Time and time again we've seen mechs justified on the basis on being good for rough terrain. It's such a common talking point that it kinda begs the question...how the frick does the military handle rough terrain right now? Like...do we just drop all our military equipment and have pure infantry have at it?
mostly militaries build roads, because one fricking vehicle going through a place alone is even WORSE than useless, because when it makes contact with the enemy, then you have to go fricking rescue it across hell too.
Mechs have two, maybe 4 legs at most. A tank tread is basically hundreds of legs. Mechs can never beat tracked vehicles on rough terrain. Human-sized battlesuits might find a niche in house to house urban fighting or in zero G but treads beats everything other than scifi anti grav vehicles.
But tanks can't handle anything steeper than a 30 degree incline.
Combat engineers anon.
Do you have any idea how steep a 30 degree incline is? Have you tried hauling your fat ass up one recently?
>Do you have any idea how steep a 30 degree incline is?
Regardless, what are you going to do when you run into a 60 degree incline? Or a 90 degree incline? Infantry can climb up a 60 degree incline but a tank can't.
Yes, that's how tanks work. Have you figured out that indirect fires come into play here yet?
But wouldn't it be better to have indirect fire AND direct fire?
They used tanks pretty extensively in Korea to great effect, getting them places is doable. You're not getting a 40-60 ton tank up a 45-60 degree incline (which is probably covered with trees or rocks) but that doesn't mean you can't find a way to get them near said incline. Any place you can't get a tank you just send mechanized infantry or worst case light infantry and airmobile infantry.
If this isn't a bait thread I'd suggest that you research the US airmobile operations in Vietnam (they were doing shit like airlifting artillery pieces to isolated mountains and setting up firebases and setting up airstrips in the forest with thousands of airlifted troops manually cutting down trees) and all of Korea.
So wouldn't a mech be useful in case the enemy has AA in place to stop the US from airlifting stuff?
I mean at that point you could use donkeys, manually lift shit, pull stuff with JLTVs if possible, set up winches, or get ballsy helicopter pilots to fly blackhawks 1 foot above the tree tops. Or use pic related.
>Or use pic related.
Why not put a gun on pic related? A mortar, a .50 cal, a rocker launcher? They could all be useful.
Now I'm going to direct you to the operations in Malaya in WW2, where they did literally that. Donkeys would carry mortars and machine gun ammo up hills and through jungles.
Right, but you could have the robot directly fire the mortar instead of having to unpack it first.
I mean, yeah. But you still need to reload the mortar and lug rounds, which requires a crew for it. I suppose a robot mortar dog thingie that carries an 81mm and can stabilize and aim it without needing to put down a baseplate and set it up would be useful though. Pretty niche though as you now have to supply and maintain the robot dog when you could just give the mortar to a few guys and avoid the dog completely.
Anything bigger a robot would be unusable though unless it takes the form of basically pic related.
>A tank tread is basically hundreds of legs.
Until you get into deep mud, then those treads act like the tank has zero legs. Horses contended better with the russian mud better than any panzer or truck did.
>we've seen mechs justified on the basis on being good for rough terrain
Which is moronic because ground pressure is a thing. If a tank is struggling with it then any bipedal vehicle larger than, power armor is going to as well.
unless these mountains/jungle need to be crossed because there's strategically important shit on the other side of these mountains/jungle, then why would you even be fighting in a mountain or jungle?
any valuable places like large farmland or cities would be flat enough for regular tanks to fight in.
any place that's harsh enough to necessitate the use of tanks or walking vehicles are places that are strategically irrelevant.
>unless these mountains/jungle need to be crossed because there's strategically important shit on the other side of these mountains/jungle, then why would you even be fighting in a mountain or jungle?
Look at Afghanistan and Vietnam.
A scifi worldbuilder could conceivably use climate change as a justification for militaries moving to bipedal mechs rather than tracked vehicles.
Rising tides impassable mud rivers or boglands, or megadeserts with soft plastic sand.