Onno Meyer wrote:
One way is to arbitrarily stack the deck against normal vehicles,
but I don't want to do that. Any power plant or weapon system for
a Mecha should be useable in wheeled, tracked or flying tanks as
well, and there should still be a niche for Mecha.
I'd say you have something of a problem then, since stacking the deck is
pretty much required. Some general observations, though:
1) You probably want supertech actuators (artificial muscles); while
it's possible to build a human-sized walking vehicle with current tech
(though it will underperform a human) the required muscle performance
scales in a linear manner with height -- if you want a 20' mech, you
want actuators with at least 3x the performance of human muscle.
2) The primary flaw of vertical (vs horizontal) designs (walker or
otherwise) is that you have a large frontal area relative to your
volume. Thus, you want tech assumptions where that doesn't matter --
which probably means a setting dominated by indirect fire (where top
area matters more) or other sorts of attacks that come from off angles.
Sadly, the weapons mecha are normally portrayed as using are direct fire
weapons where a tank-like build is ideal.
3) One way around the shape problem is a setting where shape is almost
entirely irrelevant for defensive purposes. This makes sense if the
primary defenses used in the setting are not a function of surface area
(for example, force fields).
* Superscience TL11+ could allow reactionless vectored thrust
AFVs with legs rather than skids. But how to explain the arms
instead of a turret.
Depending on actuator technology, arms aren't necessarily that horrible
a choice. However, how do you explain powered legs rather than skids or
struts? It's a total waste of mass.
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