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Are tanks always more viable than mechs in a realistic scenario. Could a war within certain environments lead to construction of mech like machines? Tanks are usually simply faster and more versatile than bipedal machines, but could rocky terrain realistically effect this?

Shift
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    Welcome to the site Shift. We have covered Mechs quite a few times. I am voting to close this as a duplicate. If you check out the linked question you should be able to find what you need. A search of "is:question mech" will also bring up a ton of questions. – James Aug 24 '17 at 17:45
  • Also check out the [tour] and [help] to get more info on the site. Good world building to you. – James Aug 24 '17 at 17:46
  • Ok thanks, you can call it duplicate if you want, I will use the other thread, – Shift Aug 24 '17 at 17:54
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    Find a U.S. Marine, or any professional soldier (I was a sailor) and they will authoritatively inform you that if it can be built, there is a shoulder fired weapon that can put a hole in it. Bigger and more expensive makes great fiction, but something that big couldn't stand up to having it's frame shot up, and joints would be easy to misalign. You wouldn't even have to penetrate the armor. –  Aug 24 '17 at 17:55
  • A thought, after the close... don't be discouraged. Almost all highly successful fiction worlds employ technology that can't or shouldn't work as well as it does. Nobody watching Gundam or playing BattleTech cares that the war machines are unrealistic, they just want the hero to get the girl, or to defeat their cunning opponent with nothing more than skill and forethought. A good scene might be the general asking the analyst "This shouldn't work. How does this work?", followed by an infodump in the form of sci-fi conjecture. –  Aug 26 '17 at 16:55
  • I know the question is closed, but I'd like to give my 2 cents suggestion: in relation to terrain, not necessarily for combat, tracked vehicles have a lot of problem (as far as I heard) in terrains with too much medium to big pointy rocks or too vertical rocky terrain with 80 degrees or more of elevation and/or pitfalls. Maybe a humanoid mech could traverse such terrain with the same agility of a human, but the bigger the mech, the harder the fall... Assuming that this kind of terrain would be necessary for the conflit and your worldbuilding in the first place, of course. – Fulano Jun 10 '23 at 00:31

1 Answers1

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Mechs are strictly worse than tanks of comparable size. There is no environment where a mecha is going to be superior to a tank.

The upright posture makes them easier to detect and target than a tank.

A smaller contact area with the ground means that they will get bogged down in soft or unstable terrain easier.

Their upright posture makes them a less stable firing platform. The higher center of gravity makes them more likely to be knocked on their side due to driver error or impact.

A tracked vehicle is more energy efficient and less mechanically complex than a mecha.

We live in a world where man portable anti tank missiles exist. If there existed an environment where a mecha could travel it would be an easy target to any well equipped infantry group.

sphennings
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    I beg to disagree about "no environment". If there are many boulders and small cliffs (1-2 m sized) in a landscape, the terrain becomes non-passable for tracked vehicles. Of course we can increase the size of tracks to WWI-type, but that would make tanks a better targets and increase their weight. – Alexander Aug 24 '17 at 17:28
  • @Alexander If a mecha is walking through a field of boulders large enough to stop a tracked vehicle it's going to be a slow moving target as it carefully picks its steps. This will make it an easy target for anyone armed with anti tank weaponry. If you up the armor you end up with something extremely heavy and costly. Think about the superheavy tanks from WWII and how they were a logistic nightmare. Just getting them to the battlefield was a challenge unto itself. – sphennings Aug 24 '17 at 17:32
  • What about terrain where it would be beneficial to be able to jump? Frequent, impassable cliffs and crags in the terrain that can't be cleared by tank treads, for example. – Chris M. Aug 24 '17 at 17:47
  • @ChrisM. If you think something weighing 60+ short tones can jump you're sorely mistaken. – sphennings Aug 24 '17 at 17:48
  • @ChrisM., it would be easier to make a tank fly than it would be to make a mech jump. Also, missiles and bombs are usually how that problem gets solved. –  Aug 24 '17 at 17:49
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    @sphennings - tracked tank, when moving through anything but a flat terrain, is also slow and can be a good target. My point is that in some environments tanks are simply not viable. – Alexander Aug 24 '17 at 17:54
  • @Alexander And in those environments a mecha isn't going to be viable either. – sphennings Aug 24 '17 at 17:56
  • https://youtu.be/mRDl5_-wJ0Y?t=14s – Innovine Aug 24 '17 at 17:58
  • @sphennings I must be mentally picturing something considerably smaller. I don't think any of the "mech" type vehicles that people have built with are anywhere close to that weight. – Chris M. Aug 24 '17 at 18:06
  • @ChrisM. Can you think of a "mech" vehicle that can jump an impassible cliff or craig that has been built? – sphennings Aug 24 '17 at 18:12
  • @sphennings Not at the scale of what we're talking about. But a Harrier jet can take off vertically from standstill at a weight of about 13 short tons. And Boston Dynamics has an (admittedly much smaller) wheeled/legged robot that can jump pretty considerably. I would submit that a smaller jumping mech is possible (maybe using a combination of legs and jump-jet?).

    I'm not really trying to argue with you, that's just about the only situation I can see where having legs would be beneficial. Impassable to a tank would just be "wider than the length of the tank", wouldn't it?

     – Chris M. Aug 24 '17 at 18:21
  • @ChrisM. A VTOL jet and a robot dog aren't comparable with a M1 Abram. – sphennings Aug 24 '17 at 18:23
  • @sphennings I'm actually talking about Handle. Well, no, they're not. But better than an M1 that's stuck at the bottom of a crevasse. – Chris M. Aug 24 '17 at 18:32
  • @ChrisM. That's a robot not a mecha. Mecha implies that there is a pilot inside. Normally the distinction between mecha and powered armor is that mecha have a cockpit while powered armor is worn. The question is asking about more viable than a tank which implies that the mecha would need to fulfill the same role. In this case that of an armored fighting vehicle, with heavy firepower and strong armor. – sphennings Aug 24 '17 at 19:49
  • @sphennings - anything would be better than nothing. Currently, mountains are accessible to infantry only. I imagine a human in exoskeleton and light armor would be at a definite advantage there. – Alexander Aug 24 '17 at 19:52
  • @Alexander That isn't the question that was asked. – sphennings Aug 24 '17 at 19:53
  • @sphennings - do we have a strict range on a tonnage of our mecha? Imho anything from powered infantry to humongous Super Granzeboma fits the definition of "mecha". – Alexander Aug 24 '17 at 20:13
  • @Alexander I'd argue that power armor and mecha are different. – sphennings Aug 24 '17 at 20:14
  • @Alexander I agree with sphennings on the distinction, from a role perspective. Mechanized infantry does not serve the same purpose as heavy armor. However, we may wish to move this discussion from the question. – Chris M. Aug 24 '17 at 20:29