundam mech, but we are not talking about such mechs here. On Auraxis we have nano machines, nano revival units reviving you endlessly, drop pods from orbit shield generators and rocket engines on entire facilities that descend from the skies. Do you want to tell me you never saw the engines of a tech plant? The lore already has these engine technologies out there, it would be a small step from there to slap a miniature version of this on a vehicle able to handle the hydraulic stress.

And again, the problem when you deviate too much from the "science" part of "sci fi" is that things quickly get crazy and become unbalanced. Because IRL all military units that we currently field are actually rather balanced (and hence why we still field them).

For example, take IRL aircraft. They trade extreme mobility and impressive firepower for extremely thin armour and low ammunition counts. Plus of course they cost a ridiculous amount compared to ground vehicles or infantry. These advantages and disadvantages make IRL aircraft balanced.

But in PS2... you have aircraft that can carry a huge amount of ordnance, that have comparable armour to tanks, and that cost the same as tanks. This creates a very unbalanced situation, which has occurred because aircraft have extra advantages and fewer disadvantages.

That's why "being awesome" is not a good enough reason to have something in the game, particularly if it will disrupt the pre-existing balance.

Again, the issue with "well future tech will solve it" is that future tech also applies to tanks just as well as mechs. Let's say that we still have a 50t tank and a 30t mech. "Old" armour used to weigh 10t, but "new" lighter armour weighs 1t. Let's say the same is with weapons, 10t to 1 t.

Well now of course your 30t mech can mount more armour and weapons. But what you're forgetting is that the tank also benefits from these advances in technology. If the mech can now carry 10x the armour as before due to technological advances, the tank can carry 30x the armour due to simply being able to carry more weight. The same applies for firepower.

What this means is that despite any advances in technology, the relative power between a mech and a tank will always come in favour of the tank, simply because the tank can always carry more.

Again, not really. It's a problem of basic physics. If I have two vehicles of equal mass and I drop them from an equal height, the amount that they would absorb is dependant on the surface area that they contact the ground with.

A legged mech would concentrate all this force on the "feet", which in general form a smaller ratio against the mass of the body.
A treaded tank would concentrate all this force on the treads, which in general form a larger ratio against the mass of the body.

From an engineering standpoint, it is easier to design a shock absorber/suspension system if the energy of the impact is spread out over a wider area. Tanks are superior here.

Furthermore if we get into the increased weight of "landing gear" or the jets themselves, tanks also have the advantage because they are able to support more weight overall. For example, if you are going to try to cut your fall with jets, a tank can have more jets mounted or have more fuel for those jets. If you try to throw in hydraulics, a tank can have better, more extensive systems than what an equivalent mech could carry.

If we're being honest, I'll admit there are limited situations where a mech might be useful. As a "peekaboo" scout for example, though such a task could probably be accomplished by a tank with a periscope. Maybe a mech also might have an advantage of firing over low barriers, but that's also a disadvantage of simply being unable to easily take cover behind low barriers. Or like I said before, to have mobility over rough terrain. That's honestly the only thing I can think of where mechs have an absolute advantage over tanks.

Overall... there's just not much of any reason at all to have legged mechs. If people really want to have something that bears more of a resemblance to the fragile and inefficient human body, then at least a mech with treads instead of legs might make slightly more sense.

Well, there is one particular situation where legs really do come in handy: stairs.

Though situations where stairs are encountered end up fitting more of a "power armor" scenario than "humongous mecha". There are some applications for legged robots, it's just that there's no good reason to make said robot three stories tall.

Treads actually do fairly well against stairs, because stairs usually made at regular heights and intervals. We already have treaded robots now that are better at going up stairs than most legged robots (which are really, really slow).

To get an understanding of how inefficient legged forms are at distributing weight, consider the following ground pressures:

Adult Human Male- ~60kg, 55kPa
Scimitar Light Tank- ~8,000kg, 34kPa

Adult Elephant Male (African)- ~6,000kg, 240kPa
M1 Main Battle Tank- ~62,000kg, 103kPa

In other words, three people in a tank plus the tank itself have less ground pressure than a single human standing there.
And as the elephant example shows, more legs doesn't necessarily help. An M1 tank can weigh over 10x a four-legged elephant but still exert less than half of the ground pressure.

Yes, the lesser the surface contact an object has with the ground while having the same weight, the more pressure it will then utilize on that surface. Basic physics... But this is a game engine where nothing collapses beneath you. The ice on Esamir is impenetrable, rock formations on Indar will never crack and collapse under heavy bombardement, buildings are indestructable, though they should moan under all that stress of being under constant fire, bend and collapse as the material has to give in. With all the bullets flying and detonations happening in a Biolab fight, this would end the battle early.

But this engine doesn't work that way, so there is little to no reason why it should be like that for a unit in the game.

So what you are saying is: IF there should be a new form of tank, it should be a new super battle tank so heavy and big, it would count as mobile fortress, be so slow it can't be considered a threat to the MBT and its role as MBT, should run on tracks and needs to be multi-seated for full potential.

That about right?

How about this? A 7 seated SBT with 4 turrets with 3 barrels each, 6 barrels point front and has 2 missile turrets above. A zergkiller that would be spawnable only in in the warpgate and would need at least 3 people to queue up with full nanite ressources.

If there is a super heavy unit added to the game, it should not have legs and instead be on tracks. That's all I'm saying.

Whether or not it would be a good idea to add in a super heavy unit to the game is a whole different story altogether!

Ah, the old Fatboy from SupComm. Has gotten a bit of a cosmetic makeover I see.

That's actually an interesting example of balance.
The Fatboy cost 307,500 energy and 24,600 mass to construct. For comparison purposes, a SupComm T2 Heavy Tank cost 990 energy and 198 mass from an unupgraded factory.

This means that the megatank (really a mobile factory) took about 280 times the resources of a standard tank.

In other words if a Vanguard costs 450 nanites to spawn, this super heavy tank should take 126,000 nanites, or about 168 players to spawn.

So maybe if you can get three and a half platoons of players to chip all their nanites in to spawn this monstrosity... then maybe it would be balanced in PS2. Maybe.

It looks similar to the one in this mod: http://www.moddb.com/mods/revamp-mod than it does the Fatboy's of Supcom1 and FA.
Probably just some concept art they then made a model to look like.

So... First you compare things to IRL aircraft, but you completely ignore the whole "IRL aircraft require extensive maintenance and supplies" for instance. An FPS such as PS2 will never force the players to go through the trouble of servicing aircraft for days and keeping up supply lines of fuel and ammo. That's why it's a sci-fi. There's sci-fi out there that has telekinetics, others are based on things like warp-drives, traveling the Kessel run in 12 Parsec which makes no sense whatsoever, 99% of the sci-fi has sound in space, slipspace ruptures, a complete downgrade of all the advances in cybernetics, nanotechnology and genetics that we would have once we get it under control etc etc.
Sci-fi isn't about realism. Sci-fi is basically fantasy set in space and with magic replaced for semi-technology. It's designed to be unrealistic because we want to get away from realism by reading/playing sci-fi! It doesn't have to make sense in our universe, it has to make sense in the universe they created. There's sound in space? As long as you are consistent about having sound in space, no problem.
Games are even worse than sci-fi. Games have to cut down on everything boring. You don't have to lug fuel around unless it's a relative simple system that can easily be managed. You don't have to go through the complexity of requesting vehicles an hour in advance before they are build, or bringing back a vehicle to a hangar to get it serviced. No you can use a tiny hand-held thing to repair your vehicle within a minute, even if it was basically nothing but a burning husk seconds before. What's stopping anyone from strapping 6 of these free items to his tank and have a constant supa-dupa repair rate? Oh yeah, game mechanics. Because game mechanics keep the game balanced and fun, or that's their goal anyway.

Actually no, all wrong. There are technology advances that will actually give Mechs the advantage.
Just as a comparison let's look at ships. Like you said, a bigger ship can always carry more guns and more armor right? So a bigger ship will always be better than a smaller ship! That's the exact same reasoning you use for tanks: A tank is better designed (or bigger in the case of ships) and can carry more weight around.
For a long time this was true. Ships carried bigger and bigger canons, up until they could carry a canon big enough to damage any hull. They still build bigger and bigger ships, but started adding more and more canons to them to have an easier time hitting and destroying their enemy.
Then came advances in rocketry and aircraft. Overnight the huge multi-canon battleships became almost obsolete. Rather than build battleships they started building... small destroyers. Because a small destroyer has all the advantages: It's cheaper, it's small size make it harder to detect, it can carry all the radar and electronics it needs to track hostiles and it can carry the weaponry to wipe out any size ship, from a massive aircraftcarrier or battleship to small rafts.
Economically and on the battlefield it became useless to build battleships. Expensive, massive targets that needed large crews but lacked the range with it's canons? Sure you could replace it with missile batteries but... Well why risk it if it dies almost as fast as a destroyer? Why not build 2 destroyers in it's place that have the same range and firepower but spread out the risk of them being destroyed and spread out the power they can wield?

Back to Mechs, as I explained in my previous post where you glossed over it: What if there's no need to build a heavier tank with more weapons? What if a Mech has the capabilities to outmaneuver your enemy? Considering that younger planets often have a much rougher terrain build out of jagged mountains, vulcano ranges and ravines it would be more prudent to use Walkers there anyway, because even the most advanced tank can't go up mountains. So the Mech has less or lighter weapons? Does it matter if the Mech is cheaper but can still kill the tank just as fast as the tank can kill the Mech? Well yes it does, it matters a lot because the Mech will have all the advantages. Mobility, enough firepower to rival the tank, cheaper to build... Why build tanks at all in those scenario's?

Ah come on, now you are deliberately ignoring how things work.
There's two ways you can absorb a blow. One is smear it out over a larger surface area, the other extending the distance over which you slow down. And seriously, everywhere you look when you really absolutely need to break (IE car crashes for instance) the best method they have is... extending the distance you slow down.
Let's be generous here, a tank has let's say 1,5m suspension range where it can slow itself down.
A Mech has it's entire legs as suspension. A human already has around 1m long legs, so a Mech? 2m at least I would hazard for smaller Mechs. Also consider that a Mech would be able to withstand falls at least as high as he can jump because it's landing mechanism is combined in it's jumping mechanism.

Now you are ignoring weight of a flying object. The moment something is airborne it doesn't matter what size it is or how perfect it's treads are. A flying Mech is just the same as a flying tank pound for pound, barring design that could improve it's flight capabilities. Considering a Mech could aid itself by jumping and having those long legs fitted with wing-like surfaces to extend hover time it would still be in favor of the Mech. "but tanks could have wings installed as well!", yes they could, but a Mech's legs become useless the moment it takes in the air, so they would already be perfect to use in such a manner. Multifunctionality wins it here from a tank. The Mech's legs are it's boost in the air to save fuel, they are it's wings to save fuel again and extend flight range and they are it's landing gear. A tank would need to gear itself with separate suspension and separate wings, but wouldn't be able to achieve much jumping power even if it did install something in it's suspensions.

Look in many current day situations a Mech would lose out against a tank, and heavily. But the point of a game isn't to keep it real, but to keep it fun. No matter how hamfisted and how dumb a Mech's design is there's tons of people who enjoy piloting one and feeling the power. But I mean come on, 50 weapon systems on that small space? You lose half before you destroy your enemy, costing you millions. Better to create 5 small Mechs/tanks with those same weapons and do a BlitzKrieg. Anyway, we aren't playing for reality, we aren't playing for seeing what the future might bring, because it won't be anywhere close to any game ever created, we are playing because we want to see an analogue for up-close-and-personal combat (no firing missiles at a radar blip) but with all the inconveniences such as maintenance, repair time, fuel, ammo, training etc cut away or heavily simplified.

When I jump and land wrong, I already extend my measly 57KG (at the time) to a whopping 300KG force per heel.
Sagging through the earth isn't exactly a big concern since we can have 12 people standing right next to each other jumping on the ground distributing much more pressure with no change in the ground. Mech's legs could be build to have larger surface area's than any human foot, and why not? With more knowledge about biological workings we could easily build a mechanical foot with anywhere between 50 to 200.000+ joints that would be more efficient and useful than any human/animal foot. Add in making the foot look oversized to give it a better weight distribution and you are set for Mechs that can traverse tough terrain, and even if it does sag somewhat through the ground/mud you could collapse one foot to make it easy to pull out and then extend it again once it's down etc. A human leg can reuse around 90% of the energy of his previous step into the next one. Considering my experience trying to drive a wheelchair through the streets I know that wheeled thing are already very inefficient with their energy on relatively straight roads, and much more inefficient on uneven ground. Walkers and Mechs would have a definite fuel efficiency advantage there. Considering a lot of modern wars are won through economics, Hitler lost for a large part because he made some decisions about tanks based on how cool they looked rather than their expenses and the speed at which they could be build to name one, a Walker or Mech would be a prime candidate for modern warfare, assuming of course that the weapons would be powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with tanks which is very likely in the future.

Well you are missing some critical info on your cost comparison in the Bushwacker, the Axel and Atlas. The Atlas is the oldest design of the 3 you mentioned entering production in 2755 because of this the parts that make up its construction are more widely available, as well as many different assembly lines producing that beast of a Mech. Now if you want to upgrade that mech to include things like FF, Endosteal, and go from the stock Standard engine to a larger one or over to an XL engine,and switching from Single heat sinks to Double heat sinks (not avalilble to IS till after 3028 but not mass production till 3048) watch that Atlas go from nearly 10 Mil C-Bills to be closer to 17 Mill C-Bills.

The Bushwacker which you picked is the second IS(Inter sphere) Omnimech to enter production in 3053, which was learned from reverse engineering clan tech. This incorporates nearly all of the improvements IS learned from the clans as well as a completely new interior part configuration to reduce glitches in the radar systems. The Bushwacker besides being built of nearly all new part designs also is limited to one Manufacture thus driving up cost even further.

The Axel while having entered Mass Production in 3036 would make it closer to the timeline of the Bushwacker however that 65 ton tack lacks one major issue. It still uses an internal combustion Engine, it isn't till after 3066 this tank uses a Fusion engine and if you look at the Battle value for those variants it doubled for the standard, and tripled for the XL version. Now only the Value of the stock version is even listed so the actual tanks cost for those can be theorized. If you look at the Rommel which the Axel is based on that version has a fusion engine that cost nearly 3 Mill C-bills which isn't far off the Jager which is just over 5 Mill C-bills but mounts more guns but smaller bore.


Now I dunno if you played Mechwarrior: Living Legends mod for Crysis but that included many tanks in addition to mechs and I can say that the Atlas while costing 9 Mill C-Bills could easily crush 10 Axels with ease before could even get within the AC/20 Range which is the main damage dealer on the Axel. Also something else to remember that Axel requires a multi-person crew, while the Atlas, and Bushwacker requires only one person at the stick.

For the person who said JJs on a tank would look silly, look at this.



I think you Forgot the Landmaster from Star Fox. (Picked this image as it showed the Jump Jets the Best.)
Might make a more in depth answer later to comments but I need sleep..

...


Obviously that bird has no idea what he's doing. The flamethrower is supposed to be mounted to the front of the tank, silly!


Which reminds me... What about a nasty flamethrower turret for tanks and/or mechs?

The fact is plain and simple: give the current state of MBTs, there is no place for a heavier vehicle. You would just kill infantry combat like it happened in Planetisde 1, when playing infantry outdoor became impossible because Mazinga Z and Goldrake were literally ruling the battlefield.

More tank ideas.

I think that's actually designed to clear the runway of snow?

Well yes, the point wasn't really about the raw BV. Obviously the Bushwhacker and Atlas both had a higher individual BV than an Axel or Rommel. The point was more about the CBill/BV ratio, which could often be skewed heavily in favor of tanks (and yes, taking Gauss Rifle or PPC variants of the tanks to form a long range firing line is much more efficient than using the AC/20 versions, especially since it raises the cost very little if at all).

The reason cost/BV ratio is relevant is because BV is supposed to be a power rating, not an economic factor. In theory, if you put two armies of equal BV on the table the winner should come down to skill and luck. So in theory if you're trying to run an RPG/grand strategy style game using CBills, cost/BV is an estimate of "bang for your buck". Of course in practice that never really worked out because the BV system was very arbitrary and badly balanced, and running such a campaign is probably a bad idea because CBills are pure fluff, but that's a whole different topic.

And of course MW titles, even fan works based on the franchise, aren't the best reference for BT vehicle performance, because tanks in those titles tend to be heavily nerfed (in MW4 for example they're given something like 15 structure total and no armor at all, you can one-shot them with a gauss rifle) in order to act as NPC cannon fodder. TT tanks could be outfitted with several tons of armor just like a mech, and were less vulnerable to FLD (like, say, AC20 to the head) because they only had to divide their armor into 4 facings instead of 11 segments.

Though of course, one of the downsides was none of those facings were expendible and their hit locations weren't random, so they couldn't have things like shield-arms and they were more vulnerable to DPR builds like LRM or medLas boats. They also only had one structure pool IIRC, which tended to be smaller than a mech's total (but larger than an unlucky mech who got cored). So there were pros and cons. In general, tanks in TT were less RNG dependent than mechs with a narrower performance band, which could be both a good and a bad thing: less potential for disasters, but also less potential for miracles.

Nonsense it's a home made tank.

Ok so TR should get scary 6 spider leg giant mech that maybe hide lower to the ground, not SUPER tall. The fastest of the mech's made to just rush in and blow stuff up, not survive.

NC should get the tall gaint Terminator mech with treads so you cant destroy its legs.

And Vanu should have a power ranger alien mech that can connect to eachother. Or an energy ball that floats and people just man little floating turrets inside it that can look in all directions. Or maybe like a platform with tons of squid legs? I dunno about vanu.


The big giant 7 seated fortress tank could be an in game event that happens once a day for each faction.

And there is a spawn room inside this giant fort tank.

The giant tank auto pilots around the map and its goal is to destroy something. Players use their nanite/life force to power each gun. If an enemy "destroys" a gun turret that player is used up but the next player can just use their full nanite life force to get in the cannon.
Or there is a gunner seat queue system so everyone gets a chance to use a turret. And as soon as a turret is destroyed it uses the next players "nanite - life force" to instantly repair the turret and put him in it.
So basically the player getting in the cannon is what repairs it and lets them use it, but they are bound to that cannon until someone destroys it. (there has to be some way to get all the players a chance to get in the big giant fortress mech and use a gun)
Maybe the fort needs like... 20 guns instead of 7.

I think that you fail to realize planetside is a FUTURISTIC game. And in the future you could program a pair of robot legs to do some crazy kung fu robot stuff that you could NEVER do with a tank. Like program the vehicle to instantly sidestep by analyzing the pilot and judging his instinct and intention when a cannon barrel points straight at him. Or time your mech's walk right so that you can step OVER tank mines instead of landing your foot on them. Grace definitely has its place on the battlefield.