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[Flare]

Actually, walker bots would be perfectly fine in the rugged terrain on mountains, where they'd have a massive advantage over wheeled and tracked vehicles. Although they'd probably be neither giant nor bipedal: just swarms of small mechspider tanks.

I don't know about this, due to the square cube law, the foot print to weight is going to increase exponentially faster than it's area. Walking around a mountain where loose ground, high inclines, and generally unstable ground incapable of supporting a dozen tonne footstep doesn't seem like a good idea to send an incredibly expensive and delicate piece of machinery.

However, the laws of physics say that recoil on a railgun doesn't matter to ground-based firing platforms (from human rifleman to megamecha) thanks to friction.

This is mostly true, but the main issue with recoil for large caliber guns is balance and generally the robustness of the chassis to take the force without messing up the precision instruments. For tanks and other armored vehicles with large armaments, as far as I know the guns are always placed in the center so shooting the cannon doesn't displace the aim of the gun. I think the aluminum tanks used by the US in Vietnam encountered this problem when they stuffed missiles into the turret.

Does anyone know if spider like legs scale up? From the way they're attached to the bottom of the body to the shape and contact with the ground, would the square cube law mess with this design? I don't see this sort of design being around past the tarantula size, and there's probably some sort of reason for this.  Is it due to the increased mass of the leg relevant to the area and the strength of the materials for the joints involved past a certain point in size?

Most large animals seem to go for the straight legs directly under the main body like elephants and rhinoceroses.

[DJ]

I expect major developments in chemistry, ie highly corrosive gases that eat through flesh and protective suits alike.

[PyroDesu]

I expect major developments in chemistry, ie highly corrosive gases that eat through flesh and protective suits alike.

Now, my friend, I bid you look at Chlorine Trifluoride. Apart from the massive thermal damage, as it reacts, it produces Hydrochloric acid and Hydrofluoric acid. The former eats through inorganic materials, the latter, bone (completely ignoring any flesh in the way).

[Flare]

We have those. They're called acids.

Not to mention that we already know the "acidic maximum" that a substance can be .

I'm sure you all encountered the pH scale in highschool. It's astonishing how many of us, myself included, didn't put the two and two together all these years...

One of the most acidic things we know of has the pH level of 1- Gastric acid. It can basically dissolved almost everything. The main problem being is that you have to get your enemy to stand still while you throw up on them, and then persuade them not to wipe it off as you ready your stomach for another after the solution on the enemy is brought up in pH. As you can imagine, this is easiest when no one is driving the opposing tank.

[Scoops Novel]

So, SPHESS MAHREEN advocates: if we mess about with genetic engineering, what could we achieve? Will we end up living in futuristic, somewhat cyberpunk, Marvel? And if there were some Sphess Mahreens, I'm certain that lacking a downside we would all want or need to be.

[i2amroy]

More use of drones is the only major change that I see to the actual combat itself. As for the change in tactics I see a major change due to the fact that space travel allows for deep strike capability almost anywhere. When you can have a spaceship drop your troops off almost anywhere on the planet it really changes the world of tactics and your space division and anti-drop capabilities become much more important. Also there is the fact that if the home worlds are located far away from each other diplomacy slows down due to the speed of light so you are much more likely to end up with fights continuing for longer and even potentially continuing after the war is over. The end result also becomes that each planet has it's own modicum of a high command that operates separately with each other, so you would have a large increase in the number of generals and other officers as each planet gets it's own command structure.

[Kogan Loloklam]

Space Marines are unlikely to happen. We are going more towards Avatarism, and it's cheaper and more efficient to go mecha over organics. Either way you don't want Genetically engineered superhumans, due to the dangerous potential for rebellion. Hard enough to prevent coups as it is when they aren't biologically much different from the governing forces.

[RedKing]

Dunno if it was brought up earlier in the discussion about railguns, but the next class of American supercarrier (the Gerald R. Ford-class) is replacing the traditional steam catapults with a form of railgun for launching aircraft.

Couple of the advantages are that it puts less stress on the airframe; can handle lighter and heavier aircraft than a steam catapult; doesn't require a source of clean, fresh water; and it has a lower overall profile and equipment requirements. It works by using an array of bigass capacitors to store up energy (in the range of 400 MJ+) from the nuclear reactor, then using that in a quick burst to power the linear induction coil. No reason a system like that couldn't be weaponized into a shipboard railgun. If it can accelerate a 100,000lb aircraft up to 130mph, I think it could accelerate a 100lb artillery shell up to signficantly more than that.

[Loud Whispers]

Space Marines are unlikely to happen.

In a world where people throw their money at surgeons in attempts at prolonging their life, what are you on about?

In all seriousness, I imagine a more modern version of the feudal Knight; more access to better diet, more access to better healthcare. Add that to relaxed social norms about surgery, blam, spehss mahreens.

[Neonivek]

Loud Whisper have you ever checked how expencive a single soldier is?

Training, feeding, pay, employment, and equipment?

Soldiers are extremely expencive.

[MonkeyHead]

Naval railguns? Oh, yea, they exist. The Royal Navy has had a testbed prototype firing slugs huge distances off the coast of Scotland for over 10 years, but there isnt a need seen for sticking them on warships. In terms of energy requirements, expense, and maintenance (mainly the wear of firing rails) they as of yet present little advantages over traditional chemically propelled ship guns save for performance, but the gains there do not justify the problems.

[Loud Whispers]

Loud Whisper have you ever checked how expencive a single soldier is?

Training, feeding, pay, employment, and equipment?

Soldiers are extremely expencive.

In a world where people throw their money at surgeons in attempts at prolonging their life, what are you on about?

In a world where people throw their money at surgeons in attempts at prolonging their life

throw their money at surgeons

modern feudal Knight

WE ARE THE 1%
WE ARE THE SPACE MARINES

[JackOSpades]

He who controls orbital bombardment wins

[Scoops Novel]

By the way... given the clusterfuck that piloting in space would be, say in a sub-relativistic scenario which necessitated human pilots, would we have augmentations so they could actually do anything? Perhaps Navigators aren't so far fetched.

[Nadaka]

Railguns DO have recoil. But they have "better" recoil than the equivalent explosive propelled bullet.

A traditional guns recoil impulse is the mass of the projectile times its velocity. A lighter, faster projectile can have the same or greater kinetic energy and a smaller recoil impulse. The velocity of a railgun projectile is not limited by the speed of exploding chemicals.

A traditional gun expels the gas along with the bullet, increasing the recoil based loosely on the mass of the propellent as well as the bullet. For a railgun, all of the generated recoil is productive.

A traditional guns recoil is "sharp" The impulse is highest at the beginning when the exploding gasses are most dense, and then tapers off as the bullet travels down the barrel. A railgun impulse is even as it accelerates evenly over the entire length of the barrel.