Synthetic muscles or hydraulics?

For a nation-type roleplay I'm in, I control a planet inhabited by excessively large hybrot or animat-type constructs that share a distinct likeness to Earth-native creatures—-mostly confined to prehistoric animals like smilidons, dire wolves or cave hyenas, as well as modern wolves, lions, mountain lions, tigers, or leopards (though just about every big cat is present, for the most part).

In short: Zoids. There's your analog. I've always favored quad-based mecha designs over biped designs simply because they make more sense to me—-which is incredibly ironic given the very idea of mecha is inherently silly.

For their method of motion, I was going to go with the usual servomotors, actuators and hydraulic systems, but I want these machines to be fluid in their motions. Would synthetic muscle systems—perhaps CNT muscle fibers—be a better choice than the usual mish-mash of hydraulics, servomotors and actuators?

The answer I always give to these kinds of questions for some odd reason is: Why not both? You can have your older mechs use old fashioned motors while the newer designs have synth muscle. Or, you can have the synth muscle mech be the Super Prototype with synth muscle units becoming available to others later in the story.

edited 5th Jun '14 11:22:49 PM by MaxwellDaring

You can have the technology in your nation solve the riddle of making synthetic muscles efficient. Muscles are collective bundles of fibers that, when stimulated by electricity, attract each other to slide each other one. The strength of the current is proportional to the strength of the attraction. You can take a look at how Mechwarrior treats this. They even named the tech, "myomer." It is plausible, but better bank on using super strong nanofibers or polymers for this. Maybe this is what carbon fiber is to be used for, eventually.

There is a cheezy 1977 movie called Exoman where a scientist develops a new technology that allows him to create powerful artificial muscles for a suit of armour.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076008/ Worth checking out, if you can find it.

I imagine that the problem with synthetic muscles is in maintaining and replacing them. So I'd use muscles in the Super Prototype and hydraulics (and their equivalents) in the widely-used grunts.

Oh! There's also the option of just manipulating the joints through some sort of magnetic or force field, a la the I-Field Beam Drive system in Turn A Gundam mobile suits or what Magneto can do to Wolverine every time they tango.

Kinda like a puppet with invisible strings, if you want, but the power required for a system like that would be enormous.

edited 24th Jul '14 1:38:54 PM by DeusDenuo

what about using both on the same platoform? servos to power the joint directly with muscle fibres attached to the substructure for exta power.

I utilize both, Hydraulics and servo systems with artificial muscle. The idea is that together they make up for their strengths and weaknesses.