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[Insanegame27]

What limits to we have as to artificial superintelligence?

[ChairmanPoo]

What limits to we have as to artificial superintelligence?

War mech artificial brains are full of hatred; violence is their sole vocation. This limits their range of tactical responses and is a potential liability.

[Rolepgeek]

Whoever decided that was a good design philosophy was rather stupid, then.

Making your warmachines incapable of thought beyond rage and hate isn't great for them not killing your side, let alone being even marginally safe to conduct repairs or maintenance in the field, as well as the difficulties to teamwork that is so vital in modern combat operations.

That's before the limited versatility created by violence as their sole vocation, making them useless for peacekeeping, stealth, combat engineering...

[Grimlocke]

My choice of medieval anti-mech tactic would be to sit in my castle and taunt it.

And really, that's probably what would happen. Field battles were only fought if both sides thought they could win, or if one side was somehow unable to retreat. Ambushes with a giant stompy robot are kind of unlikely and keeping enemy intelligence unaware of it is too, so you would inevitably end up with an enemy that runs back to either a fortified position, or someplace your stompy robot can't go like marshlands, dense forests or any place with lots of elevation or rocks about. Or across a river, good luck rafting across a giant mech with medieval tech.

The mech could be of some use against some types of fortifications, the same sorts would be would vulnerable to siege towers I suppose. But the better, nastier fortifications have moats, hills or cliffs in front of their walls which would really complicate matters. You would also put irreplaceable assets at risk that an regular siege tower could do.

Walls could also be used to house things that could at the very least knock or pull over a mech, for instance: Some ballistas fitted with bolts that have a grappling hook on one end and a rope with a big rock on the other end. Shoot the hooks at the mech, pull them back until one catches, tie the rope to the rock and shove the rock off the wall. Alternately, the defenders could just throw a whole bunch of flammable stuff on it and set it on fire. Tanks fare badly against prolonged fires, and mechs likely would too since they would be unable to exhaust heat and slowly cook the electronics inside.

If the commander didn't want to risk them that way, they could use their mechs to tow around wooden walls and walkways for cover, or carts of soldiers. Maybe they could even be used to operate artillery. Though those are all things humans and horses can do as well...


In conclusion, I think mechs (the melee-restricted ones at least) would probably skew medieval/early renaissance warfare even more towards siege warfare, but would only have a limited role in the actual sieging. It would also have trouble moving across rough terrain and water, which limits strategic utility. They would be a useful asset, but not an all dominating one and possibly mostly useful in defensive combat.

Edit: Heheh, I imagine if the mech's AI is all angsty and full of hate, but unable to suppress manual overrides by the pilot, that it would slowly go insane while its owners dress it up in medieval heraldry and parade it around towns, or when they have it do menial stuff like lifting stone blocks for construction.

[Rolepgeek]

Really?

I mean, without truly heavy artillery able to batter down castle walls, I suppose that's true, but if the mech can go as fast or somewhat faster than a horse, and is sixty tons, those gates aren't worth shit.

[Bumber]

Alternately, the defenders could just throw a whole bunch of flammable stuff on it and set it on fire. Tanks fare badly against prolonged fires, and mechs likely would too since they would be unable to exhaust heat and slowly cook the electronics inside.

Not to mention the operators. You might be able to commandeer the mech if the damage isn't too bad. At the very least you can strip it for spare parts.

Flaming catapult ammo and those hand-held ceramic bombs.

[Grimlocke]

Pretty much all the larger, more important fortifications had more than a single gate keeping out invaders. I doubt the mechs would be able to leap over a moat and through a gate, and there was usually more than a single gatehouse to get through, each of which usually also had one or more portcullises to box in anyone getting through. Sometime the second gatehouse also had a moat and drawbridge in front of it.

In a lot of cases you might just end up running your mech into a ditch, getting it trapped and mobbed, or even taunted!

Hmmm, clever defenders that are behind just a single, flimsy gate could secretly rig a big wooden beam at mech-head height just behind the gates, and then remove everything else holding the gates closed. The mech would just knock itself over and be a big, obstructive thing that the attackers would have to get past.

[Rolepgeek]

Well, they also have chemical-propulsion weapons, and from what I could tell, fairly large caliber ones at that. Mechs also probably vary in size, and if they were meant to be any use in their original environment, they could probably go fast enough to jump a moat. Portcullis ain't stopping several dozen tons of high-grade metal composite hitting like a freight train.

I mean, they could build bigger moats and stronger portcullises, but you can't do that for every castle you want to build. And each gate breached is a big advantage, 'specially if the defenders don't have any mechs. Believers can tear down walls to clear parts for the next breach, too. And if people didn't put the same sort of wetted hides and shit on the mechs that they put on other siege weapons, I'd be surprised.

My guess is that warfare would basically consist of field battles with mechs (no one would fight each other unless they thought they might win is a given anyway, this doesn't make people any different), with supporting infantry. Large formations are only useful when the other side doesn't have mechs; you have to try and jam things into the legs and shit otherwise to stop them, metal poles and the like. Blocking up sight stuff and stabbing into observation ports helps, but a flailing mech can still slaughter a crowd. Mech groups with a minimum of infantry can also be a lot faster strategically, though of course they could be swarmed by enemy infantry if they get tangled up in combat. Siege combat would probably consist of the typical, though accelerated to some degree, when mechs were involved. Defenders try to get attacking mechs to block up the holes they make, attackers try to exploit breaches and widen/improve siege works with them.

[Jimmy]

Out of curiosity, what's stopping the mech from picking up a big damned log or rock and throwing it?

[Rolepgeek]

I'm guessing limitations on arm strength, and thus, effectiveness of that tactic compared to shooting things.

[Grimlocke]

I thought the contrivance we were working with was melee-restricted mechs roughly specced like a tank?

Tanks can't vault over moats, they can barely vault a small ditch, but only if the other side has a lower slope they can land on. Moats just have sheer wall there. A 60-ton vehicle trying to jump on two small points of contact would probably just collapse the surface its trying to jump from and faceplant.
A 60-ton biped being able to move at a reasonable pace is... barely believable, but it being able to perform acrobatic jumps over moats, through drawbridges and gates all at once, without losing too much speed and plummeting into the moat after all, is just somewhat lazy story writing to me.

Its not a completely invalid approach to a story, plenty of books and movies do this and can be enjoyable if you just turn down your brain a bit, but the point of this thread is applying unreasonable amounts of reality to (usually) fictional settings! Not 'What woud be a really cool popcorn-worthy scenario'.

Back on the subjects of mechs-vs-moats, another solution would be to have a mech (or two) just carry a battering ram long enough to reach over the moat.

Also have you seen cross sections of actual castle walls, rather than the later castle-like villas? They are massive, you don't just 'tear them down' without a lot of time or explosives.

If the mechs did still working ammunition, there would be no way to replenish it, and there would be no field battles because nobody is that stupid. People in the middle ages were just as reluctant to get themselves killed as they are now, and frontally charging a giant, invincible metal demon would probably not happen very often at all. Enemies would just break up and flee, turning wars into grinding series of insurgencies.

Also, if you have ammunition for mech guns, you can make a bomb.

As such, how about political ramifications? The late middle ages and early modern era were not known for their stable leadership structures, and 'suddenly giant robots' would probably cause some violent power shifts here and there. What if a unscrupulous condottieri found a cache of giant mechs and started conquering his way through Italy, only to find his leadership abilities lacking as he is betrayed left and right, including by people controlling some of his machines?

[Rolepgeek]

I'm still not under the impression they're bipedal, and if they're to function at all, they have to have decent amount of surface area for their feet anyway, or some sort of handwavy science magicks.

And yes, sieges take time, and soldiers working. A lot consist of building a literal dirt ramp up to the height of the enemy walls. Charging a wall full of pikes is also not very fun, but people did it. People stood in rows fifty feet away from the enemy and shot at each other. You'd be surprised what people will do.

Also? Once it's through the gate, it doesn't need to keep much, if any, speed. There's no moat inside the actual gatehouse, as far as I'm aware, for most castles.

And from what I could tell, they developed working ammunition for the mechs' ballistic weapons. But smokeless powder is not the same as good bomb-material.

Also:

How are they propelling the mechs?

What part of the 16th?

If the mechs are something in the vein of spider tanks, operating with relatively simple oscillating chechanics in the legs, then the legs could have their stride lengths and/or speeds individually controlled with what amounts to a mechanical gear transmission.

It would have to be some kind of handwavey bullshit engine that doesn't need maintenance or refueling. Relying on 16th century people to invent gasoline is just too much. I don't want to throw fuel concerns completely out the window but these mechs need to be something you can turn on after thousands of years of no maintenance.

Sorry if I was misleading, it's not alt history. It's Not-Earth, focusing on people who are similar to 16th century men.

Forgive me, but what is it about having more than two legs that would enable a mechanical gear transmission? I did envision the mechs being bipedal, but I'm open to having any kind of shape and size so long as I can justify it.

I'm going with the idea that this has become an established part of society at the timepoint we're discussing. And yes, mechs would be terrifying, but they can be brought down, and as soon as it happens the first time, it can happen again.

That said, I figure they're more likely to be in the ten tons to two-dozen tons range, but that's plenty to tear shit up.

Yeah, then there's no good reason to have more than one, maybe two people in the mech.

One pilot, one commander who needs to be somewhere between the exit and the interior so he can communicate between the spotter(s) (who are still necessary for keeping maximum awareness of terrain and the enemy) atop the mech and the rest of the crew, and at least two men per gun.

On the mechs' place in combat: Assume that mechs are impervious to their own cannons (they're meant to be killed by railguns or ATGMs, none of which are available to the people in the story). So the only way to "kill" a mech is to knock it over with another mech.

So no, not melee restricted. I've also been going with the idea that if it has legs, it can jump. These are things from distant past, running on Sufficiently Advanced Engines. Them jumping and going ~80 kph/50 mph doesn't seem unreasonable to me. And the momentum/force of about two dozen cars at 60 mph will break a gate.

[Amperzand]

The problem isn't giving it enough force to jump, although that isn't easy, it's making your dozen-ton biped not shove its feet through the ground and fall over when it actually applies that force.

One potentially more feasible way of making the things jump, assuming their engines have some silly energy output and their hull-material has silly levels of strength, is to basically mount big steam rocket/jet things to their backs. Use the engine to make a lot of heat in a confined space, fill that space from a tank of water, use the resultant pressure to lob yourself in a direction. It'd still tear the ground up something awful, and gives the mech a seriously scary antipersonnel weapon if you give it more vents and the option to output more slowly, but it would allow jumping with a massive biped, without requiring Sufficiently Advanced fuel for the rocket.

[Parsely]

The mechs are not going to jump.

@Arx: I'm aware that we're not talking about small arms, and by making that observation you're not doing anything to convince me that you could shift 60 tons with projectiles massing 20 kilograms. Artillery shells are either going through, detonating against, or they are bouncing off the armor. Artillery shells do not PUSH tanks.

I'm still not under the impression they're bipedal, and if they're to function at all, they have to have decent amount of surface area for their feet anyway, or some sort of handwavy science magicks.

They are bipedal. I am perfectly happy handwaving ground pressure if that's the only offense it takes to get mechs and medieval people fighting side by side. So let's just gently skirt that issue rather than try to be original or solve it.

[Rolepgeek]

I mean, you were saying you were fine with any size or shape as long as you could justify it, that's what I was going off of. :/

And if one hits a leg, and detonates against, it could well unbalance it.