Provided certain technologies become well developed (myomer, ferrofibrous armor, portable fusion reactors) while others stagnate (AI, advanced computers, ballistics and rocketry), would they actually work?
When will bipedal walker robots become viable for modern warfare?
Jesus Christ, perun, what the frick are you doing?
the chief of army had about 19 lines of coke and perun ended up with this assignment, please don't bully
Template because I know you will want it, use arial
I mean, I would actually put this at the top of my Watch Later list or just as a special save for when I need a very happy day.
you have no idea what you've just unleashed
No, I know exactly what I have unleashed.
>Verification not required.
HOLY
What's the font?
>What's the font?
>Template because I know you will want it, use arial
>use arial
>arial
you absolute chromosome smuggler.
There was an attempt.
Unironically ralking about armed forces morale and human life value would be a greta video. Also to stay on topic a somehow large and fast bipedal walker would work great as a shock and awe weapon.
>honor
bum
>ass in the ass doctrine
4k
>equiped
>equiped
frick. Im not gonna fix it
>bipedal
>picture clearly depicts a quadrupedal mech
Thanks anon, I'm going to have a field day with this shit.
Make one about the tactical benefits of catgirl battle wives.
But that's a BT5.
excellent
Thank you anons for keeping the meme alive. I do not have much time to go on k, but everytime I do I see this and it makes me smile
he just wants supercombatant chassis for human scales nations
brb making a "elfing your mom" image
I know people have pointed it out already, but it's an edit you moron.
Don't pretend you wouldn't fricking watch it the second you saw it was there.
Copeing after posting endless videos of Russian collapse lmao.
Anon, if anything Perun has been the kindest researcher on Russian Armed Forces without going full shill, he actually has a following in Russia because instead of throwing shitty Russia STRONK propaganda he has actuslly presented the strenghts and weaknesses of russian military and how they could improve, unironically Putin taking notes would have saved the lives of thousands of ruskies.
bipedal forklifts, e.g loader mechs would be super useful, assuming you could have them plugged into mains power in a warehouse. Or if you had them carrying artillery shells into an artillery unit
So your idea is to spend billions and billions of dollars on R&D for a glorified forklift?
Are you moronic?
Do you have brain damage?
Yeah, just like how we'll get exoskeletons totally ready for battlefield use. All of those things will start their existence as logistical tools and probably stay there until we have the tech to make them moron proof and easy to use and rugged enough to survive battlefield conditions.
Eh...probably not. Most tech that went into Battlemechs actually enhance tanks even more. The Manticore Tank should be far more cost effective than Shadowhawks and Orions.
The biggest issue is recoil. A Rhinemetal 120mm Smoothbore can rock a 60 ton Abrams on it's suspension. Put that gun 20 feet in the air and it'll knock the mech over every time.
Wouldn't a tripod design work better?
Logistics win wars, anon. Billions of dollars on a forklift means millions of tons of tanks, missiles, fuel, and medicine delivered to the frontline a day earlier.
> Billions of dollars on a forklift
Or, you can instead spend those billions of dollars on producing millions of regular forklifts and your logistics would work even better
Nah, mechs have multiple uses while forklifts are unitaskers. Very important unitaskers but ultimately they're just pallet handlers.
Mechs on the other hand could
Dig trenches
Unditch vehicles
Manage barbed wire
Wrangle bridging pontoons
Fill Hesco Bastions
Clear mines
Resupply tanks
Demolish barricades
Erect barricades
Lift SAMs onto launchers
And demolish structures
.
I mean, a mech is basically a two armed excavator and everyone knows excavators can be used for everything.
> everyone knows excavators can be used for everything.
So you can buy half a million forklifts and half a million excavators and still come out cheaper than a Mech program.
Or a quarter million of each and an imperial frickton of spare parts
Shipping is limited by the ton so a single vehicle that can do the job of half a dozen vehicles isn't just a monetary saving but also increases operational tempo. No waiting for the forklifts because the bulldozers were first out of the C-7, just get them fueled up and sent out.
>Development cost
Oh please, DARPA wastes that much money every fiscal quarter. Billions of dollars gets thrown into R&D only for the projects to get canceled all the time. Next, you'll complain about the F-35 and we'll call you a Sprey-tard.
Excavators can be effortlessly fitted with forks too, but of course are engineering not attack vehicles.
Add-on forks are also easy for anything with a three-point weld-on hitch mount and hydraulic pump (which can be electrically powered like liftgate pumps etc making retrofit easy). I'm mildly surprised they're not more common given the frequency of dozer blades on tanks, but of course Russia does break bulk so pallets and Cadillac bins are alien tech.
If we ever get mechs it'll be as engineering vehicles. Excavators are practically 1/3 of a mech already.
>it'll be as engineering vehicles at first
FTFY.
That's fair. I have no idea how tech is going to develop and if we have this long stretch of peace where tank development stalls but mechs flourish as underwater/orbital construction vehicles we could see them outpace tanks.
And they're a two armed excavator that literally anyone can learn to use easily and in a short amount of time since they're replicating the human form. See VR game controls and how regular people who aren't gamers can start playing VR games right away.
Always seemed to me that the legs could never be adequately armored without being enormous.
it's half dozen of one six of the other, tracks and wheels are vulnerable too, so are helicopters, militaries don't pick systems based on survivability except for actual tanks, they pick them based on capabilities provided, and a walker provides... legs.
>tracks and wheels are vulnerable too
Nowhere near to the same extent. Wheels can be made puncture proof and stand up to a surprising amount of damage. And even flat the overall driving mechanism will still remain and you can drive on in a limited capacity even with shredded wheels. Tracks are even more robust and can take a frick ton of abuse before being anywhere near mission inoperable. Even in the worst case, tanks have spare track links, road wheels and potentially suspension arms that they can do maintenance and repairs on the tanks themselves on the field.
Compare that to legs that are comparably extremely complex, being driven by either massive hydraulic pistons, huge artificial muscles or some electro magnetic system. No way in hell is the crew repairing those on the field or are you going to drag yourself back to safety on nonfuctional limbs.
t. other
Yes. Traditional armored vehicles require 3+ crew members while mechs only require one crew member and being far more mobile.
The smaller crew is mostly useful when your spaceship life support systems weigh in at 5 tons per person, bare minimum (15 tons if you want them to be actually comfortable).
This day was inevitable. Indeed, the greater surprise is that it took this long.
>youshouldhaveacted.wav
Unless you're talking about basically heavy exoskeletons, any larger vehicle (and as such a larger investment) benefits greatly from having a larger crew to divvy task to so they focus more accurately. AI can certainly be a changer here but the other large problem with small crews is maintenance. Heavy vehicles basically spent 50% of their time being maintained by their crew. Not just having enough people to get the job done in time, there are several points where you need more than one person to get a maintenance job done at all Eg. gun maintenance.
Tankettes are the weapon of the future
Perun explained that reducing the crew of a tank just increases the engineering crew that you need to have assigned to the tank. You only reduce the crew size for design benefits like making more room for something else. Usually an autoloader.
short answer: no
long answer: nooooooooooooooooooooooo
The lack of suitable actuators are the main problem. Turbines can power huge helicopters for hours, bipedal mechs require less energy.
I think if we reduced them to half the size a lot of the problems would have gone away, if Boston Dynamics is any indication current known materials should be capable to endure considerable stress.
How do they deal with absolute dogshit terrain? They all seem like they would get stuck in the first patch of loose soil or muddy ground with their stick-like feet.
The same way pic related did? Dinosaurs and megafauna defeated that argument millions of years ago.
>Dinosaurs and megafauna defeated that argument millions of years ago.
You're assuming they could roam freely anywhere. They also weigh a fraction of a modern IFV or Tank.
Dinosaurs had hollow bones to reduce weight.
Post-dino megafauna was extremely limited on where it appeared, and because of this got bodied when spears appeared because it couldn't go and hide on less human-friendly terrain like most things that survived.
I don't think you thought this through.
Armor, APS and the "dinosaur" being capable to "throw the spear back" and/or figure out potential ambushes due having human intelligence would be factored in.
Jump jets.
>I think if we reduced them to half the size a lot of the problems would have gone away, if Boston Dynamics is any indication current known materials should be capable to endure considerable stress.
Materials are fine for smaller mechs. At the moment you can only really get the boston dynamics tier mobility with hydraulics but hydraulics are basically a dead end in terms of reliability. Teslabot is electric actuators but they don't scale well. Electric motors prefer low torque high RPM applications. Bose did make a voice coil type linear actuator for use in car suspension once, maybe similar designs could work.
In the Battletech universe! Mechs have muscles called myomer fibres.
Thing is, you could totally use those Myomer fibers to power a driveshaft or rotate a turbine. They don’t do that cause people in the Battletech universe are a bunch of moronic monarchists but that would be the most efficient use for them.
> moronic monarchists
In fairness, I would like to sniff Melissa’s feet.
Why yes, crazy german mecha girls are the best. Besides I bet once they finally get out of the guilt box german engineers will just try to build mechas because is moronely complex enough.
The problem is it sounds like those "myomer fibers" are basically artificial muscles. Muscles have a maximum rotation capability. You can't turn a drive shaft like that unless it rotates left to max then right to max, that that'd be WAAAAY less efficient than just making the thing spin one way. Spinning the shaft like you spinning a wheel would also be stupidly inefficient. If they could replace the combustion part of internal combustion engines that'd be neat but wear would be a HUGE issue on an artificial muscle expanding and contracting thousands of times per minute. Muscles are terrible for turning a driveshaft or turbine. Walking, lifting, and fine motor control on the other hand is a different story.
What you'd want for a driveshaft is the stronger materials (like you might find in the armor/frame) so you could apply more torque to without it shearing or twisting to failure. What you'd want for the turbine is stronger materials that can take higher heat allowing you to burn hotter fuels and produce more thrust or rotational energy while again, not failing.
> Muscles are terrible for turning a driveshaft or turbine
Locomotives
>Spinning the shaft like you spinning a wheel would also be stupidly inefficient
Would it though? The most efficient way to use human muscles to travel is to literally ride a bike.
Isn't this Perun somewhat of an LGBTQIA+ game streamer or something and has no real military experience?
Haven't been interested in his sexuality, he actually posted gaming videos back in the day, he works as a consultant on logistics with an academic interest in both history and military, and it seems thanks to his channel he has developed a network of people who are or were on different militaries worldwide so if half of what he says is truth then he is far more capable to speak about these matters than 99 percent of the people uploading videos about war and armies on Youtube.
By the way it seems he has a following on Russia.
He's legit, he can't comment on Australia's military affairs because apparently his job is related to them
All we know is that Emuland is a fricking terrorist state to all, and we must protect Kiwiland from it.
He works in procurement/logistics/something related to that, which makes him far more qualified to speak on military matters than some loser who drove a tank / lead a squad and has "real military experience" or whatever.
I believe he mentioned he's in consulting. But his main point has always been to not focus on him as a speaker, but rather the info and arguments he provides and evaluate if they stand on their own or not. Which is something you should be able to appreciate, seeing as you're posting anonymously on a mongolian throat singing forum.
>has no real military experience?
That literally does not matter because his information is sourced and his conclusions are clearly shown in the videos about the subject.
>has no real military experience?
I have 8 years in the Air Force, but that doesnt mean I know everything about ukrainian logistics, so thats kind of a shite argument
I like that you've added LGBT to this copypasta in an attempt to get PrepHoleners to distance themselves from him
>the Perun template
oi you cheeky wanka
there are at least a few major advantages I can think of for a mech:
>Potentially less vulnerable to mines (less surface area to trigger it)
>can cross much deeper rivers, obstacles trenches without modification
>Works no matter what the terrain, less affected by mud and snow and can climb much steeper inclines
>Higher elevation means longer range and much better situational awareness
>higher elevation means it can shoot directly down into trenches and behind cover
>isn't vulnerable to antitank weapons fired from upper floors of buildings
>can crouch or lean, allowing it to pop out from behind cover like a human
the problem is the complexity of the mechanism and the shit fuel efficiency. It wouldn't work as a tank replacement, rather as a light vehicle with a niche in urban combat, forested areas, mountain terrain, and trench assaults.
I think the development of myomer will basically equalize a mech's capability when compared to tanks, it's like black and white and technicolor TV, both can do the job, but technology has become so advanced technicolor has become prevalent because even if it costs more you get additional benefits.
I actually find funny how he is the only youtuber I have who is willing to at least talk about Russia's military as something other than just evil or a joke yet is bashed by pro-russians.
>But they are evil and a joke
We actually have ukrainian military personal explaining that for all their failings they are still having a bloody hard time due russian eventually adapting and even having advantage in certain aspects of the current war, around russians never relax.
Unironically I found scary he revealed he is getting a growing following there, imagine if Putin and his court started taking notes and fixing the russian armed forces.
Covert Cabal also provides quite sober current analysis
Ward Carroll too perhaps
>I think the development of myomer will basically equalize a mech's capability when compared to tanks
Not at all, what's even the argument for this? All it does is enable the mimicking of biological-style structures, which isn't a concern unless you want to make a sexbot.
I don't understand how people can be so confident about the abilities of a technology that does not exist
You have no idea how well it can handle rough terrain or ford rivers because it doesn't exist
Some of these are moronic though like
>more range and situational awareness because it's tall
More like "much more vulnerable and easy to spot"
>Isn't vulnerable to antitank weapons fires from above
It is extremely vulnerable to anything hitting the legs because it will just fall over from its high center of gravity and you can only up armor the legs so much before it loses any mobility
>I don't understand how people can be so confident about the abilities of a technology that does not exist
I don't understand how people can be so boring and have such a lack of vision to shoot down ideas before they're even tried. People also thought planes were a stupid idea before canvas and internal combustion engines were invented.
>You have no idea how well it can handle rough terrain or ford rivers because it doesn't exist
Any quadruped can fundamentally climb much steeper inclines than an tracked or wheeled vehicle because they don't require any semblance of a flat surface for locomotion, which is why you can't drive to the top of Mount Everest but you can climb there. Similarly a mech can simply step over certain obstacles that a tank would not be able to, like tank traps or antitank ditches.
>More like "much more vulnerable and easy to spot"
See "niche use in urban combat" above. Also see "ability to greatly change the elevation of the entire crew compartment and gun at will to pop up from behind cover", also above
>you can only up armor the legs so much before it loses any mobility
Yes, and tanks are highly vulnerable to having their tracks be damaged which results in a mission kill.
If you're some incredibly dull, unimaginative person with zero ability to work around the fundamental challenges then I can understand. but there ARE some legitimate advantages to mechs in niche roles. Imagine perhaps a wheeled vehicle with auxiliary legs, able to roll across roads with a low profile but also able to pop over trees and hills to fire its weapon, able to simply climb over anti tank obstacles and up steep mountains and forested areas, able to shoot directly into the second and third floors of buildings and fire into trenches from above. Perhaps not possible with today's material limitations, but some day...
>People also thought planes were a stupid idea before canvas and internal combustion engines were invented.
This never happened.
https://airandspace.si.edu/explore/stories/flight-airplane
There were also people who said space travel was not possible.
Incidentally this is Clarke's first law. The second encourages people to test the limits of what's possible by going a bit beyond it.
Funnily enough the two largest nations on Earth may have to face each other at the Himalayas, it may be funny if in less than a century US dicovers another nation defeated it in some essential technological breakthrough.
>Funnily enough the two largest nations on Earth may have to face each other at the Himalayas
And India has already developed a technological solution to that...a light tank, literally designed for fighting in that terrain.
>India is developing a tank
I'm sure it will go just as well as the last time they tried that.
>literally designed for fighting in that terrain
there is no way to design a tracked vehicle to scale up a rocky cliff face at 60 degrees of incline, but there are already bipeds and quadripeds that can do it and the design is millions of years older.
>there is no way to design a tracked vehicle to scale up a rocky cliff face at 60 degrees of incline
And? There's no point to developing a weapon to fight in terrain that has no strategic value and where the enemy will not be. The areas that are fought in the mountains are the paths that lead through those mountains, which obviously aren't immensely steep inclines that nothing can get through because otherwise nobody would've built a path there in the first place.
Also China also built a light tank for fighting in that rough terrain, as has the USA. Regardless of how shitty Indian and Chinese armor is, it would appear that the Himalayas are not, in fact, forcing either nation to develop mechs to overcome them. In fact the answer seems to be to just make a tank lighter.
>he doesn't know about the Burma Road
>Look up Burma road
>There's a lot of cars on it
...what exactly is the point?
It turns out that there is in fact plenty of terrain with strategic value where the enemy was and where battles were fought that didn't yet have
>a path there in the first place
...but the Burma road IS a path. That's why they call it a ROAD. Unless you're just getting autistic about the definition of road vs path I don't really see where you're going with this, the Burma Road has strategic value BECAUSE it's a road.
a road which they BUILT
Right, and it became strategically valuable after they built it. Unless you're planning on having your mechs build roads as they go through the mountains, they'll still be traversing through strategically non-valuable land. Without a road already there to facilitate the logistics and transportation of the vast majority of a military there simply isn't much value to be had in having mechs traverse such an empty waste.
Now, maybe they could be useful to disrupt enemy logistics on the roads by using the rough terrain to go behind enemy lines. Except those mechs would have to be entirely self-supplied since they wouldn't be able to get supplies from their own logistical supplies lines because said supply lines can't go up a 60 degree incline either. They would also have to deal with freezing cold temperatures and avalanches, and have to perform their own self-maintenance. They would have little in the way of infantry support and they'd have no air support. They would have to conserve enough fuel to slog their way through the worst parts of the worst mountains in the world both ways, and hope they have enough reserve fuel to actually look around for enemies and expend their ammo too.
And maybe all this is possible, but is it going to be more efficient than just using a stealth bomber? Hell no. And will a nation that can't afford to develop a stealth bomber be able to divert enough of its R&D and resources to develop this mech? Also no.
This is the sort of project that could only realistically succeed under the USA, and the USA isn't going to go through with it because they have better solutions anyways. Otherwise, for actually fighting on the front lines, everyone just sticks with light tanks, cause the front lines are where the roads are, and the middle of war is a bad time to start building a road through the mountains into enemy territory.
>everyone just sticks with light tanks
mmhmm
now look up the battle of the Ardennes
>the middle of war is a bad time to start building a road through the mountains into enemy territory.
except that's exactly what happened
>Without a road already there to facilitate the logistics and transportation of the vast majority of a military there simply isn't much value to be had
you're theorycrafting a lot but you're clearly unfamiliar with the strategic situation around the construction of the Burma Road
anyway, leaving that particular case aside. the real reason mechs aren't used is that the hardware is not yet feasible, not all the stuff you just wrote. if it was, the same argument applies for them as with tracked vehicles; they're very useful in rough terrain and whole families of walking tanks with various functions could well emerge.
>except that's exactly what happened
If they built a road in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge then they obviously didn't need mechs to do it.
>the real reason mechs aren't used is that the hardware is not yet feasible
We already have the hardware, see pic related.
Kind of a lazy argument. Alexander built a land bridge to tyre, but I'm sure he wouldn't have turned down a battalion of front loaders if they had been available
They built a road in the middle of the Burma campaign, and with great difficulty brought up tanks to set a record for the highest altitude tank engagements of the time. Mechs would have had an easier time of it actually, mules ended up being used extensively for this reason.
>We already have the hardware
not combat rated yet
it has to carry something like 35 tons and be affordable and durable.
>it has to carry something like 35 tons
Why? You don't want your mechs to be heavy, they should be lightweight, no more than 20 tons at most, preferably only 10.
Because going by current IRL armoured vehicles, that would be a useful payload of equipment, armour, weapons and ammo
For a tank, sure. But you wouldn't want to make a mech a tank, you'd want it to be a light infantry support vehicle. Wouldn't even have to be manned, could just have it be drone operated by one of the infantry to save on space.
>For a tank
oh no
even IFVs are pushing it. look at, for example, the British Ajax recon vehicle. the weight of all the sensors makes it 40 tons. in contrast the Scimitar CVRT family, which it replaces, was only 8 tons. that's because Ajax carries a frickton of sensors and datalinks, whereas Scimitar is basically a metal box with a radio and a gun.
no doubt there is a possibility that a hypothetical sci-fi mech may have a lighter motive system. but it will still need to carry quite a substantial payload.
>We already have the hardware, see pic related.
That's like saying you have hardware for a tank and show me a picture of an excavator.
>doesn't see the advantages of having a weapons system able to appear where the enemy least expects it to and cross terrain that the enemy can't
>bases his tactical thinking on what's "good enough" for two countries known for lacking military innovation and being shit at warfare
>doesn't come to the obvious conclusion that these vehicles are being developed not because they are the absolute best tools for the job but because we haven't yet come up with anything better to fill the niche
there wasn't a pressing need to develop military aviation in the middle ages but that doesn't mean it wouldn't have been an improvement. You view these capabilities as being mutually exclusive when they could be complimentary. You suffer from a complete lack of imagination. I imagine some version of you about 100 years ago telling Billy Mitchell that he was moronic for thinking planes could sink battleships. Every idea is a bad idea until you try it.
his tactical thinking on what's "good enough" for two countries known for lacking military innovation and being shit at warfare
The USA lacks military innovation and is shit at warfare?
NAYRT, but anon meant India and China
you claimed that
>built a light tank for fighting in that rough terrain, as has the USA
the M10 Booker is not light and is not a tank; it weighs about 40 tons, nearly the same as a T-72. it's not lighter because it's intended to fight in rougher terrain, it's lighter because it's intended to be flown in to support air assaults. it's not going to operate in any terrain that a T-72 cannot, and will need engineering support in rougher terrain.
I don't know about the doctrine for the Chinese Type 15, but it's 15-20% lighter than the Booker.
>I imagine some version of you about 100 years ago telling Billy Mitchell that he was moronic for thinking planes could sink battleships.
Actually you remind me of someone defending battleships by saying 'don't worry, the AA guns will get better, battleships can totally work guys!' even as planes become more and more common.
Unable to respond to my point and also incapable of understanding analogy, a winning combination!
>There's no point to developing a weapon to fight in terrain that has no strategic value and where the enemy will not be.
Good thing you are not in some high echelon of some armed forces, you sound like the type who will never think outside of the box.
Actually both you and him are morons. Enemies will always seek to surprise you and that includes attacking from unthinkable positions.
Maybe your enemies. Mine will always do what I want, because I give them no other choices.
Yes that's exactly what he was pointing out you fricking dumbass. Reading comprehension is not your strong suit clearly.
That person was being ironic. You're the one who can't read between the lines.
"thinking outside of the box" is not the same as "just copy/pasting whatever moronic shit you saw in an anime"
>A nice story to entertain museum-goers
>Missing the implied "with current technology"
Don't be stupid, anybody saying heavier than air flight was impossible were just shittalking or being exceptionally stupid. Birds and rockets existed back then. You know what you said was stupid, I know what you said was stupid, everybody knows what you said was stupid, so you can go ahead and stop pretending to be stupid.
>this never happened
>it happened
>backpedals, shifts goalposts, NO UR STUPID NOT ME LA LA LA
Yeah, we get it already, you're stupid, no need to repeat yourself.
> ability to greatly change the elevation of the entire crew compartment
This is bad and stupid
> and gun at will to pop up from behind cover
This is pointless. And besides that, it would be far more useful if you just put the gun on a telescoping arm while the hull stays behind cover.
>This is bad and stupid
>This is pointless
Great counterpoints, very well thought out.
>just put the gun on a telescoping arm while the hull stays behind cover
Actually not a bad idea but doesn't have any of the other advantages I brought up.
Literally every point is at best neutral or outright negative
>More ground pressure and particularly its far more uneven appliance means more likely to set of mines, be they magnetic, seismic etc. Only marginally better against the most basic of mines
>River bottoms are treacherous, mud could completely suck you in, large boulders to slip off their algae covered surfaces etc. Long tracks are excellent for crossing over trenches. Obstacles is so broad of a term it covers everything. Generally speaking a traditional tank can either crush through it, sidestep it or call up combat engineer support to clear it
>Higher elevation means you're far more likely to be seen and spotted, you have a much harder time to take cover being small ridges in the terrain and such. A much better solution to this is just to put a collapsible sensor/optics mast on squat low down vehicles or just use drones
>Can be achieve much better via ballistics and smart munitions, without the need to expose yourself to everything in kilometers
>Is way more vulnerable to AT weapons fired from any direction, do you really think a mech can afford to put more armour on it's top or any part than a tank?
>No or barely, depending on size. square cube law and all that. Humans can't jump 1000x their height like mites and big mechs sure as frick can't move like humans. A more reasonable solution is hydraulic tracks that can lift and lower the tank.
Tiny spider like mechs might have the tiniest of niches but it's very much debatable why anyone would spend the resources for such a thing when you can just use infantry, regular vehicles or hell normal or robotic pack animals and such.
well said.
>ground pressure
You get a gold star. You may have actually owned a tractor or other off-road vehicle (I mean REAL off-road vehicle like a combine, tractor, or other farm equipment not a lifted Jeep). Ground pressure is what determines mobility of off-road vehicles, and a mech has extremely high (bad) ground pressure. It will simply sink into mud and get stuck.
That said, I do think we will see mechs soon, but they will be like the "electronic donkey" from Boston Robotics or whatever they were called. Basically it carries food, water, ammo, etc. for soldiers. Eventually these may be mounted with simple weapons like a rifle with a digital scope, they could use it like a ground-based drone. Patrols at night and finds enemy sentries and shoots them. These would be infantry-adjuncts essentially. Large vehicles are a liability because you can just drop a bomb (or drone kamikaze) them. Easy to find, slow to move, expensive- big vehicles are easy targets.
Also their bipedal/humanoid form means that training crew to operate them would be much easier. See how regular normies can take up and learn to play VR games compared to a PC or console game due to the much more intuitive controls. Because as humans we're already familiar with the human form and how to move our bodies.
Tanks are already largely intuitive though. They use a wheel for the tank cause everyone knows how to drive a wheel after all. Loaders have an easy job, they just load. Gunners aim and shoot, commanders command, it's like...none of these people have a super complex job.
Not really a problem since living in a developed country would reveal to you that almost 100% of the population is perfectly capable of getting good proficiency in in operating non-bipedal vehicles after only a few hours of training, and actual movement after about a minute of instruction. And that learning how to move in a racing game also take less than a minute. Honestly, reading a mech thread is like speaking to an alien sometimes, I'm honestly surprised this "point" keeps coming up, is there a cheat sheet your reading off or something? It's completely bizarre.
>Potentially less vulnerable to mines (less surface area to trigger it)
when it DOES trigger a mine, it's guaranteed to topple over. a tank or can still act as a pillbox
>can cross much deeper rivers, obstacles trenches without modification
you WILL sink the moment you try to waddle across a river in 90% of cases
>Works no matter what the terrain, less affected by mud and snow and can climb much steeper inclines
if anything it'll be worse in the mud and the snow depending on how heavy the thing is.
>Higher elevation means longer range and much better situational awareness
onboard spotter drones are the future. a higer elevation also means you pop out more
>isn't vulnerable to antitank weapons fired from upper floors of buildings
lmao?
>can crouch or lean, allowing it to pop out from behind cover like a human
that's hardly an advantage
I can see a future for heavily armed exoskeletons not for anything along the lines of mechwarrior or gundam. drones and atgms will ruin your shit really easily.
Holy shit mechgays are so fricking cringe
>Battlemech armor - 1 inch
>Abrams tank armor - 30 inches
Do I need to say more?
I mean ya you kinda do
30 times more thick armor is better.
Provided it's made of the same material, sure. Did you somehow miss a fundamental part of the question
If you invent better materials put it on Abrams tank and you back to 30 times armor advantage.
Tanks are ultimate mechs, they are better design.
You're still missing the point that comparing BT armor values to irl tanks is completely arbitrary, make the armor as thick as you want it to be. You're also missing the point that no one's suggesting they could or should replace mbt's
If they can't do tank stuff and they can't really be armored then what's the point? Why not just use a weasel turned into a drone or something? Sounds a lot cheaper and simpler.
They can be both, but the point of the discussion is what would they be best at. Anything from armored exo suits to quad legged self propelled artillery, as armored as you please.
>as armored as you please
Doesnt work like that mate, gravity exists
Any amount of armor weight you add to a mech, you can add to a tank and it will do a better job, as there is less area to protect. Tanks are optimised to be super compact in order to reduce this armored area as much as possible due to the weight problem. Battlemechs are just optimsed to look cool for fiction.
>Tanks are optimised to be super compact
People don't get this. One of the greatest arguments for getting rid of the loader, is that you save a shit load (literal tons of shit) of weight by not having to protect the volume he used to occupy.
You lose his mind and body which have many tasks besides loading. Tracks are high maintenance and three people permit two to rest.
You can't get around the fact that ground pressure is determined by force(weight) over an area which is something tracks are exceptionally efficient at. Your walker would need something akin to snow shoes to have any chance of matching the performance of tracked vehicles. There's also the question of speed and energy efficiency, I figure its more efficient to 'roll' than it is to 'articulate', if that makes sense.
>your walker would have to have something skin to snowshoes
So? Tracks are great for ground pressure, sure, but you wouldnt design "feet" that come to a point
Tracks will carry weight better while also being far simpler, even if you ignore everything else. Exact same principle as wheeled vs tracked applies.
Carrying weight better is a myth.
You could have a 100 tonne mech easily not sink into the ground.
All to do with ground pressure.
It’s not about ground pressure, but about surface area. It’s inherently extremely difficult to armor a mech without adding tons of excessive weight onto it.
The weight of a walker rises with the cube, the surface area of its feet rises with the square. Feet also have much higher ground pressure than wheels or tracks of the same area because walking only uses one at a time, and when transitioning between feet the movement is dynamic and carries huge momentum.
A human weighs 80kg on average and can get away with two feet without sinking into concrete when walking. If you scaled a human up so that it weighed 8t (ie a lower weight than would be useful for a combat vehicle) the human would be 10* taller but 100* heavier, so the feet would have to grow in proportion to the weight not the other dimensions. Forget not designing your feet to come to points, you need to design many meters-long feet that are wildly out of proportion with the mech to not sink.
That's why crabs are the superior evolution.
Then again, we don't need a mech to be like 15 meters tall, as previously pointed we got animals, including 2 legged animals which were far larger and taller than humans and existed for millions of years.
>talks about crabs
>posts chickens
I'm hungry.
>when you're not just on the top of the food chain but absolutely dominate it
Welcome to Stroggos
>mfw not even battlemech are safe from carcinisation
Crabs man, it's all just fricking crabs.
Ten bucks says the first extra-terrestrial intelligent life we find will be some kind of crab.
wheels work really well at mech scales, so I'm expecting roller skating crab battles
100 times heavier would still be far less than a tank, you might be moronic anon, and there's no reason for a mech to be 60 feet tall in the first place. a *thing* that doesn't have to be as tough as a tank, which is redundant with ATGm everywhere, that can do fire support for infantry, and follow over rougher terrain than tank ground clearance, and load itself/ each other with hands are all the advantages needed to justify it's use. people also like to pretend tanks never get bogged down, when they're more vulnerable to mud deep enough to allow them to sink in as far as the ground clearance.
> a *thing* that doesn't have to be as tough as a tank, which is redundant with ATGm everywhere, that can do fire support for infantry, and follow over rougher terrain than tank ground clearance, and load itself/ each other with hands
Sounds to me like you want some sort of…fighting vehicle. But for infantry. A Soldier Combat Platform if you will.
>A Soldier Combat Platform if you will.
I call it the Brady; Surely the pentagon will get the design and funding figured out.
>make the armor as thick as you want it to be.
Nah. There is surface area of armor, there is volume and there density and there is weight . You can only make so much with 30 tons spread over the mech. And then you realize tank desing geometry is just better.
A tank with a single crew member would be best. Having to armor a whole crew compartment is pretty subiptimal
Let me preface this by saying I absolutely love Mechwarrior.
The trouble would be armor. Using existing technology and metallurgy, you wouldn’t be able to make the armor thick enough to withstand modern AP. Mech is no good when a tank can blow its leg wide open with a single cannon shot.
It’s also important to note that the mechs of that universe have nuclear reactors.
I can think of all sorts of reasons that’s a bad idea.
I do think there’s some viability to a mech like an Urbie that’s used in urban environments to deal with lightly armed insurgent groups and turdies when you don’t want to risk your infantry.
Something like an Atlas? No way, not in our lifetimes.
>The trouble would be armor. Using existing technology and metallurgy, you wouldn’t be able to make the armor thick enough to withstand modern AP. Mech is no good when a tank can blow its leg wide open with a single cannon shot.
Battletech mechs are mostly far too large for their mass, some of the bigger assault class probably weigh less per volume than some aircraft.
Smaller mechs with spindly legs are probably quite viable if you had appropriate actuators. The frontal area of the legs on something like a raven are quite small you would be able to armor them substantially for minimal mass, at the very least it will be much harder to break the legs than to detract a vehicle.
Most heavy mechs, and all assault mechs would float. That's what me and some engineer friends came up with last time we looked at it over pizza and beer.
Multiple spindly legs sound like a horrific technology to optimize for any kind of terrain other than hard rock or metal. Multiple spindly legs mean less carrying capacity for the main body of the vehicle. Unless your idea is purely autonomous vehicles that are meant to travel over weird but also hard terrain and carry a minimal weapons payload or observation equipment, it doesn't seem any more practical than an 8 wheeled ATV with tall, spindly, knobbly tires, individual motors for each wheel and a very good suspension system. Then you can actually get traction over multiple forms of terrain and have a chance of moving fast.
>mechs of that universe have nuclear reactors.
Yes but BT uses super high tech sci-fi magic hydrogen fusion reactors with tons of convenient features.
They only require water as fuel, they don't generate energy trough heat, critical reactor damage doesn't lead to nuclear explosions and instead only a short flash of flame where the reactor shielding is breached etc.
The reactors are arguably the most fantastic part of the setting.
Well it really depends on how you will have this sort of engine, if I remember well the current fusion reactor models won't explode because once they are destroyed fusion stops, I suppose we would need some alternative, although given enough research an electric engine may work.
>Using existing technology and metallurgy, you wouldn’t be able to make the armor thick enough to withstand modern AP.
The issue isn't that it's impossible to add some armor thick enough to withstand modern AP. The problem is how much of the mech can receive that level of protection.
Most MBT's are only resistant to modern AP weapons to their frontal arcs, and are very vulnerable everywhere else. And even just that shoves them to 50-70 metric tons.Trying to armor up most of your Mech leaves it being unfathomably heavy. Trying to only partially armor leaves you with a gigantic target that's vulnerable to a huge amount of threats. Particularly if you skimp out on armoring limbs.
Guys, I think I did something questionable in MS Paint to demonstrate how much front armor a mobile suit would need...
You missed a spot.
I know. I was worried that might take away from the giant cyclopes silhouette too much. But I suppose it kinda still works.
8/10
If you get portable fusion, what's the use for land vehicles? Switch the entire industry to making low-flying gunships armed with air-to-air missiles and air-to-surface lasers. Fly low, destroy enemy factories one by one in the deep rear. Land-based AA can't do anything against low-flying targets, and if they use AWACS to detect you you shoot it down.
I think OBSOLETE had the most "practical" take on mechs with how Exoframes were used, honestly
Something in the 3-4m range that might be able to cover niche uses like heavy mortar teams and spec ops applications, rather than being a frontline unit slugging it out with tanks
Let's make it more realistic, a platform with a mortar and ammunition and one of these babies is deployed, fully palletized, central or decentralized command and control. We're onto something kere.
But why are these always bipedal. I would argue that a spider like mech would be more useful as each leg puts less pressure on the ground, and more legs improve overall stability of the platform
guessing it's because they're a stand-in for human characters, including body language and emotion
you tend to see more quadruped / insectoid mechs on the enemy/cannon fodder side of things for the same reason
I doubt stompybots will ever be anything more than a novelty, but a spidermech with wheels for feet could end up being practical.
wrong the spider bot has A wheel as a body and small legs coming out of the side with its weapons aswell.
>bipedal
Why? Almost all limbed land animals have 4, 6 or 8 legs for a reason. It is more stable, spreads the weight more and have more traction. Humans are bipedal because it freed our hands to use tools and to give us a height advantage. Otherwise, being bipedal uses more energy and brainpower. Mechs should be at least 4 legged. If need be, have a humanoid torso on top, ala centaurs.
>The ideal mech according to Anon is a tank
Bravo.
What movie is this from? Just ate dinner and I'm in the mood for some sci-fi sloppa kino
Isnt it Armored Core.
It's just the trailer for Armored Core 5. It was quite a nihilistic game. "Nothing matters, just fight and die."
The point of bipedal locamotion is efficiency, but if you're going for that wheels and tracks are superior in vehicles. Mechs will have many legs. Think spider tanks and millipedes
I just need to point out that the best mech is the Stalker. It's two legs, plus missiles, and that's all you need.
>Stalker is merely a missile boat
learn to bracket geez
>this is how aliens process harvested humans
The aliens are also crabs
get rekt
>spits paint all over the model
Thanks for the camo idea anon.
Yeah I had your mom do that after she sucked me dry.
the kind of tech advances needed to make them work will also make them entirely pointless because you can just apply them to a platform that doesn't inherently suck
why bother with legs when you can just have treads or wheels or can fly? legs are terrible for large vehicles
Yes. Because:
>welcome back. We are better together.
>MULTIPLE ENEMY TITANS, RECOMMEND AGGRESSIVE SUSTAINED COUNTERFIRE
You can use them in a forest?
Think about it if you make them small enough you can traverse almost any forest. So can a tankette but this deals better with uneven terrain.
>become well developed (myomer, ferrofibrous armor, portable fusion reactors)
literally none of those technologies exist in even the most preliminary development stages.
I am so tired of these threads.
If the tech is there why not? The question is what sizes are actually viable? Mechwarrior/Battletech stuff would be so tall it'd be insanely easy to spot and light up with missiles and artillery. Even if you designed them with stealth in mind big stompy boys would probably show up on seismic sensors lol. Something smaller like the "Leo" from Red Faction 2, basically oversized heavy power armor, could be quite useful. To me the only place big is good is space and I'd go for more mobile suit type designs over MW/BT stuff for that.
Geckos from MSG4 might be viable. Small, fast, mooing gunboats would suck to deal with in an urban battle.
Intrusive moronic thoughts is what you just posted.
But why did they moo?
Word of god: psychological warfare.
Completely pointless. Four to six legs (depending on the size of the robot) is far superior for stability and traversing rough terrain.
>viability of bipedal walkers?
FRICK. OFF.
>Doesn't list reasons
>No fun
Why are you even on this thread?
Even with its hyper-specific technologies, Battlemechs still make no sense. Hell, the only reason Battlemechs ever came to be a thing is because Battletech’s history has the USA winning the Cold War and then agreeing to be annexed by Europe for like, no reason. The USA just agrees to stop existing because the setting doesn’t work if it does.
>WHAT BEGAN AS A CONFLICT OVER THE TRANSFER OF WASHING MACHINES TO SIBERIA HAS ESCALATED INTO A WAR WHICH HAS DECIMATED A MILLION WORLDS
>myomer
Yeah, if we had that kind of wonder tech they'd be amazing on a battlefield.
If we're talking lore battlemechs rather than Mechwarrior battlemechs, they're incredibly fast and agile. That combined with the ability to carry extremely heavy armor, massive weaponry and take plenty of punishment even without said armor would make them devastatingly powerful.
They could practically dodge missiles, be incredibly hard to pin down with any kind of direct fire weaponry, use cover in a dynamic fashion, move over any terrain and ignore tank traps.
All while running at 200kph, changing directions instantly and carrying enough armor to shrug off autocannon shots like they were nothing.
Atlas and Commando are peak mech design
Nah, Tolva is the best mech design.
That's not the Highlander IIc.
that's a cool walker robot
would be a shame if something happened to it
That's a cool tank. A shame if someone hit it with an ATGM.
>Featherless
>Bipedal
BEHOLD A MAN!
I knew I forgot something.
Why must you post this moronic shit thread every week?
The appeal of the mecha genre is that it spiritually represents the light infantryman reasserting themselves over mechanized warfare. Mecha brings the human soulfulness back to warfare, bringing a personal connection to combat. In the modern era of soulless Enlightenment-style warfare being fought with spreadsheets and utilitarian technological horrors, mecha brings warfare back to its Romanticist roots of a very personal struggle between men.
But that's also why trying to apply any 'realism' to mecha is dumb. It's not a genre meant for the sort of autistic bean counters or engineering nerds. It's an epic story of conflict between two or more personalities.
>The appeal of the mecha genre is that it spiritually bla bla bla
opinion noted
>trying to apply any 'realism' to mecha is dumb
you can do
no it fricking ain't
you can do all that without going full shounen jump god gundam over it
>you can do all that without going full shounen jump god gundam over it
You really can't. You can go for the aesthetics of realism, but in the end you'll always end up going Gundam with it.
>You really can't.
you can absolutely have a personal conflict between two characters without giving both of them some emotion-powered god mecha nonsense with constant screaming. You don't even need to have two fully fleshed out well written characters, just have one babbling some nonsense about the romance of war or some shit. Picture related. Ace Combat is the best possible way to take realism in stories where your main concern is rule of cool. How many missiles do the planes have? Frick off. Why are the pilots able to quote philosophy over open comms at each other? Frick off. What is air defense doing? Frick off. Just nudge the realism that gets in the way out of the way and you're good, there is absolutely no need to make every single motherfricker a magical chosen-one WMD.
>Ace Combat is the best possible way to take realism in stories where your main concern is rule of cool. How many missiles do the planes have? Frick off. Why are the pilots able to quote philosophy over open comms at each other? Frick off. What is air defense doing? Frick off. Just nudge the realism that gets in the way out of the way and you're good, there is absolutely no need to make every single motherfricker a magical chosen-one WMD.
...but Ace Combat is FRICKING FULL of chosen-one WMD's, from the protagonists of each game to the literally physics defying ace boss fights they face in combat. I don't get where you're trying to go with this, the example you posted is literally everything I said as a reason why it's not possible to not go Gundam with it, I mean frick there's an Ace Combat thread on /m/ right now because Ace Combat is just a mecha anime with planes instead.
Didn't Ace Combat setting due lack of nuke development at a proper time?
If you had never seen an airplane and I described an F-15 to you, you'd say I was smoking crack, but you'd actually just be unimaginative.
Very accurate. You should spin this off into a YouTube essay.
>8 hours later
>this exact quote pops up in my youtube feed
Algorithm's gonna algorithm, I guess...
Mechs are gay and obsolete.
3-5m tall maybe
Any larger: no.
The closest realistic mech we might see will be a powered exoskeleton that has gotten big enough that you ride in it rather than wear it. It's niche will be bringing IFV level firepower in at a quarter of the weight or less.
Insisting on the viability of legged mechs is the 'socialism has never been tried' of /k/
I hate these threads.
I actually thought Perun should do something like this for April fools day
When I was going thru some amateur worldbuilding attempts on making a dieselpunk fantasy setting, I wondered how a mechsuit would be developed as a reaction to the first world war. I surmised it would consist of heavy firepower bunker busters or of chicken walkers bounding over the trenches with flamethrowers.
No, bipedal mechs are always stupid and have no place in anything, let alone on the battlefield.
Pic related on the other hand is probably a reasonable mech design. It doesn't waste space, and it offers reasonable fire support for infantry in rough terrain.
You're probably going to want an auto-loader and remote turret for a mech too. Saving space is especially important for anything designed to be as compact as a mech would want to be, and so you want to make sure you only have a crew of like, 3. Plus since mechs are mostly used as infantry support rather than standalone forces they can have the infantry help with the maintenance that the loader would normally assist with.
Also you're gonna want to make sure all the mechs have wheels on the ends of their legs. Worst case scenario, you end up not using them, best case scenario you vastly increase their speed on certain terrains.
Logistics, engineering work that can also fight, bypass tank traps and cross shallow rivers (due to their height) due to their height seems like great advantages.
Bipedal walkers make about as much sense as using genetically engineered giantesses, but they're not nearly as sexy.
>but they're not nearly as sexy
I'm not sure this is the board for you.
why do Mechs have to be bipedal? wouldn't a quadrupedal mech be better?
like if you took the drone-dog concept and upscaled them so they could carry tank cannons?
New video dropped.
I think that would more of a political video, also funny how soviets reflected klingons so well, but russians not so much.
The only advantage bipedalism would offer is saved weight and power requirements meaning you can use that saved weight and power to mount more guns or just be lighter.
Lmao no.
Bipedal motion is inherently less efficient than continuous circular motion like with a wheel or sprocket. Secondly the higher you build the sturdier the lower structure must be to support it. ESPECIALLY when you add in vertical forces from movement rather than a static building. Long levers of that size would have to be built very strong and heavy just to support their own weight which in itself means the lower supports must be stronger and heavier and so on and so on. Any mech with armour even capable of withstanding 7.62 nato rounds all around of say above 3-4m in height would have be extremely strongly built, with the arms and legs especially needing a frick ton of structural reinforcement. Going above that to my understanding would require some improvements in structural sciences. Weaved Carbon fibre would be a possiblity in place of steel but that has a bad tendency to catastrophically break apart if nicked hard enough, not exactly ideal for combat.
So no. For the same mass, a tradition wheeled or tracked vehicle will be far more armoured, efficient and have a much greater payload capacity.
The absolute only advantage of bipedalism is better mobility in particularly jagged and vertical terrain. But that only applies within a fairly narrow weight band. It'd argue you'd be much better of with just having huge low pressure wheels on top of some hydraulic legs for extension.
guess I should have specified that my post was in comparison to quadrupeds.
wtf, perun is based and labor pilled now??
i'm new to me/k/s
just watched patlabor 1 2 and 3
what's next?
Patlabor Early Days OVAs
Patlabor TV show
Dominion Tank Police
I have no idea. every piece of mech media has so many fricking drawbacks its not even funny. I dont feel comfortable recommending ANYTHING anime wise.
If you want something old-school, go VOTOMs. If you want something new-school, go Code Geass.
If you really want to dive into mecha, go Gundam. The original Kido Senshi Gundam is a surprisingly well grounded war story complete with PTSD, supply troubles, and even getting fricked over by your own chain of command.
VOTOMS is hella /k/ino if you can get over the moronic "speshul boy" plotline. That having been said the animation for the first 10 episodes is visibly shoestring and some of the action is 1980s Hollywood "bottomless magazine" slop at times. Still pretty fricking good tho.
Dougram
>walkers
I fricking hate these clunky pieces of shit. AC's and Zakus or nothing.
Armored core is moronic. At the point your mechs can skate at the speed of sound why wouldn't you just use a jet?
The Spectrum of Military Coolness:
>1) Mechs
They're giant mechanical embodiments of the human form that make other machines look like rusty shitbuckets in comparison, what's not to love?
>2) Infantry
The base form that the mechs copy off of to get their coolness, not quite as badass but still pretty cool
>3) Planes
Similar to mechs in that they let a single dude devastate swathes of their enemies in single-man combat, but because they don't look humanoid like mechs they're still a little lame
>4) Ships
Huge leviathans with colossal guns, their coolness however is diminished by the fact that they require multiple crew to work and they look nothing like a humanoid shape
>5) Tanks
Basically just worse mechs
You're looking at tanks all wrong. Instead of squat midget mechs, think of them as mini battleships on land. The tank is for turning your military campaign into a road trip for you and your buds and they're easy to personalize.
I'm afraid this anon is right. Crashing around and having fun with the boys is the most important part of warfare. Mechs are for asocial incels.
probably useful in very high intensity warfare where an area is littered with anti-tank traps and obstacles, however they would be incredibly fragile and prone to breakdown, they would need a lot of smoke to stop them being located and simply peppered from a distance with artillery and missiles
Just like my armoured core
I always wondered how they moved.
Peak russian technology.
he has a point on this one
if the operation can be simplified enough for a single pilot
if it can be just as mobile as a modern tank
if it can be outfitted with more diverse weapons to fill more roles than a modern tank
but if the tech is there to put a nuclear reactor, gauss rifles and lasers on two legs i think you could just put them on a tank too. i dont see what the role would be for something being able to see farther, move in worse terrain, and carry more stuff. is it a gunship on the ground or a better tank or both?
>assault mech with 60 tons worth of weapons before ammo
manly, must have no armor; artist didnt know what he was doing
If it's Clantech bullshit that's only 23 tons before ammo, assuming the laser ports are mediums, the machineguns aren't HMGs, and the left arm is an ATM-12. For ammo, figure standard 3 tons for ATM, 1 ton for machineguns, and a generous 2 tons for the LRM. Likely no extra heatsinks given the weapon choices. 29 tons isn't an unreasonable amount of podspace.
One of the major reasons for mechs being as useful as they are isn't artificial muscles, fusion reactors or any of that, it's how dropships and FTL function where they aren't limited by tonnage but moreso by space where is more efficient to cram a quartet of mechs into a union then only getting maybe twice that number in comparatively fragile tanks that also cant pick up anything including shut nailed down.
Two legs are pointless and dumb for big things. All big things that walk the planet are quadrupedal.
Even ur mum?
looking good is half the battle
Some of his best work
>Itroduction
>I-troduce into her
Unironically Games Workshop made a cooler design with the skorpekh destroyers.
>burning love
>uses Haruna
Moskva sisters, our response?
Fujian-sisters I do not feel so good.
There are 2 components that make battletech mechs viable, the neurohelmet and myomer. Myomer being the artificial muscles with the tensile strength of metal and the neurohelmet allowing the pilot to fully control the mech as though it were their own body. Making them bipedal makes the interaction between th brain and the components more intuitive.
People like you just don't get it and see these machines as nothing but tools. Giant robots are the most powerful personification of a single warrior on the battlefield fighting larger than life circumstances. While they don’t have the ergonomics of the tank what the mecha does posses that is far more important is a link to the infinite wellspring of power in the soul of one with the determination enough to pilot it! They have a personality and style and sword lasers that’ll cleave holes through mountains that can't be matched by simple tanks and jets, and often become characters in and of themselves with people often even caring when they get damaged or destroyed, just as much as the pilots inside.
They are vessels of man's determination and spirit, being a mechanical tribute to himself. They are more like warhorses than tanks, companions in battle instead of tools. The mecha is man's projection of his spirit and willpower applied to a body with the power to achieve their goals!, the human serves not only as pilot but as soul to the body of an artificial man.
TL:DR Mecha pilots can shout their devotion to their friends and unleash a salvo of missiles synchronously flying in the shape of “死” towards the target.
No tank can replicate such a feat.