Can anyone think of a way to break the Square-Cube Law?

Main character:

Fight smart, not fair.

Yeah... those over-sized eyes have always bothered me (and what is that thing around his waist)?

edited 1st Dec '11 10:56:25 PM by nrjxll

While spider tanks would indeed get around some of the problems, the OP specifically stated humanoid mecha.

A good argument could be made for Spider Tanks in some settings - like extremely uneven terrain that cannot be traversed by wheeled or track-laying vehicles, especially if the Spider tank can lift its front legs above the height of its body to gain a "foothold" and can raise its height by extending its legs. That would enable it to climb over far higher embankments than a tank could traverse.

The question would be "how fast can it do it?" A tank, I understand, can get up to 60mph over fairly flat ground.

One of the other things ignored in a lot of Mecha scenarios, is a pretty little thing called "inertia" - that thing that makes the space shuttle sit still for a few seconds - despite the fact that a number of extremely powerful rocket engines are firing madly - and then ease slowly off the launch pad.

Sure, it begins to accelerate quite respectably after that and hits orbital velocity - but the initial overcoming of inertia makes for a sluggish take off.

Inertia is the reason why, in an out-and-out "race off the lights" between a fully-laden semi and a 125cc motorcycle, the bike is always going to take the lead. OK, the semi, once out on a Freeway and up to speed, is going to leave the rider on the 125 sucking diesel exhaust but on the short burst from stationary, the semi is a sluggish brick.

All the things I've seen involving huge mecha (which I admit isn't a lot but all those I've seen have it, so I'm assuming it's universal) have them bouncing about the place like naked gymnasts and launching into action with the alacrity of a dog with turps on its balls.

That's because they're animated creations based on the movements of unencumbered humans rather than real behemoths of metal and armour.

In Real Life, even if you strapped jet assist on them, the mecha would be cumbersome - slow to start moving, slow to change direction, slow to stop. Sure, given sufficient thrust and fuel, you could get them ripping along at a fair pace - but you've got to get several tons of behemoth to move from rest, and that's what we call a "fuckton" of inertia, right there.

Basically, if your mecha is getting the acceleration of a Main Battle Tank, you're doing really well. If your mecha's armament is a "wrist mounted" weapon at the end of a scaled-up human arm, then the average Main Battle Tank's going to blow seven cans of shit out of the thing before it can draw a bead on anyone - for the very good reason that the tank's lighter, shorter, less-complicated turret is going to traverse, acquire and fire much faster than the Ridiculously Humanoid Mecha's "chaingun arm".

That would be true for any conventional weapon turrets mounted on Spider Tanks, common "garden-variety" tracked tanks or wheeled armoured vehicles.

The sheer inertia and traversing arc of a humanoid mecha's arms make them impractical for mounting point-shoot weapons (and let's not even get onto humongous swords).

Star Wars seriously dropped the ball with the AT-A Ts - they managed to design something slower and less practical than a good ol' fashioned tracked tank with absolutely none of the advantages of a legged transport - and even they didn't stick weapons on the ends of silly arms.

edited 2nd Dec '11 12:07:55 AM by Wolf1066

This thread is now depressing me. WHAT HAVE I CREATED

There's no real point in trying to justify the existence of stereotypical humanoid mecha. They exist because of the Rule of Cool, and as long as you and your readers agree that they are cool (not, incidentally, a universal opinion), then you should have no problems. There's no reason to hand-wave some justification for their use when it's neither possible nor remotely necessary.

edited 2nd Dec '11 2:26:30 AM by nrjxll

It is unnecessary, but it's still entirely possible.

It boils down to this: Humanoid Mecha are impossible due to a number of immutable physical laws - not just "we don't have the technology to do it yet" (as with da Vinci's diagrams of aircraft), but "they are completely physically impossible") but they are incredibly "cool" to some people.

You have four courses of action:

1) Say "I want my story to be as "realistic" and scientifically accurate as possible so I'm going to have to dump the idea of humanoid mecha (though there could be a few Spider Tanks lumbering over the terrain)".

2) Say "Fuck it, I want humanoid mecha so screw scientific accuracy and explanations: they just exist, dammit, and I'll trust in the audience's Willing Suspension of Disbelief and the Rule of Cool."

3) Say "Fuck it, I want humanoid mecha in an otherwise "realistic" setting so I'm going to come up with silly Unobtanium and ludicrous technobabble to hand wave away the fact that several major laws are being ignored and just hope like hell the audience doesn't think I'm a dick."

4) Say "I'm going to justify everything else but just slip in the mecha with no explanations or justifications."

Of these options, 1 and 2 are generally the best - go all out for "realism" and explaining everything if that's the way you want to run your story OR say "screw it" and just write a fun story without all the scientific justifications - with 4 as an OK compromise.

The third option just highlights the fact that, amid all the real science and plausible stuff, you've had to resort to handwavium you've obviously pulled out of your arse.

Some people wouldn't care [cough]Trekkies[/cough], [cough]Whovians[/cough] but others, such as myself, would be jarred by it and jolted out of the willing suspension of disbelief.

If you want to have both "justifications" and mecha, you'd be better off being all super scientific about everything else in the universe and remain completely mute when it comes to the "justifications" for mecha - done right, few people would notice that you haven't come up with an in-story justification for the mecha and just accept that they are there due to W So D and the fact that you've written some really cool mecha.

Which is more important to you? Having "scientific justifications" for all the stuff in your story or having humanoid mecha bouncing about in deadly combat?. How important is it that you have in-story justifications for stuff, anyway?

There is nothing at all wrong with just running with Rule of Cool and putting in whatever you want. The minute you pull pseudo-science out of your arse to "justify" it, you risk appearing disingenuous.

You already knew that mecha are scientifically impossible - the existence of this thread shows that - but so are FTL drives, time travel and teleporters and that still doesn't stop people enjoying stories about them.

Actually, I'd argue that there's more of a chance for FTL travel/time travel to exist then there is for useful humanoid mecha, honestly.

edited 2nd Dec '11 12:39:13 PM by nrjxll

Well, you could have conventional humanoid mecha in a low-gravity environment, but I'm not sure what exactly the point would be...

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

Hence my choice of the word useful.

Ah, yes, missed that. Moving on...

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

It would be possible to have humanoid mecha in 1g on Earth, but they'd require ludicrously advanced technology for no advantage over easier-to-make vehicles. That's one reason why I like smaller mechs, like those in Full Metal Panic—they give the impression of being just more weapons of war.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

Before the topic of realistic mechs comepletely dies down, I'd like to toss in that the most believable type from my POV is a mix of Spider Tank and regular tank. That is, the vehicle has multiple limbs to aid in traversing irregular terrain, but with wheels or treads on the "feet" for speed and efficiency. Like Tachikomas.

The closest to a humanoid mecha I could imagine in real life would be some kind of oversized Powered Armor like in Avatar.

edited 2nd Dec '11 1:44:44 PM by RTaco

I personally added walker tanks to my story because they're rather expected, but I tried to explore how to do it reasonably realistically. To that end, I kept them vaguely small (taller than the average tank, but not incredibly large), and they really don't do much walking. They have flat, treaded feet that they use to slide across the battlefield on, like skates, and then when they reach the trench lines they just walk over them. With six sturdy legs, their weight is reasonably well-supported, and they're not so heavily armed with high recoil guns (just two forward main guns on a limited-swivel turret and some light machine gun turrets) so as to make one wonder why they aren't adversely affected by firing; I added back-mounted howitzers and semi-guided rocket launchers to try and balance out the otherwise-small amount of firepower (given what the average vehicle in the setting has, it wouldn't make sense for them to be so lightly armed).

Lastly, I had the British, who use these things, replace the legs entirely with traditional tracks when in terrain like that of North Africa, because they only really use the thing with legs when it's necessary.

I disagree, actually. I think Star Wars presents a rather good deconstruction of walkers, although probably unintentionally.

The Empire—proven to like big and impractical designs—drops large walking platforms that have highly concentrated firepower in the front and zero protective point defense anywhere else on a planet with big open space and against a foe that has no real ground vehicle support. And yet, they still lose a fuckton of them because of aircraft, they only really win because their opponents are shit useless for heavy firepower and these things are, admittedly, thick as a goddamned mountain with armor, and they accomplish the desired effect of intimidation.

Now, the EU kind of ruins this by wanking them into actual uberness, but as presented in the movie I think they were fairly reasonable, all things considered: big, lumbering, and a preposterous waste of resources, like everything else the Empire uses.

I am now known as Flyboy.

I expect NGE would not be the thing to change your opinion... it's the only anime series I've seen in full, and not quite my cup of tea, I'm afraid.

Their mechas did seem to basically run on magic, though, so on a point relevant to the discussion they did get that exactly right.

As for Star Wars... the elite warriors of the galaxy are unarmored and fight with swords. And have magic powers. And that's like the central premises of the franchise. Pretty much whatever else they want to do is OK.

Except [condescending response follows]. Because [sarcasm here]. You do understand [snark], right? POTHOLE TO SARCASM MODE

Oh, I thought of two different ways of getting around the law. In order of decreasing believability they are: 1) mess around with the Higgs field via Phlebotinum, 2) bounce a graviton particle beam off it.

Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.

I can't say I disagree with any of that, and they were realistically slow and ponderous compared with humanoid mega-mecha (made from joining several spacecraft together) bouncing around the place weilding swords like they were Zorro.

Even taking it as a deconstruction or "in keeping with the stupidity of the Empire", you've got something that is slower and less efficiently armed than a tank but without a walker's ability to climb difficult terrain. Intimidation is the only thing it has going for it - which wears off about sixty seconds after you realise that all you've got to do is hide until it goes past and you can open fire on it's arse end with impunity (impunity and a rocket launcher), as it can't touch you.

But even then, the weapons - as restricted in movement as they were due to their location - were mounted on something that can be swivelled easily and fairly quickly compared with a scaled-up human arm.

It depends on the size of the mecha... Unless they're particularly huge, I can see them as the Awesome, but Impractical result of a military doctrine that stressed Space Marines in Power Armor as their bread'n'butter troop. Power armor just gets stronger and bigger, bigger'n'stronger, until the hunky space marine becomes a glorified pilot, basically sitting in a horribly cramped mini-cockpit inside the mecha's chest.

I'd make mecha 15 foot tops. There's plenty space to armor the pilot and the machinery against pretty much everything armor has a shot at stopping. You've got no reason to present a larger target... As long as it can punch or blow its way through a concrete wall, additional size just makes it closer'n'closer to the proverbial Large Stationary Target.

Smaller mecha are much more practical than humongous ones: They follow both the role of armored infantry and light artillery pretty much simultaneously.

edited 2nd Dec '11 5:01:41 PM by SavageHeathen

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.