In the real world, UAVs and UCAVs are further along than UGVs, and UGVs are tracked, wheeled, or many-legged, not bipedal. Of course neither are fully autonomous robots yet. But those are the limits of existing technology ...
So take a sufficiently advanced technology, say TL9 to TL11 in 3E, complete with magic like reactionless thrusters. For which roles are bipedal warbots reasonable, and where do flyers win? * As long as humans are humanoid, many buildings and vehicles will be optimized for humanoids. Does that matter? * Two legs have a lower surface area than four or six legs. If the stability problems are solved, the area becomes relevant. * It takes TL11 -- pretty magic technology -- to make vectored thrust reactionless flyers possible. * A reactionless VERTOL might be an egg with manipulator arms, not a little fighter aircraft. Consider the Zhodani warbots from Traveller. * Thrusters use more power than leg motors. That is no issue for Mecha-sized vehicles, where fusion power is the way to go, but smaller vehicles must use less efficient reactors. _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
