This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Most Super Sentai series have each character with their own Humongous Mecha, but they're used in the combined form far more than on their own. No, that's a Combining Mecha, not a Transforming Mecha — Susan Davis
Ununnilium: ...and somehow, I thought this was that page. Sigh.
BT The P: Can anyone figure out what the problem is with the left-hand navigation, specifically, why it won't appear? None of the other HM pages seem to have the problem. Is it in the encoding here, or in the hidden index on Humongous Mecha, or what?
Ununnilium: Shows up just fine for me.
BT The P: Well, there's supposed to be a left-hand link to Combining Mecha there, and all I see is the index link and the right-hand link. I'm not sure why. I know it's happened a few times in the past, and it's been something on the index page encoded badly, or some other bug.
Ununnilium: Oh, I see what you're talking about now. Where *is* the Humongous Mecha Index anyway? It's not on that page.
Scrounge: The "obvious hands in vehicle mode" thing isn't the only way it's sone, and the way it was left just bugged me today, so I made a note of the door swinging both ways. I figured the word "Kibble" might be useful here, too.
Space Drake: I just want to make a note of this: do not put your personal masturbatory power armor fantasies in the trope list and pass it off as a "real life example". There may be No Such Thing As Notability, but we have to draw the line at cataloging things that actually exist.
- Why the insults and hating? That was NOT a "masturbatory power armor fantasy". Its at exactly the stage I said it was: the drawing board. Power armor, btw, DOES already exist (though not the one i described), its been several years now since a Japanese company came out with a production model designed for heavy lifting on docks and worksites, a so-called "power loader" which is widely recognised as the world's first publicly avowed, fully functioning mecha. Even the version i described is not such a far-off pipe dream. Most of the tech necessary is already readily available; with sufficient funding, I could build about 80% of it right now. The main points that i still need to figure out how to do are the shoulders and the hips, both of which I have some ideas for. Everything else left is just improvements; if I could get just those two to an acceptable level, I'd be ready (with sufficient funds for materials) to build one good enough to serve as a proof-of-concept for a combat mecha. From that point, I estimate about 5 more years of development to have one actually good enough to be worth sending into battle.
- Space Drake: Well, good for you. If you actually manage to get it built, then add it to the trope index. If every guy off the street added his totally rad idea for a transforming motorcycle to the trope list , all of our pages would be megabytes long.
Shay Guy: What Space Drake was oh-so-politely trying to say was that he doesn't think you should add real-life without at least funding for that proof-of-concept prototype. Personally, I don't see a problem, and I'm considering putting it back, though that has a lot to do with which side was displaying contempt. (What are your credentials, by the way? And do you have a username?)
I don't have any widely-recognised credentials (accredited degrees, published in peer-review journals, that kind of thing). The lack of at least a degree has more to do with my relationship to universities than my relationship to physics or mechanics, and I do still intend to get one, but whatever the excuse, the fact remains that I don't have any currently. I also don't have a username set up yet, simply because i'v not yet gotten around to it. As for funding for this project, that one I do at least have appriciable progress toward, at least for the thousands of dollars it would take to start prototyping the tricky bits, and maybe even the tens of thousands to build a proof of concept (the millions needed to build a ready-for-battle unit are another story), though its still not expected to happen for at least several years yet, even if things go well. Anyway, me actually building one wasn't the point in the first place, I just mentioned it as backstory for how i came to my conclusions. The real point, the part that I felt was relevent enough to be worth making that original edit in the first place, was to make the point that, dispite the prevelence of ludicrously impractical transformations, there are actually practical reasons to make something transform, even in non-fiction circumstances, where the Rule of Cool usually doesn't qualify as a good reason to do something.
Shay Guy: All you have to do is pick a name and start signing your posts with it. You can make a contributor page later.
