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TooMuchAbstraction posted:They're insanely impractical, OP. They're heavy, and a lot of that mass is high up, which both makes it hard for them to take cover, and makes them unstable (i.e. prone to falling over). Using arms instead of turrets doesn't really make them any better at shooting things, and using legs instead of treads doesn't give meaningful improvement in maneuverability. In fact, odds are they'll have worse maneuverability, because they're putting all their mass onto a smaller footprint, making it more likely that whatever they're walking on will fail to support them. Tanks being too heavy (e.g. to safely use bridges, or to avoid getting bogged down in mud) is a serious design concern in the real world. RPATDO_LAMD posted:Also it's really fuckin hard to make something walk on two legs over uneven terrain without immediately falling over. The human body does a million tiny self balancing things to stay upright. ok so followup question: if mechs are pure fantasy, why do they have to overheat every time you do anything? couldn't that bit just be fantasy'd away?
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Dec 5, 2023 18:35
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What about power armor, like the Martians have in the Expanse, or I suppose even the thing you wear in Halo (minus the magical energy shield)?
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Dec 5, 2023 18:47
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Earwicker posted:ok so followup question: if mechs are pure fantasy, why do they have to overheat every time you do anything? couldn't that bit just be fantasy'd away? Because the people who designed the BattleTech games didn’t want lasers to be OP.
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Dec 5, 2023 18:48
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Legged robots are being used on smaller scales where they have to get through terrain that's too rough for treads, but as you scale that up to larger terrain features, there is a simple practical problem: Most valuable things worth fighting over are not located in mountainous terrain. Most mech ideas also envision a juggernaut all-in-one combat system which has a few problems, and most of those problems also apply to making a gigantic tank. i.e. there is a reason we don't have big stupid Command & Conquer style double-barreled super-tanks, and it's because if you bulk up the armaments on something, then it makes it harder to get it where you need it to be, doesn't really make it more survivable, and doesn't really make it any better at accomplishing its goal. Tanks are already as small as they can be to practically accomplish their goal: Drive a big cannon into a place. It's more useful to make 2 tanks than it is to make a tank that is basically 2 tanks bolted together. That's even more the case when you start talking about making some weird multi-role thing where those roles don't really require or benefit from being in the same place.
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Dec 5, 2023 18:49
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Earwicker posted:ok so followup question: if mechs are pure fantasy, why do they have to overheat every time you do anything? couldn't that bit just be fantasy'd away? Because when you're telling a story or making a game, it's nice to have a flaw or barrier that the player or protagonist has to overcome / exploit / get hurt by. Totally invincible godlike mega machine with no flaws is not a very fun story. So why would you fantasy something away only to make your story more boring?
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Dec 5, 2023 18:53
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Carbon dioxide posted:What about power armor, like the Martians have in the Expanse, or I suppose even the thing you wear in Halo (minus the magical energy shield)? there are a few companies trying to make robots, pilotable robots, walking robots, etc. That said, just because they might be feasible for industrial use doesn’t mean they would be used on a battlefield. They might look cool, but what’s to stop them from getting picked off by a drone? I love mechs, but they introduce like twenty new problems without offering big solutions. Typically, there has to be some handwave in fiction about why tanks/planes/missiles are no longer effective to make them feasible.
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Dec 5, 2023 18:54
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alnilam posted:Because when you're telling a story or making a game, it's nice to have a flaw or barrier that the player or protagonist has to overcome / exploit / get hurt by. Totally invincible godlike mega machine with no flaws is not a very fun story. So why would you fantasy something away only to make your story more boring? i dont think battletech would be "boring" without all the overheating as evidence i point to the vast number of exciting science fiction stories, games, etc. that dont involve stuff overheating all the time would star wars be better if luke had to stop and recharge the lightsaber? would star trek be better if the transporters had to be restocked with "transporter toner" all the time and the head of engineering spends most of their time quashing popup ads for transporter toner deals that they cant get rid of because federationOS wont let them run an adblocker?
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Dec 5, 2023 18:56
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Smirking_Serpent posted:That said, just because they might be feasible for industrial use doesn’t mean they would be used on a battlefield. They might look cool, but what’s to stop them from getting picked off by a drone? what if you added a big ugly wire hat thing like the russians have been putting on top of their tanks lately?
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Dec 5, 2023 19:00
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i mean the overheat question applies to a very small number of mech things, you'd have to go into the specifics of the thing to understand why the designers put it in there gundams don't overheat in like any of the series as far as i can remember, same with basically every other giant robot thing i can think of
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Dec 5, 2023 19:06
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Earwicker posted:i dont think battletech would be "boring" without all the overheating you're welcome to write your thermodynamics-less world, nothing is stopping you
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Dec 5, 2023 19:06
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Earwicker posted:ok so followup question: if mechs are pure fantasy, why do they have to overheat every time you do anything? couldn't that bit just be fantasy'd away? It's a gameplay conceit to keep energy weapons balanced with ammo-using weapons. Ammo weapons are constrained by fire rate and ammo count (which can further be an issue with your loadout, deciding how much mass to allocate to ammo, whether you need to armor your ammo storage to prevent explosions, etc). Energy weapons need to be constrained by something. But they only consume "energy", which is kind of vague, so the constraint is generally "use them too much and you lose access to things that use energy". That can be the weapon itself, or the entire mech, depending on the rules. Certainly they could design a setting where energy weapons didn't have that limit, but then they'd need to come up with some other limit to keep energy weapons from completely out-performing ammo weapons, or else decide that ammo weapons simply aren't going to be a serious thing in the game. Carbon dioxide posted:What about power armor, like the Martians have in the Expanse, or I suppose even the thing you wear in Halo (minus the magical energy shield)? There are companies working on making powered exoskeletons, like a lighter-weight version of the loader from Aliens. The goal generally is to allow humans to lift more and/or to hold heavy/awkward tools at the right angle to use them, without tiring quickly. 
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Dec 5, 2023 19:11
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I think y'all are making some very valid points about why mechs are impractical and stuff, but did you consider that the main buyer of high tech weapons systems doesn't really care about practicality but mostly about securing production in specific constituencies? And they might very well be talked into buying mechs by a sales pitch for idiots if it hit the right points.
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Dec 5, 2023 19:14
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BonHair posted:I think y'all are making some very valid points about why mechs are impractical and stuff, but did you consider that the main buyer of high tech weapons systems doesn't really care about practicality but mostly about securing production in specific constituencies? And they might very well be talked into buying mechs by a sales pitch for idiots if it hit the right points. that's a big problem with military spending but not a universal default. also, the mech pictured is a commercial product.
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Dec 5, 2023 19:21
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Certainly they could design a setting where energy weapons didn't have that limit, but then they'd need to come up with some other limit to keep energy weapons from completely out-performing ammo weapons, or else decide that ammo weapons simply aren't going to be a serious thing in the game. i mean there are plentty of scifi games where energy weapons simply have their own ammo type. running out of which imo would be preferable to the whole mech shutting down when you shoot gun too much, because you could at least still run around and punch buildings and whatnot i get that any game/story etc would be boring if you were "unstoppable" i guess i just prefer it when the thing that can stop you is more your opponents actions than your mode of transit BonHair posted:I think y'all are making some very valid points about why mechs are impractical and stuff, but did you consider that the main buyer of high tech weapons systems doesn't really care about practicality but mostly about securing production in specific constituencies? And they might very well be talked into buying mechs by a sales pitch for idiots if it hit the right points. i think there was maybe a brief window in the late 1980's when the us government could have been tricked into it but i think if it were to happen right now it'd probably be some halfassed cybertruck type project
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Dec 5, 2023 19:26
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Earwicker posted:i get that any game/story etc would be boring if you were "unstoppable" i guess i just prefer it when the thing that can stop you is more your opponents actions than your mode of transit There are a hojillion mech games that don't have an overheat mechanic, you could just play those?
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Dec 5, 2023 19:36
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From what I recall, tabletop Battletech is some hardcore grog poo poo, all about the minutiae. As constraints go, heat developed by individual components, cooling systems and the requisite tradeoffs are very much in line with old school tabletop wargaming. Like, energy consumption would also work but it isn't nearly as complicated, therefore etc etc 
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Dec 5, 2023 19:38
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Dear thread, why do they make strawberry ice cream? I hate strawberry ice cream.
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Dec 5, 2023 19:38
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wash bucket posted:Dear thread, why do they make strawberry ice cream? I hate strawberry ice cream. But you answered your own question here?
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Dec 5, 2023 19:42
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Because it's the second best kind (after vanilla). Unfortunately your parents raised you wrong.
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Dec 5, 2023 19:42
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I was ribbing mech guy.
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Dec 5, 2023 19:43
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i'm seriously mad you can write that i got mad
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Dec 5, 2023 19:46
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wash bucket posted:Dear thread, why do they make strawberry ice cream? I hate strawberry ice cream. Strawberry ice-cream is loving great when it's made with strawberries, cream, sugar and maybe vanilla and nothing else. However, the key part of strawberry flavour of easy to synthesize, so that's what you get in a lot of ice-cream. It tastes like synthetic rear end though because real strawberries have a ton of supplementary flavours that the synthetic stuff lacks. So that's the reason: you're eating bad synthetic crap branded as the food stuff. Or you just suck, that's an option too. Earwicker posted:i think there was maybe a brief window in the late 1980's when the us government could have been tricked into it but i think if it were to happen right now it'd probably be some halfassed cybertruck type project I mean, there's your reason for the overheating for no reason right there. We just need Musk 2.0 to create the pitch for Lockheed Martin basically.
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Dec 5, 2023 19:47
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Earwicker posted:i mean there are plentty of scifi games where energy weapons simply have their own ammo type. running out of which imo would be preferable to the whole mech shutting down when you shoot gun too much, because you could at least still run around and punch buildings and whatnot Again, there is space to play here, ammo-using energy-weapons are certainly possible. I'm just trying to make it clear that the ruleset you're complaining about isn't objectively wrong, even if it isn't to your tastes. * for the record, in my game, I made a "laser torpedo" weapon, which fires glowing green torpedoes that work just like regular ones except they go 2-3x faster. But this is a singleplayer game with an explicit power curve over the course of the game (i.e. lategame players are vastly stronger than early-game ones), so I don't have to worry about failing to leave space for people who want to shoot the regular metal ones.
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Dec 5, 2023 19:58
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Mechs are cool. In any setting where they're the primary weapons of war it's because everyone agrees that they're very cool and even if something else would be better (tanks, drones, planes, etc.) it just wouldn't be as cool, so there's a tacit agreement to stick with mechs.
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Dec 5, 2023 19:59
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On the topic of flavours, here's a stupid question. Why are there so many peach flavoured things (tea, gummy candies, etc.) and almost no nectarine flavoured things?
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Dec 5, 2023 20:05
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Trapick posted:Mechs are cool. In any setting where they're the primary weapons of war it's because everyone agrees that they're very cool and even if something else would be better (tanks, drones, planes, etc.) it just wouldn't be as cool, so there's a tacit agreement to stick with mechs. This is almost historically accurate, many ancient civilizations did what amounts to show battles instead of full killing of everyone, sometimes even just a single combat thing like David and Goliath. In a future with evenly matched and sensible powers, we could do this with mechs.
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Dec 5, 2023 20:05
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Earwicker posted:does the idea of "mechs" as portrayed in e.g. battletech have any kind of realistic basis for being a military technology we will see in future phases of human development? It's not like most sci-fi representations of space combat don't have stupid impossible dogfighting or whatever
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Dec 5, 2023 20:07
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greazeball posted:On the topic of flavours, here's a stupid question. Why are there so many peach flavoured things (tea, gummy candies, etc.) and almost no nectarine flavoured things?
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Dec 5, 2023 20:18
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:OK, and now how do you differentiate the energy weapons from the regular guns? Your goal as a designer of a PVP game is, generally, to provide for a variety of different playstyles and build options, while trying to keep everything basically balanced. If energy weapons are identical to conventional munitions, they just shoot laser bullets instead of metal ones, then you haven't really done much to differentiate them*. My personal favorite way of doing this is the Starsiege Tribes way, where you have an energy bar that powers your shields, jumpjets, and energy weapons, and recharges itself slowly, and you can spend an inventory slot on an extra energy pack if you want. Need to fly a bunch? Now your shields are low. Just took a big hit? Now you can't fly. Shooting a sniper laser? Shields and jumpjets down. There's also the tie fighter way where you can divert ship power to higher ship speed, faster shield recharge, or faster blaster recharge, at the expense of the other ones. I honestly agree with op that overheating is not a very fun way to handle it, but i get why they do it.
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Dec 5, 2023 20:24
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mystes posted:I mean swords are also probably loving useless against poo poo like halberds and everyone loves swords in historical games and rich people have historically loved dumb swords for show, so I suppose in some sort of space fantasy future people could use mechs even though they're useless swords might have outlived their usefulness on the battlefield but they are still useful if you are challenging someone to a 1 on 1 duel and the weapon of choice is swords. perhaps this is the role the mechs will play in the future. rock em sock em robots more than battletech. also there is sword fighting in the olympics and i think giant robot combat could be a fun spectator sport as well Earwicker fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 20:29
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my friend has a WRX and has expressed in the past that they want to drive it on a track. i'm pretty sure this is a thing that is possible, how do i get this experience for them?
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Dec 5, 2023 21:02
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butt dickus posted:my friend has a WRX and has expressed in the past that they want to drive it on a track. i'm pretty sure this is a thing that is possible, how do i get this experience for them? Google "track day [location]"
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Dec 5, 2023 21:03
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Earwicker posted:also there is sword fighting in the olympics and i think giant robot combat could be a fun spectator sport as well Watch the edutainment documentary "Robot Jox": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66yH8l1Dt0s
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Dec 5, 2023 21:18
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EricBauman posted:Google "track day [location]"
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Dec 5, 2023 21:57
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butt dickus posted:i started with google before asking here but all i've found are a bunch of web 1.0 websites full of jargon that doesn't make any sense to me, a guy who drives a 16-year-old automatic. do i need to register with the scca? i'm not doing the driving. i have no idea what the term is for the thing i want. i want to pay money so my friend can drive her own car around a track. what is the right word for that? i found this place with your search terms which is nearby but i don't see anything that says "drive your car fast here for this many dollars" which is what i want Use the SCCA track day calendar to find a track that’s close to you, and then check the track to see who else is doing track days there. I don’t know how much of a thing open track days are, but that’s what you’re looking for since otherwise they’re generally run by clubs for their members. Fake edit: also search for High Performance Driving Education
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Dec 5, 2023 23:13
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What's the best way to clean the contacts in a battery enclosure once a battery has leaked into them, and what are the odds that the item in question is salvageable once a battery leak has occurred?
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Dec 5, 2023 23:24
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C-Euro posted:What's the best way to clean the contacts in a battery enclosure once a battery has leaked into them, and what are the odds that the item in question is salvageable once a battery leak has occurred? Depends on how much leak there is, you can use a bit of vinegar or lemon juice to neutralize it and wipe it off with a Q-tip or something, you might need to use a toothbrush if it's real old and there's a lot. It'll probably still work unless the leak was real bad and long ago.
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Dec 5, 2023 23:54
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I mean, to the direct question of "couldn't they fantasy the heat stuff away too", the answer is "of course, but they want it". I mean, battlemechs already have nuclear fusion reactors in them, running at a zillion degrees, but there are depictions of pilots wearing shorts and singlets and cooling vests and whatnot in order to deal with the cockpit discomfort from the extra heat. And it's like: my guys, either your system can cope with the heat of a nuclear reactor, or it can't. Enough additional heat that it makes the pilot a bit hot and sweaty - rather than baking them alive - isn't going to do poo poo. But it doesn't matter, because it's part of the fun drama of the scenario. Battlemechs overheat because the writers wanted them to overheat.
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Dec 6, 2023 00:44
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alnilam posted:My personal favorite way of doing this is the Starsiege Tribes way, where you have an energy bar that powers your shields, jumpjets, and energy weapons, and recharges itself slowly, and you can spend an inventory slot on an extra energy pack if you want. Need to fly a bunch? Now your shields are low. Just took a big hit? Now you can't fly. Shooting a sniper laser? Shields and jumpjets down. overheating is basically the same mechanic as that tribes shared-for-everything energy bar but with a heat bar instead... there are also some games that do both, like elite dangerous which uses your spaceship's capacitor energy as a short term fast-recharging resource (for firing lasers etc) and the heat as a longer term one that's harder to deal with mid-fight.
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Dec 6, 2023 01:01
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Why isn't 'because it's made up' a good enough answer? That's the only answer we have.
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Dec 6, 2023 02:10
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