History Main / WalkingTank

* VideoGame/StarCraft
** In ''VideoGame/{{StarCraft|I}}''
*** The Terran Goliaths. Decent against ground targets, but meant for heavy-duty anti-air.
*** The Protoss Dragoon, a quadrupedal tank with a Phase Disruptor cannon that is equally effective against both ground & air armored targets.
** In ''VideoGame/StarcraftII'' the role of Dragoons is replaced by the more agile Stalkers, (also quadrupedal but with thinner legs and taller bodies) which also come with a short-range {{Teleportation}} ability. The Dragoons themselves were retrofitted into Immortals, losing their air attack but massively improving their anti-armor firepower and giving them a unique shield making them extremely resistant to artillery fire.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* Between the World Wars and early in [[UsefulNotes/WorldWar2 WW2]] there were many unusual AwesomeButImpractical prototype military vehicles. Surely, somebody could try to make an armoured machine with legs. Thus, shopped black-and-white photos and faded blueprints keep appearing online. Usually as AprilFools. [[https://www.yaplakal.com/forum2/topic1077332.html Here]] are 3 photos (with comments in Russian) of a walking tank with a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KV-2 KV-2]] turret.

* Done literally with the ''Bein Panzer'' from SCEI (aka Kouashi Kikou Shidan: Bein Panzer which was an [[GratuituousGerman attempt at German]] for Legged Tank). It's an alternate history [=WW2=] game where combat takes place on Earth and Mars using more advanced versions of vehicles that actually existed in [=WW2=] including VTOL Stukas and many of the tanks that pop their treads into makeshift legs to walk on.

* Done literally with the Japan-only [=PS1=] game ''Bein Panzer'' (an attempt at German for Legged Tank). It's an alternate history [=WW2=] game where combat takes place on Earth and Mars using more advanced versions of vehicles that actually existed in [=WW2=] including VTOL Stukas and many of the tanks that pop their treads into makeshift legs to walk on.

See the Analysis page for why these don't work as well in real life as they do in fiction.

While ''slightly'' more reasonable than the humanoid HumongousMecha more common to Japanese media, these still mostly fall into the AwesomeButImpractical category, and thus this trope owes its existence primarily to the RuleOfCool. The idea is problematic because mechanical legs sturdy enough to support a heavy vehicle would be bulkier and heavier than a track system, increasing the vehicle's overall mass and the amount of power needed to move it. Another concern is ground pressure. You often see designs where the foot contact area is small in proportion to the weight they transfer into the ground, and not all of the feet are in continuous contact with the ground while a legged robot walks. A walker could therefore be more prone to sinking into soft ground. And crucially for military use, putting a vehicle up on legs raises the body higher off the ground so that it becomes a more prominent target, at least in open terrain. In RealLife, the history of tank design shows a move to make them lower profile so that they present less of a target. The legs would also have to be armored, which would be weight inefficient from a surface-area-to-volume perspective, and a tall walker would face a more damaging fall if the legs were shot out from under it.

The main justification for a walking tank would be the ability of legs to handle terrain covered with such dense obstacles that even a tracked tank couldn’t traverse it, or perhaps wade across rivers that a tracked tank would need to snorkel through, but modern armored forces are used to dealing with or working around such situations. Granted, the high ground clearance could protect the crew better from the blast of land mines and [=IEDs=], but that’s negated by the exposure to enemy direct fire, potential damage from falling, and the difficulty of escape if the crew needed to bail out. There would also be a larger number of moving parts that could fail, and swapping out a busted robot leg would be much harder in the field than swapping tracks, road wheels, or torsion bars. In short, the benefits don’t outweigh the drawbacks. That being said, walkers could prove useful for certain mundane logistical purposes if the basic engineering problems could be solved.

** In [[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberianDawn the first game]], the Global Defense Initiative's arsenal is almost entirely conventional ({{Future Copter}}s and {{Kill Sat}}s aside), but by ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberiumWars Tiberian Sun]]'', the increasing environmental destruction caused by the titular GreenRocks has turned much of Earth into a [[DeathWorld broken wasteland]] that normal tanks have trouble traversing. Thus, the Humvees, medium battle tanks and Mammoth Tanks of the First Tiberium War are replaced with [[MiniMecha Wolverines]], Titans, and quadrupedal Mammoth [=MkII=] walkers, while the difficulty in utilizing sea support when the oceans are choked with Tiberium weeds led GDI to develop the Juggernaut, basically a battleship turret on legs that can act as a mobile artillery platform. In gameplay terms, these walkers move at a slow but steady pace regardless of terrain, in contrast with the Brotherhood of Nod's wheeled and tracked units, whose speed will vary based on the flatness of terrain and the incline they're moving along.
** By ''[[VideoGame/CommandAndConquerTiberiumWars Tiberium Wars]]'', however, GDI has mothballed most of their walker units. Turns out they were [[AwesomeButImpractical expensive to build and maintain]], with the legs being particularly vulnerable to wear and breakdowns, as well as sabotage by infantry crazy enough to dash in and slip an explosive charge into a key joint. So GDI redesigned their latest generation of tracked vehicles with multiple articulated tread-pods that let them effectively crawl and clamber over hostile terrain (and even smaller vehicles in the case of the Mammoth [=MkIII=]), making them actual tanks capable of semi-walking. Only the Juggernaut artillery walkers still see widespread use, because they typically stay well away from direct combat and don't move around much, while updated versions of Titans and Wolverines are only fielded by the Steel Talon GDI sub-faction introduced in the ''Kane's Wrath'' expansion. Again, the strengths and weaknesses of walkers are borne out in gameplay - they're slow but ignore terrain, while each faction's Commando unit can run in and inflict a OneHitKill on a walker by blowing out a leg joint, though the wreck can subsequently be repaired [[VehicularTurnabout and commandeered]] by an Engineer unit.