legs Nick, Legs

[RandomNOOBY]

When do we get legs: Why shoot your enemies when you can stamp them into the dust of Neter then shoot them! My Independant Scottish Marine force made for friends campaign are tired of invading in wheels and hovers they want to stamp and kick something. Everyone likes legs even if not attatched to pretty women they can be attached to walkers and mechs and god knows what else. spin blockc/dedi blades legs dont work for me, invisi blocks require a masters degree in block spagetti tetris and are as combat effective as haggis. I dont use mods but might even turn to the darkside of mods if any modders read this and give it a go. Legs man, legs for the love of god we need legs

[3 Crab Fish Sauce]

Innomen님이 먼저 게시:

Asserting walkers are pointless is itself pointless. It's a game.

Many players want walkers, the dev says it can't be done.

Best solution imo is a technical one:

Dev should be super specific about the problem and the community either confirms there's no solution or helps create one.

5/7 m8

[Redstorm]

When did we start comparing IRL Tanks and Mechs, I thought this was supposedly a suggestion to get mechs in a game....
The only real barriers to legs is that Nick hates attempting to draw/model legs and I assume the code would be hard. Also, where are mechs going to be used other than on land/coastlines or potentially on the decks of ships...

[SievertChaser]

TheOSB님이 먼저 게시:

@dennis I won't contest that, most depictions don't seem to give two ♥♥♥♥♥ about physics. But I can assure you there's plenty of logic where I'm going.

Armor-we all know angling matters

Not anymore. There's been a complete departure from sloped armour.

Ground pressure-the issue with tanks getting stuck in high snow and moist ground was the tracks getting buried and gunned up.

Patently false. Clearly you don't know what you're talking about.

Also your example is for tanks 70 years ago. Tech has progressed a fair bit more since then.

Yes. By using wider tracks. Something you can't really do on a mech.

Disembarking- depending on the design (a smart one wouldn't be the giant 60+ foot tall at at) a mech could simply drop ropes and soldiers would fast rope down, a ramp could lower, or odds are soldiers will be wearing some form of exo suit or power armor because we've got mechs now so why rule that out so they could jump out or something.

I'll have the exosuits without he ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mech, please.

Also, the mech provides no physical cover for the troops once deployed.

There's also the possibility of the camel method where both sets of knees bend and it sort of takes a seat (assuming the APC variant would have 4 legs to accommodate for the increased mass)

And while it does, every gun on the battlefield tries to kill it.

TheOSB님이 먼저 게시:

There's also the fact that generally a mech can support more firepower.

[citation needed]

[Toasted Sunshine]

You guys keep talking about bipedal, man-shaped mechs vs a glorified truck with guns attached. You don't need to think about mechs or tanks within such limited constraints. Think outside the box a bit!
It has already been stated that these man-shaped mechs could not work, at least not effectively. Just look at the shape - where would everything fit? How do you fit in a power source + fuel? How do you mount guns and deal with recoil? Why present a larger target? Etc. Etc.
Tanks already have the fundamental engineering done, buuut... They are still glorified trucks with guns on top. They fill the role they are built for but have dificulty expanding beyond that role.
Perhaps a blending of the two would be agreeable to both parties? TheOSB is correct (imo) in the more guns/walking over rolling/utility but dennis.danilov is correct (imo) in regards to cost/size/proven combat effectivness of the tank as we know it.
Think up new, imaginative ways to build a mech that you think would function and I am fairly certain that what you think up would be more tank than "mech".

[An Ning]

Well.. there is a bipedal man-shaped mech that the S.Korean military is developing.... though they admit it is likely to be better employed in construction than in combat...

Regardless... I think I actually have an idea on how to do legs (sort of... I was thinking of making an AT-At build with it, but it's way down the line for me).
Assume you don't have 1 unit being the mech, but rather 5 units: the mech body, and the 4 legs.

The body has 4 docks pointing flat out to the sides. These docks are on spinblocks causing them to rotate left to right.

Now, docked with them at specific distances are subspawns in the shape of legs -with spinblocks at the knees.

You now have 1 "mech" that is being driven by "legs"... if you have either mad ACB skills or great LUA coding capabilities.

[3 Crab Fish Sauce]

What about we just make the Space Marines + dem Terminators and stick with that?

[SievertChaser]

Cλptλin Williλm님이 먼저 게시:

Think up new, imaginative ways to build a mech that you think would function and I am fairly certain that what you think up would be more tank than "mech".

The only imaginative way to make mechs more effective is to rip the legs off and add wheels or tank treads. The legs are a fundamental failing, and there is absolutely no way getting around it. This should be hardly surprising considering that scaling engineering solutions up or down is far from a straightforward affair: what functions on the scale of a human will almost certainly not function on the scale of a vehicle. Pretty much the only reason anyone ever tried to develop humanlike robots is in order for them to exist in an environment built for humans. Once you depart from the human scale there is no point in humanoid designs.

The ground pressure problem is unsolvable. Tanks have significantly lower ground pressure per cm2 than humans, and due to the square-cube law you'd have to have ludicrously big feet on a mech just to stay at human levels.

And in every other criteria legs fail as well. Each leg joint with the associated actuators is about as complex as an entire tank's powertrain; you get about a dozen of them per mech, therefore requiring a huge maintenance crew, and reducing the time between mainteance and parts replacement. You're never going to see a mech march between battlefields; it'd have to be carted around on a more conventional transporter - which in turn causes a whole lot of issues with bridge strength and tunnel width.

Then there's the impossibility of properly armouring legs. Treads and even wheels don't move much relative to the chassis, and are mounted close to the ground, thus they're difficult to target at even the closest range. Legs by definition would be a lot more mobile, and move upwards between each step quite a bit, so you can't clad them in an armoured skirt. Even in a low-slung walker they are going to be significntly more vulnerable, and the unfortunate reality is, their ability to navigate uneven terrain is proportionate to their height, which incentivizes taller designs. Taller designs are nigh-impossible to hide without premade fortifications, and attract a lot of enemy fire *cough* M1 Abrams *cough*.

Then there's the problem of durability. Sure, tires can be ripped to shreads, and treads are pretty vulnerable, but legs necessitate placing a large mass of actuators outside the main armoured hull. However, the problem is even greater than you might think - durability also places an extremely hard cap on maximum speed. A mech's entire mass is distributed over small and thin structural elements, especially compared to a tank, and their motions constantly change directions - unlike a tank, which merely spins the drive sprocket. The compression and sheer forces would be insane, even when moving at a casual stroll. And that's before someone is kind enough to barrage them with artillery shells - a combination of concussive blasts and shifting loads is likely to bring a mech to its literal knees long before the battle proper even begins.

[RandomNOOBY]

rules are made to be broken, walls are made to be climbed
by multi legged walkers (;

[RandomNOOBY]

An Ning님이 먼저 게시:

Well.. there is a bipedal man-shaped mech that the S.Korean military is developing.... though they admit it is likely to be better employed in construction than in combat...

Regardless... I think I actually have an idea on how to do legs (sort of... I was thinking of making an AT-At build with it, but it's way down the line for me).
Assume you don't have 1 unit being the mech, but rather 5 units: the mech body, and the 4 legs.

The body has 4 docks pointing flat out to the sides. These docks are on spinblocks causing them to rotate left to right.

Now, docked with them at specific distances are subspawns in the shape of legs -with spinblocks at the knees.

You now have 1 "mech" that is being driven by "legs"... if you have either mad ACB skills or great LUA coding capabilities.

There are several builds like this they are pretty dam cool, and functionality is not degraded much this way as each seperate drone can have its own weapons, losing a leg or 2 impedes the machines performance very minimally as long as the legs are merely asthetic sub weapon systems, Im looking forward to seeing your version

[Peridot]

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/a/a9/VenerableDreadnought00.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20121121032925 Well 40k has a fairly good example of a walker in the Dreadnought, while it isnt the fastest its also pretty hard to immobilize due to how short the legs are and the fact that they have armour around the pistons and servos of the leg, dont have knee goints and instead use gyroscopes to stay upright. making something like the dreadnought is, in theory, possible in ftd.

[Peridot]

where the dreadnought suceeds is not in moving across difficult terrain, rather in the fact that it is smaller than the tanks and can actually carry MORE firepower than other tanks that are about 1.5 times its size. This is due to the fact that it is heavily armoured on the front and can rotate at its "hip" enabling it to always be facing its foes and still shoot at them with whatever weapons are equiped on its hull.

[3 Crab Fish Sauce]

Golden Labs님이 먼저 게시:

where the dreadnought suceeds is not in moving across difficult terrain, rather in the fact that it is smaller than the tanks and can actually carry MORE firepower than other tanks that are about 1.5 times its size. This is due to the fact that it is heavily armoured on the front and can rotate at its "hip" enabling it to always be facing its foes and still shoot at them with whatever weapons are equiped on its hull.

40K Physics. Da red wuns go fasta!

[Peridot]

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/c/c9/Chaos_Defiler.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20101220091707 another good example of a mech is the chaos defiler from the same universe, with the tops of the 6 legs being above the main carriage and its 6 legs mean that it is hard to completely imobilise because of redundancy, something which tanks lack

[Peridot]

40K Physics. Da red wuns go fasta! [/quote]
That is only for the orks, any other faction with red vehicles still move at the same rate as any other colour scheme.

[SievertChaser]

Golden Labs님이 먼저 게시:

40K Physics. Da red wuns go fasta!

That is only for the orks, any other faction with red vehicles still move at the same rate as any other colour scheme.

Oh, please, have you seen Imperial aeronautica aerodynamics?