Chris Campbell wrote:
At 10:32 PM 6/5/2007, Minh-Nhat Le wrote:
--- Chris Campbell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Very unlikely, since any society capable of building mechs will
> already have superlative dedicated combat vehicles at its disposal.
>
> The notion of needing mechs to do the job is, well, baroque at
> best.
Are you agreeing with me?
I was replying to Alfred here, but yes, on this topic we seem to be in
agreement.
I know that the idea of large humanoid mecha with hand-like manipulators
is pretty much out there, but let's take it as a a work of speculative
fiction. In the UC timeline, obviously such mecha became the standard
combat weapon. Why? not really known, since the historical background
concerning the development of technology and its usage for Gundam isn't
that well documented. But the fact stands, in the Gundam continuum (or
the Gundam Continuums, assuming the alternate realities), these mecha do
exist, and they do have a lot of crazy designs, weapons and accessories.
No, it does not make sense, if we put it in real-life perspective. Yes,
it's terribly impractical, why not just have guided weapons platforms
that can take out whole battleships and the like?
The thing is, the envisioned fictional world that is shown in Gundam
does have the mecha. Now, in the future, humanity may go that way - and
maybe it won't. Maybe we'll end up more as a hive mind that works of a
futuristic version of the Internet, or we'll end up as psychics working
off equipment that enhances our abilities. We may even end up with
gigantic colony ships that can launch little delta-dagger-type fighters,
or have warp travel and go around in shiny, swan-like spaceships. We
don't know.
What we do know is that the future is not set, and that anything is
possible; to lock ourselves into only what can be done, what is
practical, is a sure way to not evolve, to not develop new technology.
When I watch Gundam, I look and see a possibility - not necessarily a
practical possibility, given today's standards, but as I stated earlier:
The future is not set.
Now, as for the Kaempfer - it looks incredibly different, but again,
there are historical precedents for combat weapons that look incredibly
different from anything else at the time it was introduced. It looks
great, so it's fine by me. It's all fiction (or a possible future),
after all.
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