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[Ozarck]

Spoiler: Some thoughts on the spider mech discussion which I missed due to being asleep (click to show/hide)

near future, combustion would almost certainly remain the primary fuel source. They are manufacturing fuels out of a lot of different things now, and not just digging it out of the ground.

I wouldn't imagine you would want a full tank cannon on an articulated leg vehicle - the recoil would wreck the legs, unless you sat the machine down to fire every time, which would create a weakness against standard tanks

double the weight of a standard tank? gonna limit mobility again, which run contrary to the design rationale of "like a tank, only more mobile."

for a light infantry urban combat support machine, less armament, lighter, and smaller but more numerous guns plus maybe rockets. For fighting tanks of equivalent size, cost and quality of tech, you would need something like air support. A mobile mech just isn't an improvement in tank tech - it fits a whole other category.

Flame throwers are dramatic but impractical. Unreliable opinion: Only good flame throwers are napalm and phosphorous grenades.

for urban combat, a mobile mech is best for fully or partially destroyed zones - getting over rubble that traditional vehicles would have a hard time with - essentially, an "after air raid" assault vehicle, designed to swarm in and conquer weakened objectives quickly and hold them until heavier units can be navigated through cleared zones.

main cannon under the belly has the complication of getting snagged on obstacles. Smaller antipersonnel weapons are standard under belly weapons in most sci-fi shows with tall walking thingies. If you have enough recoil to threaten balance, you may have too much or an articulated leg vehicle to begin with.

If one were going for a machine which could be operated by a number of players such that a forum game could be run on it, either two three man machines or one four to six man machine would be good, with the latter including driver, gunner, small arms guys, maybe an ammo guy and commander. An argument could be made for a two pilot set up as well, especially if it's near future, as there will be instances in which manually operating individual legs would be necessary or convenient.

[NJW2000]

Well, here's my badly timed musings on cannon turrets, then.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If the thingy is a body no folding legs, why not have, instead of a turret, a heavy cannon inside the body on top, in a sort of large ball-bearing, which could rotate, according to gravity. The cannon could just poke out the side of a hole which the ball was adjacent to, and to aim, the legs in the direction the shot needed to be fired in could fold or lower, tilting the body till the top was at a non-vertical angle to the ground, with the cannon resting on the rim of the hole in the top, as the ball swivels due to the weight of the cannon's poking out end. Thus, a good driver could just tilt say 45 degrees and fire horizontally, in any direction, especially with lots of legs tilted to different degrees.

You'd sacrifice simplicity for to lose a weak spot.

[Parisbre56]

Edited my mission 22 action to ask Steve for exits in adjacent levels.

04:08:28 <Nikitian> With a semi-circular symmetrical body it can probably move just as well in any direction while still 'facing' the enemy
04:09:06 <Piecewise> I don't suppose we'd need to so long as the wheel base on the feet could turn to reorient itself as well
04:09:39 <ER> mount as big a gun as you can spinally.
04:09:40 <Piecewise> Though it would leave the gunner very much at the mercy of the driver

Not really. With good enough computers/algorithms (presumably with some AI or at least many preprogrammed settings so that they can adapt to damage and changing conditions) and enough legs, you could have the driver controlling position (strafe left,strafe right, forward, backwards, etc.) and the gunner controlling orientation (up,down and rotation). Imagine it like the driver pointing on a map at the point where he wants the vehicle to go and the gunner selecting a point in a sphere he wants the vehicle to look at (or just points at a target, depending on how advanced the computer/sensors/comms are). The computer handles the rest. Probably same for any anti-infantry turrets or secondary weapon turrets it has.

The only advantage of having the driver control rotation of the body is that he can position it so that the strongest armour is facing the enemy while the gunner focuses on shooting. But a mech is probably not going to have very strong directional armour anyway, since its legs are going to be its greatest weakness.

There's also the problem of redundancy to consider. If the computer controls fail, it's going to be much harder for the driver and gunner to coordinate and control the vehicle manually. Then again, if the computer fails, the entire vehicle will probably fail too since everything in it sounds computer controlled, so it might not be worth to consider this, unless there's a chance that only the "driver" program will fail for some reason.

EDIT: Here's an idea to make mechs more viable: A substance that reduces friction substantially, so that even tanks with very good threads can't get a good grip and move around. Said substance is regularly air-dropped on battlegrounds in modern warfare, meaning that tanks and other vehicles that rely on a good grip have become less reliable. Instead, both vehicles and infantry have either switched to hovercraft-like propulsion or giant spiked legs that hit the ground strongly enough to penetrate the near-frictionless layer above it and get a good grip. Hovercrafts have better speed but limited fuel and suffer from equal and opposite reaction when firing heavy weapons, while spikelegs can change direction of movement more easily, require less fuel and provide a more stable platform for firing heavy weapons. EDIT2: Maybe also have hybrid vehicles for artillery, hovercraft that can get to position quickly and then use giant spikes to "deploy" and lock themselves in place to fire. EDIT3: Maybe even spiderman-like vehicles that can quickly deploy and retract harpoons to move around and anchor themselves. They would have interesting movement, especially in cities.

Kinda moves away from the realistic setting (since there are substances like that but probably none so powerful and so cheap to deploy) and there are a few other problems with it (like, how is the substance dissolved after combat is over and if it can be dissolved, why aren't tanks given dissolvers. Or why are people using ground troops at all and aren't using flying vehicles instead), but it's fun to consider. Maybe one government started deploying it, won a major battle with it and then like nukes, everyone started using it, causing a shift in the way war is fought. Or maybe it was aliens and their terraforming slimy snot.

[Radio Controlled]

PW, if you wanna design vehicles, I once made a small 'checklist' of parts that a vehicle or a suit would consist of. Might be useful:
http://einsteinianroulette.wikia.com/wiki/Tinker#Vehicle_and_Suit_Design

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 Vehicle and Suit Design

 Role
What is this thing supposed to do? What are it's up- and downsides?

 Body
What does the vehicle look like? General shape or frame of it, as well as what it's made of.

 Propulsion
How does it move (if at all?). Legs, threads, wheels, wings, rockets, ...

 Energy/Gas
Where does it get the energy to do things? Includes generators to power things, fuel for flight,...

 Command/Control
Who or what controls this thing? Computers (wetware or silicon), remote controlled, pilot(s),...

 Software
Does it have special software programs or functions? Examples include auto-dodge programs, aim assists,...

 Sensors
How does it recieve information from the outside world? Cameras (in different parts of the spectrum), audio, radiation and chemical sensors,...

 Communications
How does it stay in contact with the outside world, such as teammates? Simple radio, AWACS packs, Quentum Entanglement Computers,...

 Mounts/Limbs/Weapons
What does it use to influence the physical world? Includes limbs to interact with things, mounts to load thigns on, to weapons of various kinds.

 Armor/Passive Defense
Is it armored? What kinds, how much, what shape? Includes regular armor, reactive armor, shields, protective padding, but also stealth features or other 'passive' defenses.

 Countermeasures/Active Defense
Does it have any systems that actively defend itself, such as flares, chaff, or lasers to intercept projectiles?

 Special Features
Anything else that doesn't fit in the above?

[piecewise]

[Comrade P.]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm getting really strong Ghost in the Shell flashbacks right now,

[renegadelobster]

That looks pretty good

Edit: Just a thought, but the main cannon looks like an APC cannon versus a MBT cannon. Unless you're going for a smaller one that can fire off more rounds and have a higher ammo storage capacity

[piecewise]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm getting really strong Ghost in the Shell flashbacks right now,

I think Patlabor predates ghost in the shell.

[Radio Controlled]

That looks pretty good

Edit: Just a thought, but the main cannon looks like an APC cannon versus a MBT cannon. Unless you're going for a smaller one that can fire off more rounds and have a higher ammo storage capacity

Logical, I doubt it could support anything more than an autocannon (the thing often mounted on ifv's like the Bradley), firing an mbt caliber cannon would probably wreck it several degrees of bad. Even an autocannon might have too heavy a kick to get any accuracy beyond the first shot.

Also, if you wan antitank capabilities without usn a big main cannon, maybe consider adding a TOW-missile equivalent.

[piecewise]

That looks pretty good

Edit: Just a thought, but the main cannon looks like an APC cannon versus a MBT cannon. Unless you're going for a smaller one that can fire off more rounds and have a higher ammo storage capacity

Logical, I doubt it could support anything more than an autocannon (the thing often mounted on ifv's like the Bradley), firing an mbt caliber cannon would probably wreck it several degrees of bad. Even an autocannon might have too heavy a kick to get any accuracy beyond the first shot.

Also, if you wan antitank capabilities without usn a big main cannon, maybe consider adding a TOW-missile equivalent.

I've been changing the design a lot. It uses 106mm recoiless rifles now. No danger in falling over there.  And the thing has been reduced in size and weight substantially.

[NJW2000]

So, who thinks UristmcCoder is going to get punished for deciding to "test his range of morion"?

I'm guessing that he'll be able to indentify them from 2-10 metres, depending on visibility.

[Urist McCoder]

Auto correct i will go fix that now

[renegadelobster]

Heh...had a semi-random stupid thought. Could kinda copy the M50 Ontos and mount multiple 106mm rifles on it. Maybe one on either side of the turret?

[piecewise]

Heh...had a semi-random stupid thought. Could kinda copy the M50 Ontos and mount multiple 106mm rifles on it. Maybe one on either side of the turret?

It has 4.

[Radio Controlled]

That looks pretty good

Edit: Just a thought, but the main cannon looks like an APC cannon versus a MBT cannon. Unless you're going for a smaller one that can fire off more rounds and have a higher ammo storage capacity

Logical, I doubt it could support anything more than an autocannon (the thing often mounted on ifv's like the Bradley), firing an mbt caliber cannon would probably wreck it several degrees of bad. Even an autocannon might have too heavy a kick to get any accuracy beyond the first shot.

Also, if you wan antitank capabilities without usn a big main cannon, maybe consider adding a TOW-missile equivalent.

I've been changing the design a lot. It uses 106mm recoiless rifles now. No danger in falling over there.  And the thing has been reduced in size and weight substantially.

Reducing size and weight is always a good idea when trying to make legged things. Would it be too late to propose making a regular vehicle with threads/wheels on the 'belly' and deployable legs? Would probably defeat the idea of it being a spidertank (more like a regular-tank-that-can-climb-a-little) but much easier to keep realistic.

Though if you're willing to drop the 'tank' idea and make it an infantry support platform, like an IFV sans troop carrying capacity, that'd simplify things on the weight and size front further.

As for the recoilless rifles, I think using those means lower range and accuracy than using TOW-like things (or general ATGM), but might be offset by smaller ammo size. But, one should first set out design goals and expected uses for a weapons platform before you begin designing, not 'we could give it x to make it good vs Y'.

So pw, what role do you want your thingie to fulfill? If it's for a forum game, I think high-intensity close-quarters (urban) combat would work better than longer-ranged engagements ('point at target, let computer calculate, fire, repeat' could get stale fast). Or stuff like combat in forests or cave complexes (hunt the terrorist!).