On Jan 15, 2010, at 10:49 AM, Nigel McCarty-Eigenmann wrote:
In a setting with established standard mecha, where the mechs are
the big
noise in the military industrial complex and the eyes of the
military and
populace - tanks wont get enlarged spending as they will be deemed
_support_
and lower priority. People don't make optimal decisions.
Expanding on this a little more, if history has battle suits being an
initial success and the main manufacturer of said suits has most of
the intellectual property rights, it may be that the car manufacturer
making the tanks can't initially get the same technologies. If both
are owned by the same corporate conglomerate, it could be that the
corporate executives see higher margins from the suits than the tanks
and 'heavily encourage' deployment of them over tanks.
The best technology doesn't always win.
Keep in mind that there would likely be more civilian uses for battle
suits and mecha in construction. Although the implementations would
certainly differ, the basic techniques would likely be the same. If
some sort of Ultimate Battle Suit Competition became more popular than
NASCAR/Indy 500 that would pump even more money into developing suits
and mechs over tanks.
I could easily see these sort of factors giving tanks a TL penalty for
what sort of systems are available.
The other reason would be if more of the combat became 'urban
warfare', especially against small terrorist groups. Tanks work well
against large armies, but not nearly as well against insurgency. If
some of the mechs are small enough to fit through normal doorways,
that would give them an advantage in those circumstances.
-Bret
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